Posted 9:50 AM by Gene

Speaking of the Fantasy and Profanity League we have mentioned the recording bans of the forties. If they were similar in one way -- the unions' demands for income from "new technologies" -- they were vastly different otherwise. As the first recording ban ended the record industry saw a plethora of income streams that enormously profited it. Capitol and Decca settled early (around October of 1943); the former promptly signed the King Cole Trio, who became its hottest act; the latter rushed the cast album of Oklahoma! into print and created a new platform for pop music. By '45 the new MGM Records started issuing soundtracks. Many independent labels transformed the jazz and blues business. Country music boomed. During the second recording ban came the Ed Murrow-Fred Friendly collaboration I Can Hear It Now, the first best-selling spoken-word album and progenitor of the audio book. Then came the two formats that radically changed the recording trade: the LP, which freed the classics from the record changer's tyranny and brought forth the concept album, and soon allowed for mail-order record retailing; and the 45, which bolstered the singles trade. Of course recorded music never died off even during the worst of the bans; it had radio to serve as a reminder and sent V-Discs to soldiers. The music biz' now-forgotten labor troubles helped clear the way for an unprecedented business prosperity that only recently came to a well-deserved end (although its artistic prosperity died out long before).

Now consider today's situation. After over a century in business THE CONSPIRACY and its heirs and assigns face exhaustion. Of course no one will say this as too many in the rag trade spend their every column looking for work there. Indeed they share one crucial trait with the recorded...SOUND biz: they no longer oversee a mass medium, having concentrated their attention on the stupid and the teens. Take away the "hit" properties and you hardly have an audience -- the same blight facing the recorded...SOUND trade. With recorded music the new technologies of the forties made distribution easier; today's technology threatens a platform for everyone, which in practice has already become a platform for no one. And with niche programming today's small audiences will only get smaller. Rather than make the best product possible THE CONSPIRACY is looking for the best platforms possible, completely oblivious that with excellence platform doesn't matter. And because new-oldmedia may defy profits the biz is emphasizing costs; never mind it helped bring on the problem by paying millions to the scribblers who now plead poverty. The Millionaires' Strike will be difficult to solve precisely because, unlike with the record biz of the forties, technology no longer aids the moguls, it hinders them -- and not so coincidentally, except in the spreadsheets and for the synergies, because show-biz' best days are distantly behind it.

(Slightly revised 5/9/2009)