(Reflections on) John Mellencamp's Reflections on The Sorry Shape of Music Today

I like John Mellencamp, the Indiana rocker. I like his music, his passion for his art, his populist sensibilities, his willingness to speak out.

He has an opinion piece at The HuffPo which describes the sorry shape of the music business today. I'd say that John is dead-on accurate in about 95 percent of what he says.

But he misses a couple of big things, and they are important because it affects his conclusions. He also takes a totally undeserved shot at Ronald Reagan. We'll get to that.

Let Mellencamp take the stage:

Over the last few years, we have all witnessed the decline of the music business, highlighted by finger-pointing and blame directed against record companies, artists, internet file sharing and any other theories for which a case could be made. We've read and heard about the "good old days" and how things used to be.

People remember when music existed as an art that motivated social movements. Artists and their music flourished in back alleys, taverns and barns until, in some cases, a popular groundswell propelled it far and wide. These days, that possibility no longer seems to exist. So far, so good. During the late 80s and early 90s the industry underwent a transformation and restructured, catalyzed by three distinct factors. Record companies no longer viewed themselves as conduits for music, but as functions of the manipulations of Wall Street. Companies were acquired, conglomerated, bought and sold; public stock offerings ensued, shareholders met.

To some extent this has always been the case, but never so much as after the success of the '60s and '70s. There was just so much money and so much greed, it was inevitable that Wall Street would want to compete with the Mob for a "piece of the action." And it meant that it became much more difficult for the small fry, the independent label run by an inspired visionary (or madman) from his garage to make it.

At this very same time, new Nielsen monitoring systems -- BDS (Broadcast Data Systems) and SoundScan were employed to document record sales and radio airplay. Prior to 1991, the Billboard charts were done by manual research; radio stations and record stores across the country were polled to determine what was on their playlists and what the big sellers were. Thus, giving Oklahoma City, for example, an equivalent voice to Chicago's in terms of potential impact on the music scene. BDS keeps track of gross impressions through an encoded system that counts the number of plays or "spins" that a song receives. That number is, thereafter, multiplied by the number of potential listeners. SoundScan was put in place at retail centers to track sales by monitoring scanned bar codes of units crossing the counter. A formula was devised whereby the charts were based 20% on the SoundScan number and 80% on BDS results. The system had changed from one that measured popularity to one that was driven by population.

Record companies soon discovered that because of BDS, they only needed to concentrate on about 12 radio stations; there was no longer a business rationale for working secondary markets that were soon forgotten -- despite the fact that these were the very places where rock and roll was born and thrived. Why pay attention to Louisville -- worth a comparatively few potential listeners -- when the same one spin in New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta, etc., was worth so many more potential listeners?

All true. The definition of "who is listening" changed with the demographic of "who is listening in the top 12 radio markets." It was an artificial manipulation of listenership statistics designed to limit costs and to achieve a pre-ordained result.

All of a sudden there were #1 records that few of us had ever heard of. At the time we asked ourselves, "Am I out of touch?" We didn't realize that this was the start of change that would grow to kill, if not the whole of the music business, then most certainly, the record companies.

Here's where Mellencamp goes off the track:

Reagan's much-vaunted trickle-down theory said that wealth tricked down to the masses from the elite at the top. Now we've found out that this is patently untrue -- the current economic collapse reflects this self-serving folly. The same holds for music. It doesn't trickle down; it percolates up from the artists, from word of mouth, from the streets and rises up to the general populace. Constrained by the workings of SoundScan/BDS, music now came from the top and was rammed down people's throats.

No, John! You missed your own point. Reagan said that government (bureaucratic) control of the private sector -- that's you and me, John -- would lead to less freedom and less fortune. The same concept holds true for the record business. You had a new (government-like) regulatory regime imposed by the powers-that-be of the music business that elevated one type of consumer over all others, and thus certain types of artists were groomed to cater to that narrow audience.

It is not unlike what happened in the mortgage business. Longstanding rules that required borrowers to show that they could actually handle a mortgage (like appreciate good music) were scrapped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at the insistence of members of Congress, and then private lenders were forced to adopt the same insane rules, all in the name of "the public good." People who were not required to show proof of income or ability to repay were given government-backed loans. Then greedy people found a way to bundle these mortgages into debt instructments that were sold, and resold, many times over for their "value."

Bottom line: the natural market was manipulated to satisfy the greed of a few, and it required a regulatory mechanism, not unlike your BDS system, to achieve it. Reagan would never have approved.

When a system no longer makes sense -- the producers don't understand it and the consumers don't understand it -- then it stands to reason that something artificial has been introduced in between.

Mellencamp goes on to decry the "planned obsolescence" of music formats -- in his musical life he's seen the LP and single turn into the 8-track cart, the cassette tape, the compact disc (CD), the MP3 player -- which the music biz rightly or wrongly decided was an opportunity to re-sell every existing product in every existing catalogue all over again. I and almost all music lovers commiserate with Mr. Mellencamp over this. After all, it's our money! (How many times I've agonized over whether to replace an old LP with a new CD!) But it's the price we pay for living in an advanced civilization where new inventions bring new clarity to old music. (Unlike Mellencamp, I'm a fan of the CD quality over vinyl, although I still love the way wide analogue tape sounds.)

Mellencamp reveals his own misunderstanding of the beauties of the "Golden Age of Music" when he praises "Like a Rolling Stone" and derides "Monster Mash." Johnny, that was the beauty of that era: when everybody and everything competed side-by-side for our attention and entertainment dollars. Top 40 was rock n' roll competing wide open with Soul, Pop, Psychelic, Art rock, folk, country, bluegrass, blues, jazz, funk, classical: the result was often genius, or completely comical.

For instance, in the same year Mellencamp's first single hit the charts ("I Need a Lover") you also heard "Heartache Tonight" (Eagles), "Escape," (Rupert Murdoch), "September" (Earth, Wind & Fire), "Roxanne," (Police), "Ooh, Baby, Baby" (Linda Ronstadt), "Music Box Dancer," (Frank Mills), "If Lovin' You is Wrong," (Barbara Mandrell), "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," (Michael Jackson), "Tusk," (Fleetwood Mac), "Just When I Needed You Most," (Randy Van Warmer), "Reunited" (Peaches & Herb), "Hot Stuff," (Donna Summer) and "My Sharona" (The Knack). And that's just a small sampling.

Lots of diversity, lots of styles. Personally, I'd trade any of these songs for what I'm hearing today. But that's part of the problem faced by today's artist. For the first time in human history, musical performances are preserved so perfectly that any artist today must not only compete in a flawed, biased marketplace against his or her peers of today, but also competes for our attention span and entertainment dollars against all those recordings that came before. An artist even finds himself competing against himself! Your new stuff has to be better than your old stuff ... if you can get yourself heard.

For music listeners, these are truly the best of times and the worst of times. For music makers, not so much.

Sadly, these days, it's really a matter of "every man for himself." In terms of possibilities, we are but an echo of what we once were. ... There is no street for the music to rise up from. There is no time for the music to develop in a natural way that we can all embrace when it ripens and matures. That's why the general public doesn't really care. It's not that the people don't still love music; of course they do. It's just the way it is presented to them that ignores their humanity.

Yes, John, it is "every man for himself" but it always was. There is still a street scene for music, there just isn't much hope for those in it that they can get heard. There is still musical fruit ripening across the country but it is being sold in small markets, over the internet or hawked at small venues.

These new artists are waiting for the current system to change, or collapse, so that they will have their chance. The "music" the industry tries to peddle ignores our humanity because it is not the music we crave, if you can call it music at all.

To be historically fair, the good old days were not always so good for the artist. Legendary stories abound of artists being cheated out of their royalties, of the Cadillacs that were given at contract signings that turned out to be rentals that were repossessed; of record company owners disappearing with the looted wealth of several artists. But the overall industry was vibrant because there was opportunity for everyone. That is what has changed.

The answer is not "compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems" -- as high-minded as that sounds. You hit on the answer: artists must rebel against the "the Man." (Isn't that what you say you used to do?)

Don't let Don Henley talk you out of the right thing. Form your own labels, take new, promising artists and bands under your wing, and refuse to play nice with the tone-deaf fat cats who control programming and markets. Go around them. Take risks. Your smart enough, and talented enough, to do this. Do not assume that your problem is a liberals versus conservatives issue. It is a freedom to market versus control issue: the big labels have their audience to which they wish to cater. You know that it isn't your audience. You just need to remember who your audience is: the millions of us in middle America who don't count in the BDS reports.

Don't be afraid of putting your lives, your fortunes and your sacred honor on the line. That's the American way.

I suspect the fat cats will come begging for forgiveness soon enough.

Tell 'em to go to hell.