IDM Mailing Archive

H/H>Until the MTV announcement, techno was looked upon by the recording H/H>industry as simply one of several areas of potential growth. There was H/H>also talk that sales could be boosted by a new wave of lightweight pop H/H>(the Spice Girls), sunny teen rock (No Doubt), traditional pop (Celine H/H>Dion) or a soul revival (Tony Rich, D'Angelo). H/H> But the MTV statement started a buzz in the record company H/H>corridors and in the media about techno--probably because it is the most H/H>cutting-edge of the alternatives--that quickly escalated it to the H/H>forefront of the discussion. What Hilburn and Hochman are (deliberately?) ignoring is that electronica has a much wider potential profit margin than any of the other styles they mention. A bedroom-produced album has an innate economic advantage over one recorded expensively in a studio: it doesn't have to move nearly as many units to recoup the initial investment. On top of this, most (all?) of the artists being pushed as the future of mainstream music are signed to UK labels, and merely licensed to the US labels releasing their records. This puts the records in an even better economic light - the only initial investments involved are in actually pressing up the records and in promoting them. Probably the closest analogue to the big electronica push is the so-called second British invasion of the early- to mid-1980's. Bands like Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Men at Work benefitted from the emergence of MTV, yes, but their records were also cheaply licensed from overseas labels in a time when the record industry was in a slump similar to the one it's in now. I think it's obvious that electronica becoming the "next big thing" has nothing to do with the music industry becoming "hip" to "our" music - it just shows how desperate the industry is to stay in the black. C. -- C.Hilker (cspot@hyperreal.com) "He was mesmerized by the light-pictures, and the music sent him right into dreamland"