Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business is an analysis of the economic and cultural forces affecting the marketing of music and how the industry has always responded in a dysfunctional and short-sighted manner to those changes. The book ends with an acknowledgment that the music industry is enduring a rebirth and that although no one can predict what the new world of music will look like, we can at least be assured of its continued existence.
The author is a 30-year veteran of the music business and writes in the disappointed tone of a family member who can't quite grok watching a self-destructive relative implode through bad choices. He states that the issue is not that music sucks but that the music you hear through typical media outlets is, for the most part, homogeneous and dull.
Music has been a commodity for thousands of years, so the concept of making money from the creation, performance, and distribution of music is not a new one. The record industry itself, however, has never been terribly artist-friendly. Many of the great musicians on the Chess jazz label, for example, actually owed money to their label at the end of their careers! We're talking Etta James and Bo Diddley here. Rock and rap labels were not much more forthcoming with their artists. Apparently, no one told the musicians that the piles of coke in their dressing rooms and the limo ride to the Grammys came out of the band's royalties. Bordowitz points out that you can hardly blame the labels: they are businesses and thus the bottom line supersedes love of music in this industry where the major players are publicly owned and thus responsible for favorable quarterly reports to their shareholders.
The book contains an in-depth and business-oriented analysis of the corporate aspect of the music business: the mergers (there are only four major labels now), the basic structure of a band's management, A&R, and promotion (all of these people have to be paid!), and the emphasis of video in marketing. The latter is interesting: artists such as Milli Vanilli and Ashlee Simpson being caught with their pants down, lip-syncing… but who cares? They look good on camera! The major labels use voice manipulation to remedy problems created by artists who can't sing as good as they look.
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