Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Art War Over Music in N. California by Doniphan Blair
Little did San Francisco musicians know that the iPod, which debuted in October 2001, along with its very arty ad campaign, which was soon staring down at them from billboards, would eventually eviscerate both their album sales and their local clubs. Illo: courtesy Apple
YOU'D THINK CALIFORNIA WOULD BE
pretty protective of artists, considering it is home to the television and movie industries; it has a big chunk of the music industry, plus quite a few painters, sculptors and poets, not to forget dance, which is surprisingly big in San Francisco. (Remember Aronofsky’s ‘Black Swan’, 2010, and the dancer competing for Natalie Portman’s part?—she was from San Francisco.)
But when the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, the Parisian humor magazine, were murdered in January and massive solidarity demonstrations erupted all over Europe, there were few Californians marching or holding signs (see CineSource's last month feature, "Is All Forgiven?").
Of course, that attack was a grotesque aberration and, in general, French artists are well-protected by the state. If they work for a certain percent of the year, in seasonal theater, say, they receive a stipend the rest of the year, so they will be there when Moliere in the Park, for example, reopens the following season.
Meanwhile, a massive assault on the arts—specifically music—is being perpetrated right here in San Francisco, a place long proud of its creative traditions. After debuting on the world stage with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, the City went on to produce the Beats, the San Francsico Sound of the '60s and Lucasfilm, among many creative movements.
Aside from gaming, however, will there be any art movements emerging from this area in the next hundred years?
Yes, yes, I know: The great digital disruption was profound and people in industries injured by it are always bellyaching about how hard the transition is, or how they need more time or subsidies, just like in France. But when it comes to music, the situation is dire.
Bassist, composer and band leader Charles Thomas, born and raised in SF's Fillmore where he still lives, has watched the roller coaster ride from when Winterland was down the block to the Fillmore's resurrection as a boutique jazz 'hood (shown here with pianist Tony Stead at Sheba Piano Lounge, 1419 Fillmore St). photo: D. Blair
• America's "official" music industry dropped by half in the last decade
• iTunes, owned by Cupertino-based Apple, which took over the lion's share of music sales, has cash reserves of $150 Billion (more than the reserves of ALL countries, let alone ALL other companies—see TechGarage's chart)
• Musicians are turning from record sales to performing to earn an income, but
• Live music in the Bay Area has not enjoyed notable increase or support
“Although we’re still going strong and still hosting great acts and selling out frequently, we’ve definitely experienced a downturn,” I was told by Lynn Schwarz, who worked her way up to become a co-owner and booker at the venerable South of Market club, Bottom of the Hill. “It’s hard to say when we first noticed a decline in our business."
While Apple made $37 billion profit in 2013, the last year for which many of these numerics are available, the ENTIRE music industry dropped from $15 billion in 2000 to $7 billion in 2013, a incredible transfer of resources, livelihoods and creative energy from the artists and their industry associates to the tech sector, where it is only a drop in the bucket of that community’s almost unfathomable wealth. The entire current "official" music business of seven billion is 5% of Apple's 150 billion in reserves and dozens of tech companies have billions more in reserves.
“I would say, anecdotally, the number of music venues has increased," Terrance Alan, an "entertainment activist," told me, in our phone conversation of March 10th.
"As delivery systems change, from record to CD to electronic, the industry has been slow to adapt. Musicians are finding that the live space is one way they can increase revenue as album sales are diminishing.”
A founding member of San Francisco's Late Night Coalition, which focused on getting nightclubs permits back in the ‘80s, when the biggest problem was parsimonious SF cops, Alan helped found and run the San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission, one of the few of its kind in the US.
While the artists have tried to adjust, and, as a result, live performances by known bands have gotten incredibly expensive (unknowns remain $5 or maximum $10 for a club admission), there has been no significant increase in support for musical performance by the Bay Area's Silicon Bohemoths.
This six cent ($.06) royalty statement to New York drummer/composer Craig Wuepper from Pandis (probably short for Pandora Internet Service) for 1200 plays inspired him to request 'that none of my material stream on the internet from this record. I know the exposure is important but I didn't want to participate until they got more realistic with some sort of revenue sharing." illo: courtesy C. Wuepper
Pandora, the music streaming service based in Oakland, has become notorious both in the music industry for its microscopic residuals, and around Oakland, for its absence of community sponsorship or involvement. Although a Pandora rep did promptly return CineSource’s emailed interview request, a rarity among media giants, despite repeated resubmissions of that request, no fifteen minute slot could be found to actually do it during the month leading up to this article’s publication.
Other tech companies have similar postures. There is no plethora of bands headed to Cupertino to do $1000 buck gigs for investor luncheons or some-such-thing. Nor has there been a flurry of sponsorships of music festivals, clubs or musicians, not to even mention block parties.
To be sure, the digital disruption did provide many MASSIVE benefits to musicians, from cheap but excellent recording equipment to the ability to deliver your identity or sound to the public via Facebook or YouTube, which has now become an enormous MTV service. Some folks no longer "spin" albums, CDs or MP3s but YouTube videos given almost the entire musical catalog is now available, often with video footage.
Moreover, back in 2003, there were 880 label-employed musicians and 300 indies earning livings, according to Elite Daily (6/6/14, citing the US Bureau of Labor) and, almost a decade later, in May 2012, there were 190 label musicians and a whopping 1830 indies.
In fact, the Australian artist of one name, Gotye (pronounced "gau-ti-ay," original name Wouter Andre De Backer, 35) produced “Somebody that I Used to Know” in his folk's basement in Melbourne. It reached Number One on two dozen national charts and the Top 10 in another 30, eventually becoming the best-selling song of 2012 and one of the best-selling digital singles ever.
“You have the power now,“ wrote LA musician and author Thomas Honeyman on his site last year. “[But] what are you going to do with it? For the first time in its long history, the American music business is firmly in the hands of the artists and the consumers. You have the ability to lead the industry wherever you want it to go.”
“The Industry” will obviously survive and some will prosper—immensely—but many locales, which previously considered themselves blessed by cool music scenes or hotbeds for the arts, may not.
The crowd at SF's lauded Bottom of the Hill, hosts to all types of bands, from punk to hyphy, emo, metal, shoegaze, screamo, rockabilly, alt-country, classic rock and grunge, although 'I’d say our specialty is indie rock, whatever that means nowadays,' noted owner-booker Lynn Schwarz. photo: courtesy Bottom of the Hill
“There’s an exodus of musicians and our customers alike as they get priced out of this city,” club-owner Schwarz continued. “This city is only hospitable to the ultra-rich these days. SF is losing its artists en masse. The late night transportation system is still sub-par for a city that fancies itself cosmopolitan. The fact that you can’t ride BART on weekends past midnight is troubling at best.”
“Our club has always hosted local bands. These days, it’s so hard for local bands to get people to show up at their shows. It breaks my heart because there’s still so much talent—just not enough people going out to shows,” Schwarz lamented. “We can sell out old school rock bands or brand new. Singer-songwriters are still very popular. But the local-only shows are definitely suffering.”
“It’s hard to say if techies are coming to our shows," Schwarz said when I inquired if there was any recompense from the folks inflicting the digital disruption damage. "I have always had techie friends and consider them to be just normal people with a range of interests, so I’d hope they are spreading themselves out in different entertainment venues.”
“That being said, I worry that there are a lot of workaholics that are not patronizing [local] arts organizations. There needs to be a concerted effort to get the word out that the arts are here; that they need to be supported; that they are what makes this city cool. I recently spoke at this panel that focused on this topic," she concluded.
Throughout the history of the music industry, which started with sheet music sales in the 1800s, artists have been able to become middleclass, even with just a "one-hit wonder." Today only megastars, like Taylor Swift, who has played a part in protesting these changes, can earn a living.
Meanwhile, those who get "only" a million plays a month on Pandora, if they take home a tenth of penny per play, get $1000, not even enough for a one-bedroom in the skyrocketing rents of previously-low-key Oakland.
It's as if Vincent Van Gogh's brother, Theo, instead of working tirelessly on his brother's behalf (ultimately selling only one solitary painting, the proceeds for which he forwarded forthwith), sold Vince's entire oeuvre and paid him only a penny per painting, paintings which now go for up to $100 million each.
The notion that radical poverty is good for the arts or that Van Gogh's prints should sell for a buck a shot is absurd. photo: courtesy V. V. Gogh
Art is essential to our vision and dream scape. Once an image or tune or narrative becomes a meme, utterly unique and powerful, it forms a one-of-a-kind cultural building block. Whether a pop musician or Van Gogh, the creators of such work should be fairly compensated.
Naturally, there is no way we can go back in time and convince Vince not to cut off his ear or eat his oil paints, which were laced with wormwood (the active ingredient in absinthe), not to mention getting humans to reverse the fall from grace initiated by our quest to acquire knowledge and build machines. But the idea that our community is currently making so much off of the musical arts while not giving much back is serious "Art War."
It might seem odd to make a comparison between the radical Islamic terrorist organization known as ISIL/S and Apples' iTunes. Certainly Apple isn't cutting off musicians' hands nor destroying ancient art, the patrimony of civilization. But consider this: Apples' iTunes reaches nearly all musicians worldwide whereas ISIL/S does not even control all of Iraq where many musicians are still able to survive through flourishing CD sales in the bazaars of Baghdad or radio play. In comparison, the global effect of Silicon Valley's war on art is infinitely larger.
But also consider this: The average teen or twenty something listens to music about half their waking day, meaning some 150 songs daily, a 1000 a week, and 52,000 a year. Multiply that by 100 million, say, for the US alone and you get 5.2 trillion song plays a year! That's hella lot residuals.
You'd think that Apple, which makes the listening devices and download systems, would be concerned about their content creators but apparently not.
According to Rolling Stone’s Steve Knopper (10/25/11), back in the good old days of the $15 buck CD, the label got 65% (or $9.74), the retailer 36% (or $5.40), the recording artist 12% (or $1.93) and the writer 6% (or $.91).
Today, although the figures vary, according to RS: "If a song gets streamed 60 times [assuming 60 plays was a good average for a store-bought, brought-home CD], the songwriter receives 9.1 cents... and the performing artist gets 38 cents" often splitting it with a record label."
This means that the label gets $.19, the recording artist $.19 and the writer $.09, equaling a 90% haircut for the artists and a whopping 98% markdown for the label.
It's going to be hard building back the Bay Area's band strength with those numbers.
Apple's logo of taking a bite out of the apple first symbolized the acquisition of knowledge but now seems to mean more the fall from artistic grace. illo: 15th C. Lucas Cranach
In 1968, Bay Areans were enjoying an extremely fecund music scene. Although they didn't get much recompense from their label, Fantasy (another story, see CS article), Creedence Clearwater Revival was topping the charts with three platinum albums and the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were living high on the... well, everything. What revenue stream might support that today?
“The city has not protected some of its most cherished nightclubs, and if the clubs aren’t thriving, the musicians aren’t thriving and the whole scene is sick," Lynn Schwarz said. "The city has to put its weight behind helping our nightclubs and other artistic institutions and artists survive.”
“The legislation recently proposed by Supervisor [London] Breed is a great first step towards one kind of protection from noise complaints [which occurr] when developments go in next to nightclubs—something now threatening us on three sides at Bottom of the Hill. But it needs to go further—help provide low-cost practice spaces to musicians, for instance,” (more on Breed's 2014 proposal here).
“I do not think live performances will ever be replaced by digital recordings of performances,” Lynn concluded, much the way it is doubtful that robotic, full-body masturbation will replace analog romance and sex.
“Seeing a show live is completely different than seeing a streaming recording of it. It’s sub-par," Schwarz opined. "We’ve had a lot of people ask us to partner with them to provide live streaming and we’re not into it. We believe in the power of live music. Nothing replaces that!"
Terrance Alan, meanwhile, is more optimistic. "The number of [small] venues and diversity has increased. This occurred decades ago due to, in large measure, the permitting both of fixed places of entertainment and temporary permitting that was transparent and open. A lot of it came through the raves, which were often not permitted."
"The mistreatment of artists can traced back to the industry's mishandling of the transition to digital," Alan insisted.
"The history has yet to written about responsibility or lack thereof of this community to preserve the arts," he continued. "I think there will be a movement [to preserve music here], I hope there will be."
"For example, there is no way a community theater can compete with a tech startup. We've been seeing that in the Tenderloin. This is a big topic and there are lots of people talking about it. There is a group, Arts for a Better Bay Area, and they are working to organize this politically. Then they can move the agenda."
"These are struggles that our culture has gone through for our entire history. I am not sure how it is going to play out but I certainly hope we will preserve the arts and music."
But how? If Apple put one ten-thousandth of its 2013 profits into supporting live music, $3.7 million, perhaps bringing in bands for lunchtime concerts, sending out bands to high schools, sponsoring the Bottom of the Hill club, and the like, they would start following their own 2013 Mac Pro slogan: "Built for creativity on an epic scale."
They could also put a voluntary donation button on iTunes, "Add .10 for the artists" say, which would raise the musicians' take by 50%. That would make the difference between being able to rent a small studio in Oakland or having to move to Lafayette—and you know what type of music they make in Californian suburbs!
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .Posted on Mar 25, 2015 - 04:39 AM