Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Wurtzel asks: What does the death of the rock star mean for America’s economic might and its soft-power?
The old-fashioned rock star has gone the way of the dodo and the dinosaur …Today’s music industry is either moribund or dead …The one thing the United States exports with serious success is our popular culture. We have conquered the world not with our weaponry, but with our music and movies. In fact, 47% of our gross domestic product involves intellectual property (IP) transactions, and about 6% of our national worth — $626.6 billion annually — is from our copyright businesses … The U.S. was meant to be a nation of commercial creativity. It is our birthright. It’s what we do …
Today there is far more excitement at the introduction of a new Apple product — look at how people flocked to get their iPhones! — than over anything artistic. The one creative area hardly affected by the encroachments of technology, at least insofar as its market has not caved, are fine arts like painting and sculpture. At a Sotheby’s auction in autumn 2007, Jeff Koons’s nearly two-ton, nine-foot, hot-pink stainless steel sculpture, “Hanging Heart,” fetched $23.6 million, a record for a work by a living artist. In November, Sotheby’s and Christie’s reported a return of $1.7 billion for that single month, up 24% from the previous November. You cannot, after all, download a painting or a sculpture. The thingness of the thing itself — all that stuff Heidegger talked about when you read him in college — cannot be translated …
Our movies and music are America. And the day the music dies, the party’s over.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Today every young person is trying to BE a rock star by uploading their home videos on YouTube rather than learning how to love the music that’s already out there. Unfortunately, what IS out there is the mass-produced techno stuff that makes it hard to differentiate between one “artist” and another…
My niece is 10 and she made me a mix cd of her favorite songs – they were hard to stomach and all sounded the same. She doesn’t even know who Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, etc. are. Sigh.
And I love Jeff Koons. If I had the dough I’d buy his oversized balloon puppy anyday.
August 16th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Well I am one who has been a recording artist and performer for many years. I am in essence a rock star in hiding, I have withheld my music until I was in a correct state of artistic control. That is now. I like to be in control of my are and have spent time and personal research finding out ways artist loss that creative control. Record companies, bad relationships business and personal, and drugs and or drink. Since 1998 I have slowly and steadily built my personal knowledge on Copyright, Corporation: (2 times now 3rd one will bethe charm~), Recording and Sound engineering live and studio, 1980′ recording technology cost of a state of the art studio = $250,000 Today better quality computer based gear = $3000. I’ve owne it now for over 5 years. Internet distribution. etc. The new economic market for the musician is now live performance, like the art mentioned above MP3s are icons on a desk top and music in a player. The ‘things’ that we once held in our hands, that made it ‘real’ the LP.s Cassettes, the 8 tracks and even the CD’s are now no longer the norm. Now all that is no longer the standard. We burn generic CDs we download into MP3 players or my personal Fav. Mini Disc. (sounds better than MP3s LOL … an independant thinker) so our link to Rock stars in not in our hands, it is through eyes (TV & Computer screens) and of course ears. This creates a strong desire to go SEE IN PERSON the person that is mostly electronic digitization to the music fan. The biology of the person in concert is going to be where the real commerce is. No longer sales, it really never was, music historically has been an organic social thing. Concerts Small Pubs Large Clubs, etc. people need the hugs handshakes and pat on the backs to remind them they are not digital data receptors of electronic spew. My whole new business model is based upon this and not ’sales’ of music, that will be treated as by products for sale like T-Shirts and Hats, the internet is a bands personal radio station, directly distributed to the listener without corporate or industry control. Live music is again going to be primary draw for music lovers, back around the campfire as we all sing Puff the Magic Dragon and yee songs of old and new LOL… Rock Stars are still around we just refuse to be pawns and puppets anymore. Like many years of watching electronic broadcast television shows … a very wise and strange looking prophet said and we listend:
Live Long and Prosper. Links to my new acoustic music will be added to the above Rock Site soon. That will be a whole new artform in itself for Rock Stars have also learned to become: Multi Dimensional …. ……..
Blazze (yes we still use stage names LOL)
August 16th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Same Post typos corrected it IS after 4am LOL:
Well I am one who has been a recording artist and performer for many years. I am in essence a rock star in hiding, I have withheld my music until I was in a correct state of artistic control. That is now. I like to be in control of my art live and recordings, and have spent time and personal research finding out ways artist lose that creative control.: Record companies, bad relationships,(business and personal), and drugs and or drink. Since 1998 I have slowly and steadily built my personal knowledge on Copyright,Trademark, Corporation: (2 times now 3rd one will be the charm~), Recording and Sound engineering, both live and studio, i.e.1980′s recording technology & cost of a state of the art studio = $250,000 Today ‘much better quality’ and computer based gear = $3000. I’ve now owned it for over 5 years. & of course Internet distribution. etc.
The new economic market for the musician is now live performance, like the art mentioned above MP3s are icons on a desk top and music in a player. The ‘things’ that we once held in our hands, that made it ‘real’ the LP.s Cassettes, the 8 tracks and even the CD’s are now no longer the norm. Now all that is no longer the standard. We burn generic CDs we download into MP3 players or my personal Fav. Mini Disc. (sounds better than MP3s LOL … an independant thinker) so our link to Rock stars in not in our hands, it is through eyes (TV & Computer screens) and of course ears. This creates a strong desire to go SEE IN PERSON the person that is mostly electronic digitization to the music fan. The biology of the person in concert is going to be where the real commerce is. No longer sales, it really never was, music historically has been an organic social thing. Concerts Small Pubs Large Clubs, etc. people need the hugs handshakes and pat on the backs to remind them they are not digital data receptors of electronic spew. My whole new business model is based upon this and not ’sales’ of music, that will be treated as by products for sale like T-Shirts and Hats, the internet is a bands personal radio station, directly distributed to the listener without corporate or industry control. Live music is again going to be primary draw for music lovers, back around the campfire as we all sing Puff the Magic Dragon and yee songs of old and new LOL… Rock Stars are still around we just refuse to be pawns and puppets anymore. Like many years of watching electronic broadcast television shows … a very wise and strange looking prophet once said and we listend:
Live Long and Prosper. Links to my new acoustic music will be added to the above Rock Site soon. That will be a whole new artform in itself for Rock Stars have also learned to become: Multi Dimensional …. ……..
Blazze (yes we still use stage names LOL)