Stream a Little Dream

When I started playing guitar and joining bands it was pretty much the same route to follow if you were looking to make it (whatever that means!) You would learn to play, join a band hit the road and hope you’d be discovered, somehow. A lot like the story as told by Paul in the song Take It Away. Well, pretty soon you discover that ain’t gonna happen brother! You realise that making it is relative to what you consider success is. The Beatles success to a large extent was obscene. Let’s face it. With their type of success I’m surprised they stayed even remotely sane and as George quiped, they gave their nervous systems in the process! As I’ve said previously, the Beatles had a blank canvas to paint on and their success was perhaps slightly easier for them as they kicked down all the closed doors they found….like let’s turn up the bass (on paperback writer), let's have all night sessions (like on Pepper)….let's use this instrument, that orchestra ….in some respects the guys ended up kinda doing what they liked, whenever they liked and with that came creative freedom and therefore a certain ease and opportunity in which to break new ground. It was an evolution from eager and hungry school boys to lean athletes…well musically and professionally speaking anyway!….I wonder though if a band like the Beatles would have, or indeed could have broken through given the kind of constraints and pressure there are on bands, (nay, products) today? How many times have you said, there’ll never be another Beatles? Have you ever wondered why? How would they have cut through I wonder?
Today, the quality of your written product is not the point. Potential isn’t something that’s taken into the equation. No, today, bands have to be their own self contained label, production and management team waiting to be cherry picked by big companies. Bands have to work their own fan base through social networking sites. They have to be au fait with the My Space generation. They need to be able to communicate and fully understand the internet and its social integration with their demographic. To be able to understand who’s going to buy their tee shirts because one thing is for sure, no one is going to buy your music are they? No, it will be stolen. It’s just a fact of modern musical life. So, where the emphasis was once on the quality of your song writing its value is now less, because as a commodity, there is no real value in it on its own. Sure, as one part of a “whole”, it has some value but not like it was in the Beatles day. There are tens of thousands of bands out there all vying for success. Most of them won’t succeed. Sure, there was a lot of competition in the Beatles day too, but nowhere near as much as now. I’m sure that the Beatles would be worthy by any measurable standards here today and way beyond tomorrow, but I’m also sure that they couldn’t have made it in the same way. In some respects it’s partly because of the Beatles huge success and massive cultural impact, that bands don’t have the same kind of chances. There are still some huge acts out there, but none that cut the ice with such precision as the Beatles. Forty years up the line, the band is still under the microscope to an unnatural degree, such was their impact. Few, if any from today will be on the same slide. Which one of the Beatles would have nurtured their my space site searching for friends, uploading photographs and answering the mail I wonder? Which one of them would have said, lets just give the music away and concentrate on t shirt design? Would they have had the gigging opportunities that they did in order to develop as a live act? I’m not sure a place like Hamburg’s scene exists for a band anymore. Today, if that kind of place did exist, they would probably use a hard drive full of stolen files to fill an eight hour all-nighter – cheaper that way right?
I’m not saying that the band wouldn’t have made it, because I think they would have. Cream as they say, floats to the top. But, it’s doubtful if they’d have made it in the same way with the same sort of impact because the business is so over subscribed and is so much less important to what was its core audience – the record buying public.
The music industry to a large extent is in deep, deep trouble…well for now anyway, until it recovers and finds a new business model to adopt. To a large extent it only has itself to blame. In this day and age, most people see music as some kind of free commodity with little or no value, somehow only put here to entertain people for a few minutes at a time with no remuneration for the artists who trust me, still put their life, and soul into the creation process. Watch for example how the music business reacts to a new feature soon to be, if not already available on the Real Player – a function that allows the user to record the streams they listen to! All this going on whilst, kids in bedrooms up and down the country begin the journey of learning to play, (maybe) joining a band, learning how to record on a computer, (maybe) hitting the road and opening up a my space site, developing their websites, opening an online shop, designing their t-shirt, nurturing their fan base, understanding their demographic, meeting with their legal team and hoping to be discovered.