Tag Archives: Business

Music Industry, Music Industry Blog

Frustrating Songwriting Practices

A lot of discussions I happened to have with industry friends recently are about songwriting. Some for semi-finished songs or demos, some for commercial songs. Finally I come to realized that, a few of these common songwriting practices are just frustrating to me.

First of, let me just get this straight, there’s no songwriting technique that is wrong. Music is art. As long as the music and emotion is real and authentic to the creator, it’s ok for people to not understand, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. The idea of songwriting should not be a sacred statue that no one can critique or say anything about, or else how can we move forward? Also, what I don’t like does not apply to everyone either. But since I can’t shut up about music, I might as well just let it out.

One of the big problems in the music business today is how music has moving further and further away from a form of expressing artistic creativity. It’s becoming more of a way to cater market interest, kind of like how social media only feed you with stuff you like with its algorithm. And while intrinsically, that’s ok, the balance between these two objectives sometimes goes really off. Like very seriously, off. I hear people complain all the time that “good music is so hard to find these days.” But why? Are songwriters today less creative or less artistic than songwriters in the 90s, 80s, 70s?

Of course not. But here are some of the common problems:

1. When the emotion isn’t genuine, people know. A lot of the times, songwriters have to deliver and might be on tight deadlines. Of course, I’m not trying to deny that there is a craft side of the songwriting process. But don’t try to fool anyone when you don’t mean it. Unless they are your super fans aka are super blinded, generally speaking, we human beings are good at sensing the fakeness and bs, although sometimes we can’t really articulate that. If there’s something we don’t feel right or don’t really “click,” most of the times, it’s because the emotion isn’t real!

2. The “I don’t care” and “you don’t know me” message floating around in today’s love songs, especially mainstream stuff. I mean, seriously? This is actually one of the biggest frustrations I have with this generation of music. You can be sad, angry, disappointed, agonized, feeling painful and everything, or eventually you might be redeemed and born a new person. It’s all valid. Human emotion is hard and complicated to deal with. That’s essentially why we need music, literature, movies and all other forms of art. But honestly, if you don’t care, why go through the hassle writing about it? If you think this person don’t know you and you don’t give a f, okay, but why you pretend to not care when obviously you do, and in a form that you should feel free to express yourself and emotion? And kids think this is cool? Like, hello??? This is exactly what passive aggressive means, and sending message like this is just sweeping stuff under the carpet which really doesn’t helping anyone. Plus, it’s just not true, which also ties to #1, people can smell it and it’s really a lot less cool than you think it is.

3. Trying way too hard to come up with a “great song.” This one is really funny. You know, in my undergrad songwriting class, we once had this discussion about writing a “great song” or “hit song.” It seems most songwriters go through the phase of wanting to write a great song that everyone just love and adore, and eventually becomes a great hit blah blah. But usually what ends up happening is that we try way too hard and pay way too much attention on the details, wordings, production, whatever minor stuff, yet really overlooking the big picture here. You hear that in a lot of commercial music, when the basic idea is great but sounds like it was not quite developed well, and you hear a lot of great details, but with this really shaky framework.

And it’s rather frustrating, because when we try this hard it usually doesn’t go our way and we ended up feeling defeated and question ourselves and our creativity. At the same time, most of us write our best songs when we are not trying. Sounds funny right? I think one of the key components of writing a great song is to be true to yourself, and when you pay too much attention to minor issues, you press down the actual emotion which matters the most. The first draft matters but shouldn’t be perfect. I once wrote a song when I was very drunk to just let the emotion out. Luckily, I recorded a rough phone demo to capture all of that so that I can work on the details later (or was I that drunk? Hmmm). That song turns out to be one of my favorite and I was taking a very interesting turn from my previous style, which I was very happy with. Not to encouraged people to write songs under influence but, you get the idea, right?

4. Speaking be true to yourself, I think most of the times, songwriters need to realized that, we are the tortured ones. Most people don’t have to deal with this amount of self-reflection and emotional rollercoaster on a daily basis, however, for music, it’s about emotion. It requires massive amount of daily reflecting and digging out relatable pieces from experience in order to create this form of art. If you run away from it, and I see it all the time, when songwriters wanna just put words together to create this aura yet avoid telling the real story, it’s awful. I mean, you can write a poetry or what not, it doesn’t have to be country where things are all plainly laid out. But when the “realness” element is missing, when it doesn’t tie to any type of your own experience, again, people can sense it very easily, and you are fooling no one but yourself. In my very personal opinion, a great song, regardless of genre, is the result of combining years of music training, years of self-reflection from personal experience, years of articulation training to tell a relatable and most importantly, concise story, with a ridiculous amount of honesty. From the outside, it always looks like everyone can write music and put on the internet. And boom, you can be famous! But no, really, if you want to make songwriting your profession, the bar is not as low as you thought it is. Facing yourself, your true self, is always a painful process. Some people are lucky and don’t have to do it their whole life. But as songwriters, we are damned to do that from a very early stage. That’s part of the job. That’s just what it takes, and it’s a lot of pressure on mental health. Seriously, one of the costs for songwriting might be seeing a good mental health therapist to keep you sane on a regular basis.

Most of the times, if you know me personally, the advise I usually give to people who wants to get into music business is “don’t.” Not that I don’t love music or this business, in fact, I do very much. Yet, 99% of the people only see the glorious part of it, and nobody talks about the sh*tty part and the invisible yet ridiculous high bar in order to be in business. Nobody wants to say it, but being in music business is a place that can make your heart ache, if you love music like I do. At last, I think one of my career mentors once beautifully sumed it up, “if you can find another job, don’t do music.”

Music Industry

Lots of Blurred Lines

Of course, I wanna talk about the case. The Blurred Lines case.

I have been keeping my mouth shut and reading the press for the past few days, just hoping to make sense of all things associate with the case. Especially when it’s a contemporary hit with an all time legend, who wouldn’t wanna know what’s going on?

Ironically, like the song title, there are surely lots of blurred lines in this case. First, I have always been a little puzzled about how the current copyright law works when the last author die. The current copyright law says that the copyright of the song last until the death of last surviving writer plus 70 years. I’m all for the life of the last surviving writer part, but I have been curious about how the following 70 years plays out in reality. And honestly, 70 years is a hell of long time. We have seen in history that these copyrights have been handed to people who only use them for exploiting money. Some of them aren’t so creative. Some of them can be a little greedy. This is not what copyright should be about; however, I’ve seen it happen again and again in contemporary music history. Once I was upset that the copyright of Amy Winehouse’s music was partly handed to her father. And now, it appears that the Gaye family rely on Marvin’s music for livelihood, which I have always been wondering if it’s really fair.

Money is not even the worst part. The thing that really wowed me was that, put aside the $7.3m, the Gaye family “seek an injunction prohibiting the further sale and distribution of the track.” WOAH, wait a minute. That crossed the line a little, didn’t it? I mean,  the Gaye family is in it for the money, obviously. Ok, you got your $7.3m. That’s a lot, even for a hit song. Songwriters these days aren’t making zillions of dollars, not anymore, especially with the whole digital business we have now, which is still in heated debates. And again, it’s one damn song. What is that all about?

Another interesting thing I read in Bob Lefsetz’s journal about this case was that, the verdict was granted by a Californian jury. The key word is “jury.” The juries are different from a judge. As Lefsetz rightly points out, “… juries are notorious for going for feelings / running on emotions.” It reminds me how much a stir Blurred Lines made on social media couple of years back when it first came out. The song has a terrible message. It’s sexist as hell. It’s about seducing and sweet-talking women into sex in a really demeaning way. If the lyrics of this song translate into in real life conversation, it’s called sexual harassment. I didn’t even know that I can love and hate a song so much at the same time.  As much as I enjoy the rhythm and the throwback vibe of the song, the lyrics throw me off so much that I sometime hate myself listening to it. I would be so ashamed, as a young woman, to say that I like the song.

And when I think about it, if I were one of the juries, I would’ve made the same decision based on my emotion, even just to make people stop making these songs. But I know it’s not gonna happen. They are gonna do it again, and again. We’re up for a long battle.

My conclusion is also much align with Bob Lefsetz’s. Everyone is in it for their own interest. There’s really no clear line of which way is really just or fair. The two songs sound incredibly similar in terms of rhythm, vibe, singing style, maybe even the bass line a little bit, but are they really the same song? I personally don’t find much similarities between the two songs in terms of lyrics and melody, which are the two main things the copyright law protects. Oh well, but because it’s a jury, and if the lawyers of Thicke and Williams knew any better, they really should’ve settled.

 

Music Week’s press release about the Blurred Lines case http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/marvin-gaye-s-family-awarded-7-3m-in-blurred-lines-trial/061118

Bob Lefsetz’s journal about the Blurred Lines case http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/03/10/the-blurred-lines-decision/

Music Industry

Is Physical Still Worthy?

Long answer short, yes.

People always have different opinions about physical copies of music, aka CDs. The general view of bloggers, music professionals, customers, colleagues, even my college friends, is that physical will soon be gone or is already “dead”. Is it really true?

I want to take a hard look at this. In my mind, any channel of distribution needs to serve a purpose. Because music is so accessible through Internet nowadays, physical copies have to do more than just delivering music. That “something else,” which should be a unique feature of a physical copy, needs to trigger a connection between the art and its audience. The unfortunate truth is, increasing numbers of music consumers don’t feel that the physical CDs they get from record shops can deliver such value. The extra cash they pay seems to be worthless. Then of course, all of us would like to pay less than 10 bucks a month for streaming whatever songs we want. Sweet deal for us, bad news for the music creators.

One of the interesting things I found is that I only see physical sales dipped so much in the western music industry markets. Put aside how the Internet is so much faster and more commonly used in western countries, I want to know why, in other major markets, physical sales can do so much more that sometimes it increases. I want to use Japan as an example, since I was a crazy J-pop fan when I was a teenager, and I want to talk a little bit about my experience as a customer. Oh, just to give you a little bit of background, Japan is the second largest music market in the world, only behind the United States. Data wise, 85% of music sales in Japan are physical in 2014, and digital had even experienced a decrease during that year, according to Forbes.

Japan’s music industry seems very different from the ones of United States or Europe. That realization came to me when I moved to the United States and bought my first CD in US dollars. I knew it because I had a “Really? That’s it?!” moment. You may ask, well Sandy, why you felt this way?

It’s very simple. It’s just not enough. I felt like the dollars I spent on that CD was not worth what I was getting. When I was a teenager in China, most of my spending money went to CDs on a regular basis. Ha, my parents were definitely not the happiest during those days. But my point is, there were more content than just a plain old CD: postcards, stickers, short letters, handwritten notes, invitation to the fan club, coupons for the next concert… you get the basic idea.

Even better, specifically for J-pop music, there was and still is the tradition of releasing an early, limited / deluxe edition for each CD (aka 初回限定盤, in Japanese Kanji). I was obsessed with collecting those. It usually included even more content than the ordinary version, even for the singles. Sometimes it’s physical goodies, sometimes it’s an additional track, sometimes it’s a “backstage” or “in the studio” video, but there was always something more to look forward to and be excited about. Of course, it normally cost me about 1/3 more to get this early, limited, deluxe edition CD, but it made me feel so special as a fan. Through owning all of the goodies that suit the theme of the CD, I felt like I got to know the band and understand the music a little better. It made me more attracted to the work and the personalities through this beautiful art. Every CD was a sonic, visual, and emotional experience. It delivered way more than the pleasure of listening quality music. In the good old days, I was probably the happiest teenager I could be when I saved up enough to buy a new J-pop CD.

I think it’s a little sad that, many artists, managers, and companies in western markets are not taking full advantage of physical copies; it’s always just a thin little piece of CD. Instead, they switched their main focus to digital, merch, tour, social media promotion, so on and so forth. It’s great that these other things work out, and I’m by no means saying to eliminate those strategies. But what about the music itself? What about the excitement, the connection, the sense of understanding one another, and the feeling of belonging somewhere that can be communicated through music? That little something extra, which can lift this great excitement to another level, really says a whole lot and goes a long way. It’s almost parallel that in our Internet era, people ask “what’s the point of handwritten letters?” The Internet is great, but it’s just a tool. It works like a machine and pumps out information, data, music, whatever. But because we are all just facing our screens, it takes so much effort to come off as genuine and show our true personalities. So why don’t we do just a little more with the physical CD that can easily connect artists with fans? It’s tangible. When we open up a CD, it’s a magical connecting moment. It’s nice. We love it. Of course, making extra stuff is going to drive the sales price to increase. But if I love you as a fan, I gotta want to get to know you and touch your soul. A little extra expense? Not so much of my concern anymore.

You may understand me a little better now. When I got my first CD of an American band, I bought it for almost 13 dollars, with 10 tracks and a thin little lyrics booklet. Yeah, there were some gorgeous, obviously photoshopped pictures here and there, but they didn’t say much about either the music or the band. I guess sometimes, we all try a little too hard to look pretty.

 

Forbes on Japanese Music Sales http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2014/09/21/85-percent-of-music-sales-in-japan-are-cds/

Global Music Industry Share Data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_music_industry_market_share_data

Music Industry

The Blog

I decided to start a blog writing about the world of music industry, particularly music publishing, because I’ve been absorbing knowledge about this industry for the past four years or so but haven’t really put out any of my own thoughts.

I always thought that I wasn’t ready and I would make a fool out of myself, but no one’s going to be absolutely ready anyways. So I might as well start now, right?

This blog is going to be largely based on what my interests are at. I like combining music with business, so it’s probably going to be somehow technical involves numbers and analysis.

I will also share and comment on what I read that’s interesting. Not only do I read stuff from major publications such as Billboard, Music Week, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journals, etc, I also read in different languages about music markets in the world (for example, Taiwan, China, South Korea). So from time to time I’ll deliver you music news that you may have limited access to.

I’m also a feminist. It took me a long time to finally admit it. I may also write about feminist stuff in the music and entertainment industry. If that throws you off, that’s fine with me.

Oh by the way, English is not my first language, but I’m trying.