The Incoherent Ramblings Of Victor M. Ruiz

Over the course of the last few weeks we’ve heard about Cake coming in at number 1 on the Billboard charts after only selling 44,000 copies of their latest album. The day after it became official Mark Strigl sent an e-mail around regarding this very point, and I subsequently heard this mentioned during the Wall Street Journal Podcast, and American Public Media’s Market Place Podcast. A lot of good points where mentioned during both of these shows (which I’ll mention later on in this post). That said, I want to also bring up another point that Orgen, lead singer of Spanish black metal band Bittencross and staff writer for Fusion Sonica brought up during his debut article for his column Desde Las Sombras, or From The Shadows.

He basically mentions that the accessibility brought on by the internet has hindered the music industry more than helped. He alludes to the fact that when he grew up albums where harder to come by, as a result you got together with your buddies, and sat there for hours listening to music, before spending an additional bunch of hours discussing groups like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, etc.. Due to the accessibility provided by the net you have a boat load of legal and illegal option where you can basically listen to anything you want, when you want. During the Market Place Podcast the reporter mentions how listeners can go to Spotify, LastFM, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and listen to what they want on demand. He also mentions how illegal downloading still exists, but that these services/sites have essentially trumped the majority of illegal downloading sites, where people are able to listen to their favorite artists without worrying about any legal ramifications.

This brings me back to a conversation I had with Savage Messiah’s lead singer Dave Silver, who mentioned this to me last year after catching them as part of Killfest 2010 in Europe. He mentioned how most of their new fans had found out about them via MySpace, and the majority of them where satisfied in listening to their songs via this specific social network as opposed to purchasing a higher quality MP3 or CD.

So taking into consideration these points, I could honestly see that it’s a little of everything. It’s difficult to compete with something that is free. A lot of people were counting on the Guitar Hero/Rock Band generation (and maybe it’s early to pick up the seeds both of these games have planted), and although this has given a big boost to bands that are involved in both games, how has this ultimately affected album sales? Did releasing Metallica’s Death Magnetic, or Guns N Roses Chinese Democracy beforehand via these games really impact sales of these albums?

The ultimate question is this, is the new generation of listeners, which is expecting to have everything serviced to them, when and how they want it going to convert over to the diehard fan base that actually supports and keeps bands alive? Is the passion really gone as Orgen alluded to? How does today’s generation keep bands afloat?

As a result, have we seen the end of big bands like Metallica? Or should I say, should we stop looking for the new Metallica? If they were to start today, they obviously wouldn’t sell as much as they did during the 80s. Would they have survived if Kill Em All was released in 2008 and not 1983? Are any bands that came out in the latter half of the past decade stable enough to be considered the next big thing?

I realize these are a lot of questions, and most will probably remain unanswered for the time being. But let me know what you think.

-VMR