The Egatz Epitaph

I published the following on my Facebook page, and it got some great comments and a bit of attention. Unbeknownst to me, I published it just before the MTV Awards, which shows you how closely I’m in touch with that world. Here it is for all to read, along with a few edits.

Dear Major Labels of the Music Industry:

There’s a reason I don’t spend much money on buying new music, and it’s not because record stores are just a memory, or because of piracy, or because I got old.

Your recent offerings suck. That’s right. They suck. My ears make my wallet vote. If my choices are between another Katy Perry-type freeze dried, overproduced studio creation developed by an extensive team and a band with nine guys who all look, sound, and dress like 19th century Mennonite farmers, I’m out. Like Hollywood, you, the major recording labels, continually play it safe, offering nothing different, nothing compelling, nothing with a gram of emotional honesty.

Your promotions suck. When musicians, established and not, have to sell their songs to television networks so they’ll get a 20 second snippet played with a bad medical drama voiceover on top of it in the hopes the exposure will generate sales, your marketing department has failed. Fire them all, and start over with someone who has better ideas.

Your loyalty sucks. Most popular bands of another era were mentored. Their first two or three albums and tours were spent to train, develop their songwriting, and foster future potential blockbuster sales. Today, if a new major label band doesn’t score big with a single off their first album, they are marginalized by the label and not promoted until they shrivel up and die. Shame on you.

Radio sucks. Thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the subsequent corporate consolidation, conglomerates like Clear Channel now call the shots regarding what the public gets exposed to. DJs used to play what they stumbled across that moved them, not what some corporate whore from the car rental department told them to play. Since this has gone on long enough and a new payola scandal gets trotted out in front of Congress every 17 years, why don’t you put some money into a more effective Internet-based broadcast system which showcases new, worthy, talent which doesn’t sound like all the other AutoTuned crap you majors have been peddling for decades?

I could go on, but this is capitalism, and as Marx pointed out, the rules are merciless and simple. You offer us little more than shit for a long enough period and eventually we look elsewhere. Get your acts together, and maybe I’ll come back to you. Until then, I’ll keep buying more toys to make my own music. I’m not Jeff Beck or Mick Taylor or Andy Summers, but even listening to my own music, let alone making it, makes me much happier than paying for what you’ve been peddling for a long, long time.

Sincerely,
Ron Egatz