By Karen Ruttner
Having spent nearly 10 years working in and around the music industry, I’m used to hearing complaints about the business being dead. Since the advent of file-sharing, music execs have been scrambling to find new ways to monetize the catalogues they oversee.
Everyone seems aware that traditional terrestrial radio is no-longer viable for discovering new music. MTV stopped playing videos ages ago. So how on earth are record companies supposed to get the word out on their releases?
At first, the Internet seemed a partially-welcome double-edged sword. While it allowed for illegal (and thus, un-monetized) downloading, it also opened the channels of communication between bands and their fans, allowing music to break through that in the past would’ve gone completely unnoticed. However, as access has become easier and easier, the web has been flooded with a glut of flash-in-the-pan acts. The general public needs a filter.
Enter… television.
The importance of getting music on television is not a new phenomenon. It could even be argued that if not for television (specifically, The Ed Sullivan Show), the Beatles may not have broken America as quickly as they did. In the early ‘90s, direct correlations were found between appearances on late night American TV and increased record sales (an article in Entertainment Weekly placed particular emphasis on Saturday Night Live and the now defunct Arsenio Hall Show).
The key seems to be finding an outlet that reaches millions of people who may actually be interested in paying for music. It’s therefore safe to say that primary targets for labels and bands are those shows popular amongst the younger demographic (though it should be noted that the recent success of singer Michael Buble’s record Crazy Love has been attributed in part to the championing by Oprah Winfrey on her afternoon show, which is generally favored by an older demographic).
This year’s music television juggernaut (in both the US and UK) is Glee. The hit Fox show is being hailed as the music industry’s white knight. Two months into its inaugural season, Glee is drawing a weekly audience of over eight million viewers in America, and it’s been reported that fans have purchased more than two million songs sung by the show’s cast on iTunes. Revenues are being split between the Fox network and Columbia Records (who partnered with Fox to release all Glee-related music), and artists and music publishers are being paid licensing fees for the songs used in each episode.
Thus the future of the music business seems to be in the hands of TV’s music supervisors. Trusted shows (as in, shows with track records of being music savvy) may be the best outlet for record companies to pimp their wares. Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing Rolling Stone covers with the cast of Gossip Girl? Who knows. And who knows how long this model will continue to succeed. We’ve come a long way for sure, with acts like Madonna – who earned fame/notoriety with every video that was banned from television – practically begging for inclusion in network broadcasts, but the question always remains, where do we go from here?
