On Sunday night, Talking Head’s David Byrne and Nine Inch Nails/How To Destroy Angels’ Trent Reznor sat down with USC professor Josh Kun at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center – an event organized by The Los Angeles Public Library – to discuss a major subject: music. Byrne has recently written a book ‘How Music Works’ which touches many aspects of music, but the conversation rather focused on the music business. I was a little disappointed at first to see that the title of the talk was ‘Going it Solo: Music, Marketing and the Web’ as I was expecting to listen to them talking about feelings and emotions or even the role of architecture and surrounding in the creative process, but the subject was nevertheless interesting as totally crucial for today’s musicians.
The evening began with a musical introduction played by a band called String Theory, which was using a giant harp/cello whose 100-foot-long strings were attached… I don’t know where! Talking about architecture, they were totally using it to play their beautiful pieces going from classic, baroque to more atmospheric ones, wearing special gloves to stroke and pluck the strings. It was unexpected and captivating, but soon David Byrne and Trent Reznor, who were meeting for the first time, were introduced and began to reflect on the music industry.
I haven’t read 'How Music Works’ but apparently Byrne is destroying the myth of the artist receiving ‘a gift from the sky’ at one point of the book, and they talked a little bit about this, evoking luck in the creation process and agreeing that creativity comes more from focusing and tough discipline than anything else. These two are music workers, even if the term is bizarre when it applies to artists, but for Reznor there are two different brains, or set of mind if I may add, the one he uses to try to be subconscious in order to come up with music and the one he uses to edit and ‘sort out the crap’.
Here is for the creative process, but there is currently another brain the artist must have, as his/her job has wildly expanded, and this part has eaten up lots of brainpower. ‘Is it possible to talk about music without talking about money?’ asked Josh Kun to continue with this idea. They all pursued by talking about the business aspect of music and how an artist must also be an entrepreneur, a marketing person these days. ‘Once we start, we don’t think about money’, said Trent Reznor, ‘then it becomes a question’, and Byrne gave the example of his recent collaboration with Annie Clark (St. Vincent), ‘I don’t think we made the money back, yet!’
The internet has certainly changed everything, ‘Do you think music is a commodity, that a song matters only if it has a money value?’ asked Kun. The problem is that it is no longer a commodity since everything is free on the internet now. ‘The real currency of an artist is to grow your database’ said Trent Reznor.
Reznor gave a little historic of the question, saying that the labels had first all the bad answers to this change of situation, as they sued Napster, then the fans… He explained that he lost money when he decided to leave his label in 2007 after releasing 'Year Zero'. However, he is now back with a label with his new band ‘How To Destroy Angels’, and he explained that his decision was based on an episode in Prague where the band was doing a concert, however, he couldn’t see any sign that Nine Inch Nails was playing there: ‘We're playing in Prague, but I see flyers up for Radiohead, who are playing the same place we're playing, six months from then. Then I walk into the record shop, and there isn't a section that says Nine Inch Nails.’
It seems to be the big dilemma for musicians, taking the freedom to go without labels and control their destiny but having the difficult task to engage the audience (even overseas audience, since social media allow you to just preach to the choir in this fragmented new world) or going with a label, losing a bit of control but gaining international exposure. To justify his decision to come back to a label he said: ‘It was, one, to have a team of people who are better at that [marketing] than I am, worldwide… that felt like it was worth slicing the pie up monetarily. So far it's been pleasantly pleasant.’ Contradictorily, Radiohead has been self-releasing his last two albums and seems to be doing very well.
They agreed on the fact that the DIY ethics rather than signing with the 'evil' labels is a myth when it comes to make more money, as contracts used to be unfair but now options and models are more numerous. David Byrne also said he finds the new generation of musicians much more focused than he was, ‘we used to think that musicians had to be high all the time, now they take care of their shit, it’s a big change of attitude!’
And they obviously have to talk about the new music streaming services, the ‘whole new thing’, which has ‘whipped out the preciousness of music’ said Reznor. ‘With Spotify, why would you ever buy music again?’ added Byrne exposing an example of his song ‘Lazy’ which got number 1 in the UK, but brought about $700 to the label, and gave him about 15% that he had to split with the DJ who created the song with him: he got about $40,… lunch money. ‘It’s hard to know what we get from these services, … but this model is not gonna work for us’, he said, laughing.
They agreed there is a big shift with all these services, all these internet channels, and Trent Reznor said it all started with the iPod, ‘The iPod must be filled’, and this generation isn’t interested by ownership anymore, or by the precious record collection, this generation is interested by streaming as many songs as possible. This also shifts the attention from the music itself, ‘People don't put their headphones anymore to listen to a record and look at the lyrics’, worried Trent Reznor.
May be the solution for the artist is to become a brand, or to use a marketing stunt to be getting more attention, and they evoked Amanda Palmer’s recent adventure with Kickstarter and her successful campaign as she was able to raise 1.2 million dollars! ‘But nobody is talking about her music’ said Trent Reznor, who said Amanda was a friend, 'Bjork’s games did not make her songs better, I have the feeling that songs should be enough, but may be I’m a relic’, he admitted.
As much as I want to agree with him, I wonder whether music is enough in these tough times for musicians… but going back to Amanda Palmer, Trent Reznor and David Byrne said she was an exception, having developed an exceptional close relationship with her fans through social media, implying that the Palmer’s stunt is not possible for most artists.
'But I like the distance’, added Reznor, ‘I liked the idea that David Bowie may have been an alien’,… ‘I tried to come up with a fan club subscription, but I didn’t like this kind of relationship’ and yes, he had a good point, a too close contact with the fans probably kills all the mystery and mystic surrounding the ‘ancient’ idea of the artist. Times are so different and artists probably use more facebook and twitter or even tumblr – an appropriate tool for bands with a personality like Odd Future noticed Trent – than the good old website (that Byrne still likes)… Honestly, haven't we written about all these subjects numerous times on rock nyc?
However, despite all these new problems, making music is still a game admitted Byrne when someone asked his opinion about music being only leisure. ‘When we make music, we say we're playing music…it's a form of play’, he said, 'leisure may sound frivolous but it is pretty deep!’ And I am totally for that idea, the rehabilitation of leisure as one of the deepest things in life.
