{"id":2013,"date":"2014-08-06T13:53:13","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T20:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2014-08-06T13:53:13","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T20:53:13","slug":"what-can-the-music-business-learn-from-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2014\/08\/what-can-the-music-business-learn-from-tv.html","title":{"rendered":"What Can the Music Business Learn from TV?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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THE contrast is hard to miss: the great surge in television — especially on cable — as the music industry collapses. Culture writer Ted Gioia has written a short provocative post<\/a> trying to make sense of the mismatch. He’s also asking how music can replicate some of the success of HBO, Showtime and the others.<\/p>\n

Generally, Ted is urging the music and recording establishment to take the high road, doubling down on quality. Specifically, he thinks they should focus on grownups and not children.<\/p>\n

This should be obvious to the music execs, but somehow they haven\u2019t figured it out yet. Fourteen-year-olds will not support a subscription-based model for music. HBO realized that the dumbing down of network TV left a large group of consumers under-served, namely sophisticated grown-ups\u2014and these were the same people with the most disposable income to spend on entertainment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ted continues: “In contrast, the major record labels are still stuck in kiddie land.”<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of insight in this piece, and I urge all of my readers to find it. I’m left with a few questions; I don’t entirely know the answer to them.<\/p>\n

First, how congruent are music and television? Rock and pop music — the field’s mainstream — has been built on young consumers for at least six decades now; how do you turn that around.\"250px-HomelandTVSeries\"<\/p>\n

Second, how secure is this cable-TV golden age? Mad Men, Homeland, True Detective, and a handful of others are tremendous, but will un-bundling or some other technological\/economic shift make today’s heyday as temporary as the rock boom of the ’60s?<\/p>\n

Third, how typical are shows like the best fare on HBO and the others? Many of the most intelligent shows lose money and have tiny viewerships; Duck Dynasty and reality TV are far more popular than Masters of Sex. Doesn’t music have a similarly tiny gated community of smart, grownup fare, in places like Nonesuch, ECM and Merge Records.<\/p>\n

I welcome responses to this and Ted’s sharp piece.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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