The Pop Music Idol and the Spirit of Charisma

Reality Television Talent Shows in the Digital Economy of Hope

T. Cvetkovski

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137494450
• eBook ISBN: 9781137494467
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Arte generale

This book makes a case for the synergetic union between reality TV and the music industry. It delves into technological change in popular music, and the role of music reality TV and social media in the pop production process. It challenges the current scholarship which does not adequately distinguish the economic significance of these developments.

Part I

Organisational Change: Corporatist Relations between the Music Industry and Reality TV

1

The Sociology of Reality TV, the Political Economy of the Music Industry and Convergence of the Twain

Introduction: Why won’t this ‘Internet Thing’ just go away? A vignette to situate the debate

This book explores one of this century’s more successful business entertainment partnerships – that between the major hit music makers and their new significant others, reality TV producers. It examines how the major players in the popular (pop) music industry have mobilised their forces to assert influence in an emerging decentralised music landscape.

As the title and subtitle suggest, this book is concerned with not only the relationship between pop music and reality television (TV) actors but also the digital economy in which they reside. A new contestable music world has been shaped as a result of technological change. Digitalisation has created a decentralised and unprecedented marketplace in which consumers are able to access popular music in previously unimagined forms. The interrelationship between technological change and consumption of music products has become not only complicated and vexed, but contested. Downloads, and now, to a lesser extent, physical distribution must compete against streaming and socially networked consumption as viable avenues of online, that is virtual commodification. (And the infinite threat of illegal consumption should also be acknowledged as a parallel contribution to this unprecedented level of complex media consumption.)

Music reality TV contests provide a fascinating case study for how a small number of dominant corporate citizens have attempted to successfully rationalise the above disorganising effects. But before going into the themes guiding this book, it is worth situating the debate by way of a short reflection.

For the better part of the 20th century, the popular music industry existed in an anti-competitive environment. Product commodification was centrally, that is, monopolistically coordinated and controlled by an exclusive club of almost identical dominant industry players (the oligopolistic majors). By end of the Second World War, just four firms dominated the music industry. Barriers to any alternative modes of consumption were erected around the entire production process as the rules for music business engagement were set by this concentrated status quo. The industry, in short, had a defined economy of scope – from the start of production (music creation) to completion (consumption). The industry’s monopolistic space was naturally occurring thanks to technological control and industry dominance, and the majors made the most of the temporary monopoly control over copyright because copyright laws have always been extended to favour corporate citizens. Combined, technological control and copyright domination provided very little scope for free market competition from the beginning of the recorded music industry.

Until recently, this elite group did not bother about economic externalities driven by technology affecting its business scope. There was no need because it set the terms of consumption. The majors dictated what was to be recorded (style) and issued, what formats would be used (physical records), and what should be played by radio and then television (chart promotion and sales representation). The majors’ economic scope of production was, quite frankly, untouchable in the 20th century.

But technological change in the form of digitalisation arrived, right on cue, as the millennium drew to a close. The dawn of the 21st century signified the possibility of the relegation of the traditional music industry’s hierarchical structure to history. For the first time, popular music has witnessed a hollowing out of a defined music industry organisational structure (see Chapter 4). The industry still remains concentrated in terms of ownership of previously acquired intellectual property rights (IPRs, namely copyrights), and ownership is jealously guarded in that domain. But there has been significant change in product commodification and the diffusion of pop music recordings. The landscape has changed as the business of music commodification and its organisation have become contestable. Pop music has become less centrally controlled. In short, the majors have lost both economic and political ground and have posted unprecedented major losses in revenue since 1999. The majors have become, for want of a better term, vulnerable in the 21st century.

What happened? Issues affecting production had always been promptly resolved by the majors in the past. Indeed, the transition from vinyl to cassette to CD (and eventually MP3) has been reasonably smooth, that is, not disruptive. So 21st-century technological change, in the form of the Internet, did not at first appear formidable. It was anticipated that any potential effects of technological change would be withstood as the Internet storm passed. Indeed, when a cartel-like group of four to five corporate citizens owns up to 80% of published and recorded music (including every known physical format and all other means of production), they can buy, influence, lobby, manipulate, sue and otherwise manoeuvre their way out of any rough patch. After all, these artificial citizens had survived legislative change, economic recessions, aggressive mergers and hostile takeovers, and of course piracy over successive decades. To keep a level head with regard to the advent of the Internet in the late 1990s, seemed, quite frankly, a rational thing to do by the major controllers (or at least until the ‘Internet Thing’ just went away).

The Internet Thing seemed just like any another external challenge, and capable of being tamed. Remarkably, this was a phrase used by a major record company executive during an interview in 2002 as part of my doctoral research on the political economy of the music industry (Cvetkovski, 2004). The subsequent disorganising effects during this period in the music industry should not be lost on the reader. As mentioned, consecutive sustained losses in recorded sales revenue were being posted globally in the first part of the decade (see official sales data as published in Music & Copyright from 1999 to 2004). This was an alarming development because in 2002, CDs (mostly albums) accounted for nearly 93% of sales and the balance comprised cassettes, vinyl and music videos (according to official industry IFPI [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry] and RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America] data for 2002). The lion’s share of revenue generation which had always belonged to the majors was depleting unexpectedly. Furthermore, monetisation through digitalisation quite simply was neither realistic or at least viable for the industry’s economy given that CDs were being sold at an absolute premium retail price. Accommodating an unknown quantity such as the ubiquitous worldwide web was not comprehensively on the agenda for the major music industry players. Besides, the system was not broken – why fix something unbroken? Why change an unchanged century-old formula? Napster and Mr Shawn Fanning could be taken care of – and they were (eventually).

But I was curious, nonetheless, as to how the Internet would be included in the business model. When I asked the interviewee to explain the industry’s approach to digitalisation, not much input was provided concerning this Internet Thing other than to acknowledge its tyrannical piratical capacity. So, when further prompted about the Internet and its ability to deliver digitalised music products to consumers, for example, to provide far greater audience and market reach, the interviewee (who only spoke on the strict reassurance of anonymity) looked at me quite sternly and quipped, ‘Well that’s one good thing about the net isn’t it?’ He subsequently refused to expand on this statement, and I was left to ponder this remark in the absence of clarification. I left it at that.

Some years later, and on proper reflection, it dawned on me that the comment made by the record executive was a scathing and sarcastic reply most likely meant to indicate that digitalisation had brought with it the end of music commodification as the majors knew it. I now know I was right to think he was somewhat reluctant, defensive and generally pensive about discussing the issue further. His comment was not about piracy. (Remember, this was the period when the industry was reeling from Napster when single songs were being downloaded gratis ad infinitum, and KaZaa was just about to offer full album downloads illegally.) All this illegal activity was occurring at a time when The Pirate Bay and other such BitTorrent sites had not even been launched. In short, digitalisation brought with it new forms of commodification – unknown, unpredictable. If this were the pharmaceutical industry, these new digital products would be described as dirty drugs because frankly the effects would be wide ranging and possibly (actually) adverse in many respects. In short order, first digitalisation actively promotes illegal behaviour and, second, it promotes a less anti-competitive and restrictive or protectionist, that is, a contestable market economy.

The interviewee’s comment was about the end of centralised control, sooner rather than later; and that no good would come of this new wave of technological change. In the circumstances, his attitude was justifiable and quite prophetic as to how the majors would be conducting business in an uncertain digital world. The majors are, after all, best described as corporate ‘centralised bureaucracies’ in which ‘there is a built-in tendency for conservatism’ (Mokyr, 2002: 276). This attitude implies a strong ingrained resistance to change resulting in a struggle between the old guard protecting its technological know-how and the ‘triumph of the new technology’ (2002: 254). Brown is more direct: ‘Resistance to change’ occurs when ‘power and autonomy’ are threatened (1977: 107). Things were about to dramatically and unpredictably change – and not just because of music piracy or subsequent struggles to resist innovation which challenged the music empire.¹

This observation we know to be true because precisely a decade later, approximately 50% of music sales stemmed from album CDs (that is a drop of nearly 43% in just ten years). Instead, 45% of sales were digital (mostly à la carte singles and not lucrative album sales). These modes of production were controlled by external service providers (the computer firms, telecommunications companies and other IT affiliates) (see industry-sanctioned IFPI and RIAA data for 2012). The slice of the traditional distribution pie revealed further erosion of the significance of full CDs as streaming and kiosk style deliveries came on the scene in 2013. Centralised control had transitioned into a form of decentralised (but still corporatised) control in just a few short years. It seems the industry’s reaction to change was to preoccupy itself with media piracy battles which, history now reveals, is a struggle more akin to fighting insurgents, guerrilla style. In other words, new cells just keep cropping up. Yet the real issue that was not anticipated by the major players was the extent to which digitalisation created legal yet disorganisational effects in a broader economic sense, concerning the delivery of music products in the future. It seems something did break, and it needed fixing – quite seriously.

What can be gleaned from the above vignette is that battle lines for a war to retain control of a music empire had been drawn, and technological change at the start of this century was the trigger. It seems Attali was correct in 1985 when he observed that the political economy of the music industry was essentially a ‘struggle’ and ‘battlefield’ (1985: 20). The industry has always battled against piracy and in recent decades resisted political challenges aimed at disrupting its hegemonic control of price setting. It now seems to be resolving a struggle over coming to terms with technological change, namely digitalisation, and the effects it has had on established commodification processes. In this technologically unpredictable universe, this club of musical rainmakers now finds itself seeking synergetic relations with like-minded citizens in order to retain control and sustain some growth within a popular music empire.

Technological change in the 21st century surprised the music industry elite. Where corporate citizens, as industry leaders, once enjoyed certainty and continuity in the 20th century by coordinating the entire economic scope of production, these majors have found themselves learning to share product distribution in a virtual marketplace. The challenge of online external competition about the way in which music products are consumed has forced these dominant players to respond to digitalisation in a joint-venture-like collaborative manner. Music reality TV contests epitomise a mutualistic relationship for the purposes of attempting to sustain ideological control about how music should be consumed.

What is technological change? Definitionally, it is a slippery term, but can be applied to the emergence of the Internet in the pop music setting. It has several meanings and is used widely in the literature. Its most obvious element relates to progression in technology so as to enhance or improve production either quantitatively or qualitatively (or both) of goods and services. It is an ‘alignment between the technological possibilities and the society and culture that exists … shaped by the society and the meanings that enjoy power within it’ (Hill, 1988: 33).

Another core component relates to innovative techniques and inventions, for example changes in format – from physical analogue technologies such as cassette tapes and cassette decks to digitalisation including MP3 files and streaming. In the context of this undertaking, it can be regarded as an ongoing shift in the production process relating to specific items for consumption, namely the commodification of pop music. But there is also another dimension to technological change that extends beyond products and the ‘change over time’ of the ‘processes used to produce them’ (Stoneman, 1983: 3). As Mokyr (2002: 253) explains: ‘The political economy of technological change thus predicts that it will be resisted by well-organized lobbies.’ This added element is firmly embedded in notions of power and control (Hill, 1988).

Technological change, by definition, might also contain an organisational element where progress (innovation) creates organisational and managerial change, given that changes in production affect product organisation directly. At best, techno-organisational change adapts to social change without power and control being affected. At its most dangerous, change has the capacity to affect ownership and control of the product. It is capable of bringing administrative disruption or disorganisation to an established, rational process. This may relate to the production of the tangible products or the management of intangible rights. In the music industry setting, a fracture in the rational process relates to both. Thus, organisational change via evolving technologies raises questions about the capacity of dominant market players to successfully adopt correct strategies in order to make the new emerging and sophisticated technologies ‘pay off’ in an emerging commercial environment. Wrong choices in this marketplace there have been – but the road to success has also been paved with correct choices in the music industry. The correct choices reflect adaptation to new circumstances. Once efficacy is proved for these strategies, these choices become institutionalised and embedded in the organisational structure. The ability to adapt, conform to and then subsume a process is a symbol of power and resembles the logic of production, for which the majors are renowned. In other words, the inherent risk technological change presents is uncertainty and unpredictability. Control of processes allows owners of the means of production to identify, assess and implement business strategies and therefore anticipate further change. The Internet does not allow this level of anticipatory comfort. At best, major players can only react to developments, and the implementation of reactive policies is not a very sound strategy in a digital environment.

Music reality TV joint ventures reflect one such successful choice as they do not technologically challenge the music industry’s traditional line of popular culture authority. Recent technological synergies between popular music and TV might be viewed as progression of sorts through the process of digitalisation.

Music reality TV contests are quite special products. It is boldly asserted at the outset that these shows are distinguishable from any other mode of reality TV. Similarities there are, but the synergetic union between pop music and reality TV was not a happy coincidence, but rather an inevitable design. Music reality TV contests possess core traditional music business attributes, and could be analysed primarily within a music industry framework so as to understand their place in popular culture. It is hoped that this contribution assists in squarely situating music reality shows in the field of popular music studies rather than generally in the field of reality TV scholarship.

The undertaking that follows is twofold. Part I aims, first, to attempt to compare and contrast reality music television with other reality TV entertainment in order to make clear divisions between the former and the latter cluster of reality entertainment. (As mentioned, there will be some similarities.) Second, it aims to critically analyse the political economy of this mode of reality TV in order to understand its role in music product commodification, and how the majors have responded to change. This second aim is critical to an understanding of the future of the music industry at an intra-industry level and especially in a digital world where various modes of consumption have converged, which forms the focus of Part II. To add hyperbole to Attali’s (1985) already emotive remark about music being a battlefield, if the majors in the past legitimately ruled the music industry with their traditions, then it seems as if consumers and in some cases artists themselves, as musical inhabitants, have risen up against this long-established authority. The effects of changes in music commodification on consumers are just as significant as the effects of changes in music production on producers and artists.

Living the reality dream

Reality shows and their portrayal of ordinary citizenry seem to dominate TV in the 21st century. The desire for people to project their otherwise unremarkable private selves into the public sphere is, quite frankly, astonishing. For example, criminality (Cops) (Doyle, 2003), sexuality (Bachelor) (Turner, 2006; Skeggs, 2009, 2010) and even justice (Jury Duty) (McCarthy, 2009) are everyday (ordinary) civil society interactions which have been promoted to become a TV brand (Skeggs and Wood, 2012). The seemingly endless combination and permutation of reality TV subject matter stands out as perhaps the most absorbing mode of popular entertainment. In many of these shows, citizens strive to self-actualise or self-realise their own potential in the form of human capital (whether it be e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I: Organisational Change: Corporatist Relations between the Music Industry and Reality TV
• Part II: Decentralisation and the Rise of a New Organisational Order
• Notes
• References
• Index