The Reality Of The Music Industry Holiday Shutdown

Thanksgiving is a time for family gatherings and banquets, but it also marks the beginning of a time of year that those in the business of music either love or hate - the Holiday Shutdown.

The Holiday Shutdown is the toughest time of the year to do business because the execs that can greenlight a project begin their extended vacations, so they're rarely in the office. It begins Thanksgiving week (some leaving on Monday rather than Wednesday), and really continues until about the second week in January. Oh, they'll be back in the office between now and then, but they're usually so backed up with work that if you're not on the top of the pile you'll be pushed to next year.

One of the reasons why record execs leave is that the release schedules for the year and even into the first quarter of next year are set in stone. The Christmas releases are out by now, and while there may be a record that might drop in the first week of December, it's a rarity. It's a slow season work-wise, so why stick around?

On the other hand, agents and managers are still working as they line up fill-in dates for the end of the year and work on tours for the new year, merch vendors are still working because it's a prime time of the year for retail sales, and publishers are still getting payments and working on synch licenses for television shows and movies (although many of the producers have also left unless they're still in production).

This is also the time of year where bands may still be negotiating for a New Years Eve gig, which may be the best paying, but the worst gig of year, as the audience tries too hard to have the good time they think they're supposed to have.

With all that being said, it's a good time of year to get your marketing in order for 2016, since there's bound to be some downtime in whatever sector of the business that you're involved it. We'll review that more in an upcoming post, but in the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving and don't eat too much turkey!

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9 Music Products The Industry Got Right

The Ampeg SVT

A visit to a friend's very capable commercial studio the other day got me thinking about some of the musical and audio items that have remained essentially intact since they were introduced. In some cases improvements have been attempted, but the original design is still the best. In other cases there has been continual improvements, but the original idea still hasn't changed all that much. Here are 9 products in no particular order that the music and pro audio manufacturers got right from the start.

1. The Shure SM57/58 - Nearly 50 years down the road and the SM 58 is still the standard stage mic, and the SM 57 can be found in every recording studio big and small. What's the difference between them? They both have the same capsule but the 58 has a filter to decrease the proximity effect a little.

2. The Ampeg SVT amplifier - Has there ever been a better bass amp been built? There's still nothing like that 8x10" cabinet for being able to dial in almost any bass sound you want, and the monster head will easily rock any venue.

3. The Marshall 1960 cabinet - There's something about the original birch Marshall 4x12" cabinet that's never been beat. It makes any amp, big or small, sound bigger and larger than life.

4. The Fender Strat - Former Rolling Stone guitarist Mick Taylor once expressed to me that he felt the Strat was the world's most perfectly designed guitar, and he couldn't have been more right. The shape, the contour, the sound, the vibrato tailpiece - the only thing it isn't is a Les Paul.

5. The Fender Precision Bass - You might see high-profile bass players play fancy boutique basses on stage, but when it comes to recording there's always a trusty Precision around. If you want a can't-miss big full sound, this is still the one for the job.

K&M Boom Arm

6. The K&M boom stand - Atlas made the original boom arm accessory in the early 60's but the tripod Konig & Meyer boom has been the studio standard for more than 50 years. It hasn't changed much in that time, but it hasn't needed to.

7. Powered monitors - Once upon a time you struggled to find the right amp to match your speakers. It was a nerve-wracking search very much akin to a surfer finding the perfect wave. Monitors with built-in power amps that are ideally match to the speaker took away all that confusion, while making them cheaper, more compact, and sound better.

8. The Digital Audio Workstation - For a long time the only thing that engineer's knew was tape, and as a result became quite used to its limitations, even during the transition from analog to digital. Having a remote sitting right next to the console was just part of the natural studio environment. Today most DAWs offer way more advantages to tape  and we're all much better off for it. The modern DAW is what's made the home recording studio possible, and even the least expensive app has 100 times more power than what The Beatles had available to them (although talent is another story).

Radial JDI Direct Box

9. The Dean Jensen Direct Box Design - It's hard to believe there was a time before direct boxes, but after some industrious techs began to custom-build them in the 70's, transformer designer Dean Jensen provided a free design using one of his transformers that's been copied over and over ever since. If it's a passive direct box that you're buying, Dean Jensen is its father.

What else have I missed?

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5 Reasons To Lower The Drinking Age

Here's something I posted a couple years ago that I think applies today, especially during this holiday weekend.
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Recently there's been a national discussion for lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, and several states, including Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont and Missouri, are actively studying the prospect.  The chief argument is that if you can fight for your country and you can vote for president if you're 18, you should be able to drink a beer legally too.  But lowering the drinking age would be a boon to the music industry and, I dare-say, even provide the engine for turning it around.

A little history. We went through this same issue once before when the drinking age was a variety of ages from 18 to 21 across the states, but the war in Viet Nam brought about the "If I can fight for my country, I should be able to drink" argument that we're seeing again today. By 1972 most states agreed that voting = legal alcohol and lowered the drinking age to 18, which opened the floodgates to accommodate a whole new set of thirsty patrons, and the way to get them in the door was to provide live entertainment.

Clubs sprang up everywhere and live music thrived.  If you were a half-decent band, you could easily find somewhere to play almost every night of the week and get paid for it too (none of this "pay-to-play" crap existed).

This was great for the music business because it gave neophyte musicians a place to get it together both musically and performance-wise.  Just like The Beatles did in Hamburg in 1962, you could play 5 sets a night 5 nights a week to really get your chops together.  Do that for a year or two and you were ready to take the next step towards doing your own thing, if that's what you wanted to do.

Unfortunately, it was also easy to fall into the trap of just playing clubs forever because the money was so good, but those with ambition took their club days for what they were and moved on up.  They had learned what they needed to by constantly playing in front of crowds.

This musical support infrastructure is largely gone these days.  A band that is considered to be playing a lot today is lucky if they play once a week.  That means it will take a group a lot longer to not only get to the point where they're comfortable in front of crowds, but to get musically and vocally tight as well.  The longer it takes a band to make progress, the more likely they will break up or change their direction, which means that perhaps the next great trend in music has shriveled on the vine.

Since the drinking age was raised to 21 in 1982, the excitement and diversity in music has steadily decreased.  It's bland, it's homogenized, and we've really not seen a new trend that's caught on big since rRap (which hit the mainstream 25 years ago). I attribute this mostly to the large scale closing of the club scene due to the higher drinking age (the tougher DUI laws too). Higher drinking age and more arrests = fewer club patrons.  Fewer club patrons = goodbye clubs.

Let's face it - musicians need the constant feedback and attention that only an audience can bring.  The more you play live, the better you get at it, which leads to more experimenting, which means the more likely you are to find your own voice.

I hope the drinking age is lowered soon.  Music (and the music industry) desperately needs a shot in the arm.

FIVE REASONS TO LOWER THE DRINKING AGE

1. If you can fight and die for your country at 18, you should be able to drink at 18.

2. If you are trusted to vote at 18, you should be able to have a drink at 18.

3. 18 year olds are already drinking anyway.  Just go to any college campus and see for yourself.

4. A lower drinking age means more clubs, which means more work for musicians.

5. More work for musicians means better entertainers, better musicians, more interesting music, and ultimately a stronger music industry.

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