For those of us who have spent much of our careers dependent
on one meeting a week at Radio One to define success or failure the news that
the station’s RAJAR figures mark a further decline in listenership could be a
moment for an outbreak of schadenfreude. They should not.
In tandem with MBW’s analysis noting that Spotify now
reaches more people (in very rough terms) than Radio One and The Guardian’s
reporting this morning that David Bowie was the most popular act of 2016,
this collision of data confirms what we all knew already; that new music is
losing out to catalogue in the battle for public attention.
Alongside the Radio One figures, it is worth remarking on
the continued growth of 6 Music listenership. For those of us concerned with
the ‘alternative’ scene who campaigned long and hard to keep the station from
closure, such a boost would seem to be a positive, yet the combination of Radio
One’s continued slide and 6’s quarter on quarter growth reveals an unintended
consequence of the success of keeping 6 open; a ghettoization of music into
dead ends.
Many of us can remember the power of the Radio One playlist
in its 90’s pomp. An addition to the B list was the moment that you could start
to plan a sizeable campaign, an A list was a moment for bunting. Whilst neither
was a cast iron guarantee of success, it was a big step towards it and that
certainty allowed investment and risk which, in turn, delivered a vibrant and
profitable new music market. The same cannot be said of a 6 Music playlist.
This is not the fault of the station but the BBC insistence on atomising its
content and allowing assumptions about listener age and taste to define its
output. This has led to a relationship between artists and the organisation’s
output that is less profitable for both parties. In hiving off music according
to genre or artist age the corporation has shot itself in the foot, taking a
mass audience and throwing it to the winds, diluting itself to a point where it
has lost its position as the ‘home of new music’.
The great white hope is that streaming services will take up
this mantle. Yet for all the positive talk about investing in new music and
graphs and charts demonstrating the labels commitment to new artists, the
reality on the ground suggests that either this is failing or that it is a
shibboleth, a manipulation of the facts to suggest a reality that simply does
not exist. It’s a simple exercise to conduct. The sales for new artists in 2016
revealed by MBW and reported by NME here are grim reading for those of us concerned with pushing forward new music at a
successful and sustainable level – ie with returns that allow artists to be
full time. Certainly the reduction of sales as a barometer plays a part here,
this is not slam dunk fact territory, but then a look at Spotify’s most
streamed debut artists of 2016 hardly reassures, the top spot being taken by anartist that we really should not be talking about in debut terms.
Or talk to most managers or new artists about the gap between their ambition
and available sources of funding; such pillars as tour support, personal
advances and instrument funds being long consigned to the past amidst a feeling
that capital is being reassigned to reissues and digital strategies to exploit
catalogue; a business approach best characterised as ‘guaranteed return over
risk’.
From a strict business perspective, this new landscape works
fine for labels in possession of catalogue, a list that includes plenty of
independent operations alongside the big three. I have yet to hear anyone from
a label explain to me what happens in a decade or so when the list of artists
that have achieved real, tangible, lasting success remains stuck in the late 90’s
with odd exceptions like Adele, Sheeran etc. Some artists, the Stormzys and
Skeptas are finding ways to work around that but the hit rate is still woefully
poor and the DIY model is not a solution for every artist.
Avoidance of risk given the easy money to be achieved from
streaming services is an obvious attraction for labels but that, ultimately, is
not a recipe for a lasting and progressive musical landscape. Labels need more
certainty and support to invest in new music at the levels that new artists
once enjoyed. Music is, after all, a business first and the current risk of a
debut act is far too great given the likely returns. The idea that new music is
driven exclusively by young people needs to be junked. For all their reverence
of John Peel, a new equivalent would be first out of the door and on the way to
6 Music in the current climate. If the BBC wants to retain Radio One as a force
for new music, a change in approach to how to contextualise new music and
encourage a more diverse and engaged audience, regardless of when they were
born, is needed.
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