Statistics, as the bean-counters will tell you, are everything. If you can’t run a slide rule over it, it’s not worth the time of day. And look where statistics have got the British music industry: in the first quarter of this year, sales of albums and singles were down 13.2% on 2002, with over-the-counter purchases of singles falling by a scary 35%. If, as detractors argue, the industry has spent a little too long counting the diminishing returns and not enough time searching for the next Beatles or Blur, well, it needs to get out a bit more. To stop thinking short term and invest for the future. To venture forth from its matt-black offices and get its hands dirty.
Because those bald figures, worrying though they are, obscure the fact that music in this country is going through a period of extraordinary creativity. Increasingly affordable home-recording technology and a generation for whom computer use is second nature are resulting in an explosion of DIY music-making. And their music reflects Britain’s multicultural make-up as never before.
Est’elle, a 23-year-old London Mc whom people are calling the new Ms Dynamite; Ladytron, a British electronic quartet who released one of last year’s most exciting albums; Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, an anarchic Brighton band with two top 30 singles to their name; LSK, a Leeds hip-hopper making some of the catchiest music in Britain today; Panjabi Mc, a bhangra producer from Coventry whose single Mundian to Bach Ke looks like opening the floodgates for this thriving but neglected musical genre; Ben Christophers, a singer-songwriter from Wolverhampton whose two albums have been hailed as masterpieces; and Keane, a Sussex-based guitar trio whose debut single, Everybody’s Changing, could do for them what Yellow did for Coldplay. All these artists are proof that British pop is in the rudest of health. From independent labels to specialist radio, from the club scene to the live circuit, music that is eclectic, exotic, mongrel, experimental and, above all, progressive is waiting to be discovered.
It is how this new music is consumed that most vexes the industry. And it is the extent to which radio and the major labels seem to be ignoring it — and, some would argue, actively preventing it from being discovered — that most alarms the industry’s critics. How many of these artists have you heard of? And where, assuming you hadn’t and wished to find out more, could you go to listen to them? Here, says Radio 1: “We are onto new bands as quickly, if not more quickly, than any other radio or TV station in this country,” it argues. Here, say the major labels: “It’s simply not true that we’re too busy pushing the likes of Robbie Williams to concentrate on new talent,” says a top-label executive. “We’re on it 24 hours a day.”
“You have to ask why record companies are so averse to putting out good music,” counters a veteran record-plugger, who haunts the corridors of Radio 1’s London HQ each week, attempting to get songs on the airwaves. “And maybe that’s down to them trying to be creative in a situation where you’ve got to do everything as efficiently as possible, or someone will come and take you over. Going round finding new music is not the most efficient thing to do. What the music business would like is for the Spice Girls to be able to go on for 50 years. It would make things much simpler.”
Now, Radio 1 and the big five in the record business — BMG, Sony, Universal, Warner’s and EMI — are easy targets and convenient whipping boys. Commercial radio is, in terms of innovation, considered a lost cause. “They have to deal with the majors and the majors have to deal with them,” says the plugger. “So they’re going to play what they’re given and they’re going to get given what they play.” But BBC radio, and particularly Radio 1, draws most of the fire. Those intent on seeing the glass as half-empty find plenty of fuel for their anger in the behaviour of the station, which they accuse of being so concerned with ratings and, latterly, the BBC’s negotiations for the renewal of its charter in 2006 that it has all but abandoned the cause of new music in Britain. If you were to take the station’s weekly playlist as your sole exhibit, it would be quick work to find Radio 1 guilty. But if you were to look at the role played by its specialist shows in finding new talent and then feeding it into the daytime mainstream, then the station seems almost ground-breaking. Moreover, the Radio 1 audience is shrinking, while that of stations such as the less hidebound Radio 2 increases. The chief reason why commentators still concentrate on Radio 1 is that it is hanging onto The Chart Show for dear life, even as singles sales plummet and the top 40 dictates daytime programme content more than ever before.
In the case of the major labels, critics say that the issue of commercial piracy — which cost the industry an estimated £50m in 2002 — is used by them as a get-out that obscures their collective failure to source, nurture and develop new talent in this country. These arguments are seductive and, to a limited extent, correct. And both are likely to receive an airing when Radio 2 stages a live, five-hour discussion entitled, somewhat portentously, The Great British Music Debate, on July 2. The aim of this debate is to grapple with the problems facing the industry and devise a route out of the mess. Nobody doubts that this is real and all acknowledge the need for urgent action. But are they asking the right questions? And looking for answers in the right places? In a London supermarket last week, browsing among aisles stacked high with foodstuffs, detergents, clothes and barbecue bags, I toyed with buying some cut-price CDs. Shiny, alluring racks of them caught my eye, all bargains, by artists ranging from Avril Lavigne to Radiohead, Shania Twain to Red Hot Chili Peppers. In displaying them here, between the lavatory rolls and the petits pois, the retailer is inviting you to incorporate the purchase of music into your weekly supermarket shop. Music has, for better or worse, become just another item on our shopping list. It is a lifestyle choice, dictated largely by impulse.
There is an obvious but instructive parallel to be drawn here. Supermarkets, in a state of flux, anxious about the competition, worried about being taken over, cutting prices to the bone to retain the loyalty of customers, driving local shops to the wall. Major labels, caught in a remarkably similar conundrum, so busy fighting their corner and warding off predators that they haven’t the time to think about or invest for the long term, instead creaming off the talent from the independent labels and dropping the bands they have poached when they don’t have a hit. And radio, facing a deregulated free-for-all when the communications bill becomes law later this year, forever paring down its play-lists and programming to the lowest common denominator, afraid to innovate, desperate not to offend.
We are serving you, they would argue. We never forget that you have a choice. And they are right. We do. In fact, in an age of almost daily technological advances, where content, be it musical, televisual, political or educational, is available in multiple formats 24 hours a day, and where both industry and consumer are running to stay still, the concept of choice requires redefining. If there are more choices, do you have more choice? And if Radio 1, for instance, isn’t playing the new Ladytron single, well, nobody’s forcing you to tune in: you could download the song in seconds.
One senior music-business figure argues that it’s time to move the debate on. “The question should be: is radio the place that should be breaking new music? Because, arguably, most people aren’t listening to radio to hear new music; most people are listening to radio to hear familiar music.” But we do worry about new music, says Radio 1. Ditto, say the major labels. Do the facts back up their arguments? In the case of Ben Christophers, the answer would seem to be no. Without a playlisting, and without, moreover, any daytime plays on Radio 1, his singles sank, his albums failed to sell, and his record label dropped him. Ladytron’s first album was released on a tiny independent label, allowing Radio 1 to explain its failure to play their singles with the excuse that, as there weren’t enough copies around, they weren’t going to chart anyway. Est’elle, meanwhile, is currently being courted by the majors and massaged into respectability by the station’s specialist shows. When she is duly relaunched in the next six months, Radio 1 will claim her as its own discovery. The play-it-safe record company will say: here is evidence of our commitment to new talent. The supermarket will pile her CDs high. The independent label that first released her songs will get back to the real business of scouting for great British music — which will go on being made, out of the spotlight, against the grain. Everybody happy? No. Not even the bean-counters. And, as they’ll be the first to tell you, statistics are everything.
www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/events/greatdebate
The Great British Music Debate: we have lift-off
