Are the Black Eyed Peas what is wrong with the music industry?
Posted by Michael on September 26, 2009 under Articles, Personal | 
4 Comments to Read
Black Eyed Peas break records with 25 consecutive weeks (and counting) atop the Billboard Top 100 Chart.
We keep hearing about shrinking record sales and the decline and eventual demise of the recording industry. How all those freeloading downloaders are destroying the community… But I think there is something else wrong with the industry… It is best illustrated by The Black Eyed Peas.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy many of their songs. But do you find anything wrong with the following?
The Black Eyed Peas have set a record for longest consecutive run at the top of the Hot 100 singles chart with their two songs, “Boom Boom Pow” (12 Weeks at #1) and “I Gotta Feeling” (13 weeks and counting).
I don’t know which I am more troubled by:
1. The music industry hasn’t been able to promote any song in almost 6 months that appeals to Radio and the consumer enough to knock these guys out of #1.
You see, I think “I Gotta Feeling” is kind of fun and “Boom Boom Pow” is kind of crap, but whatever I think, do any of you think these are MONSTER HIT, Record breaking songs? I can’t imagine it. Top 10 hits… sure. #1 hits… maybe. Record run at #1… How the hell did this happen? It isn’t that there isn’t any good music out there. I have found some outstanding songs and albums out there that are or should be mainstream. Has the industry forgotten how to promote, or do they just not have any money left anymore to promote?
OR
2. If I hadn’t of bought the CD, I still wouldn’t have HEARD these songs.
Now granted, I don’t listen to the radio. But MONSTER hits used to be inescapable. You’d hear them EVERYWHERE. TV, shopping centers, blasting out of car stereos… you name it. I STILL haven’t heard these two songs anywhere but my own iPod. The album is doing alright, but not immense sales. The singles are selling big on iTunes… but if this is a major smash hit
Jason Mraz Breaks records with 75 weeks and counting on the Billboard top 100
of it today, how come I, someone who keeps and eye and ear out avidly on pop culture, hasn’t heard these songs anywhere? I still run into people who haven’t heard Rihanna’s “Umbrella”.. another monster kit… and I could name tons of “monster” songs that I have a hard time finding people who know them. Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” recently broke the longevity record for most weeks (75 and counting) on the Billboard Hot 100. I rarely find someone who knows the song when I mention it.
Have we lost our cultural touchstones? Has media fragmented so far that the next generation won’t have all those “songs EVERYONE knows”? Can we get it back?
Big hits drive sales. Not just of the big hits. They help keep the customer in the purchasing habit. They buy other stuff as well. I think that there is far more to blame than file sharing and shrinking floor space for CDs in retail outlets. Without the water cooler hits, the urgency to buy fades. For the industry to survive, they need to figure out how to recapture that. Or maybe I’m a relic for thinking there is something desirable in having songs EVERYONE knows.
Dmitri said,
Hi Michael,
I hadn’t realized that those tracks broke a record for being number 1 on Billboard. That is frightening, no? I agree with your assertion that the fragmentation of the music industry has been the cause behind some of the new marketing tactics or lack thereof. It seems that word of mouth through social networking sites and websites, such as Pitchfork and The Hype Machine can boost the sales of an artist as much as a major marketing campaign by a major label. There is surely a correlation between the proliferation of digital technology and the decline of musical purchases. I was just discussing this issue with my friends the other day: to go visit your local neighborhood music shop was a ritualistic experience that stimulated your tactile, visual and auditory senses. Music had more value because the experience of discovering new music did. Looking at album art on the iTunes music store or Lala.com just doesn’t have the same impact that it had in a live setting. The impact of the new generation of teens – the ones who are becoming exposed to new music through more of a digital setting – has yet to be seen. How will their tastes in music mature with the increasing fragmentation of the industry? Will they react strongly against what is going on or remain non-committal.
En Derin said,
Gotta agree with ya there.
Peter Nelson said,
I think it’s a myth that there was EVER a time when “everybody” knew the popular music of the young. When I was in college in the early 70′s listening to the Dead or the Allman Brothers or the Stones, my parents had no idea who any of them were – but they sure knew the songs of Dinah Shore or Johnny Mercer or the Inkspots.
Today the songs that “everyone” knows got that way because of the self-absorbed egos of (my) boomer generation dominating the advertising industry and using “Born To Be Wild” to sell diapers (or whatever) and hiring a geriatric Sir Mick to strut around at Superbowl halftime.
Fear not: we will die off and Jay-Z and Beyonce will yet get their turn to sell canned soup on TV while the next older generation nostalgically mouths the words to “Crazy in Love” and wonders why they can’t name any current (2040) hit songs.
Montgomery Crapdidly said,
I couldn’t agree with ya more. The black eyed peas are terrible. Looks like snape there is interested in fergie, and fergie is interseted in u………
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