The music industry is at an all time low.
Not just commercially, with album sales seeming to hit record lows on a weekly basis, but creatively too. Major record companies are spending their development and marketing budgets entirely on a few sure-fire artists, essentially dooming smaller acts on the label to obscurity and, for many, a silent demise.
The rise of Youtube helped shift some of the burden off distributors and allowed audiences to discover new artists directly. Future stars like Justin Bieber and The Weeknd (who is nominated for Best Original Song at the 2016 Academy Awards) found their initial fame on the platform, and it helped others, including Gotye and Sia, reach viral status after having already established their careers on a national level.
While currently six of the most popular channels on Youtube are music-based, a host of poor imitators and a fierce industry-lead censorship campaign has seen attention turn to Vine, Twitter’s video sharing service, to find the next big name in music.
For those not aware, Vine allows users to upload videos no longer than six seconds or less, that can be viewed via the app or Vine website. Released in early 2013, it quickly became the biggest video sharing application on the market, with an active user base estimated at 200 million individuals per month.
The service lends itself to viral marketing. Where once artists like 5 Seconds of Summer uploaded a full volume of covers in order to gain attention, the labels are now picking up prospective talent based on how many users create parodies of the short clips on show.
In the short term, it has proven a success. 17 year-old Shawn Mendes’s debut album reached number 1 in the U.S., while Silentio’s Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) – a song revolving entirely around two dance moves popularised by Vines – sold over 4 million copies.
There’s certainly a feeling, however, that all the record companies are doing are setting up a generation of one-hit wonders, and that they know that’s the case.
Vines are six second memes, and they have the same lifespan as their single-frame counterparts: a few months, at most. Their appeal is limited to how long it takes before A) they get repeated to the point of irritation, and B) someone else steps in with a catchy tune.
A perfect example of this is Bobby Shmurda, the New York rapper who signed to Sony Music offshoot Epic Records for over $1 million. His song Hot Nigga gained notoriety in 2014, but it was the dance that accompanied it that garnered the most attention. Called the ‘Shmoney dance’, it was imitated by Drake when he hosted the 2014 ESPY Awards, and by Beyonce while on tour with husband Jay-Z.
In December of 2014, Shmurda was arrested due to alleged ties with infamous gang the Crips. He remains in jail awaiting trial, with Epic Records having shown no sign of support for their artist over the last 14 months.
It’s indicative of the music industry’s future. Epic’s worked with controversial artists in the past, but this latest move seems like it suggests they know they won’t be getting anymore out of Shmurda.
As record labels grow more voracious in their attempt to leverage the next big, but brief, thing in the world of Vines, the industry they built is continuing to collapse. Their obsession is only going to take them so far, and right now, that doesn’t look like it will be very far at all.
What do you think? How long has the music industry got left? What does it need to do to save itself from extinction? Let us know in the comments.