@rg
We read so much doom and gloom about the music business every day that it’s easy to think that pretty soon the whole thing will come crashing down. Cheer up. It’s not as bad as you think.
As all the various research and trade organizations begin releasing their sales figures, a number of them have jumped out to perfectly define the state of the music industry today. Check this out:
- US album sales were up 1.3% last year, the first year since 2005 that’s happened. 66% of these sales were CDs.
- There were 249 million albums sold in the US last year. People will tell you that the music industry is dying, but 249 million of anything is still a huge number.
- 75% of all CD sales were made offline. That means that people physically purchased the CD at a brick and mortar store or an event.
- 40% of all CD buyers are over the age of 45, which means that the demo that mostly grew up with CDs are the ones still buying them. But it also means that 60% of all buyers were under 45 too.
- Vinyl sales increased 37 percent in 2011, but only accounted for 1.2 percent of all physical sales. That doesn’t mean that people who buy vinyl actually listen to it though. Just like the old days, many still buy it for the cover, the artwork, the liner notes, and the trendiness (which is new).
- Rock is the most popular genre of music, with 32 percent album share, while pop music represents 40 percent of all current digital tracks sold. Ninety-three of the 100 best selling vinyl albums in 2011 fall within the Rock or Alternative genres. I guess that means that the hip-hop and rap trend has run it’s course.
- People who live in New York or LA buy more country records than those who live in Nashville by almost 2 to 1. Having just come from a speaking tour in Nashville, I can tell you first-hand that it’s a very cosmopolitan music town, with country no longer the major part of the industry as it once was. That said, country music represents 13% of the total album sales.
- Digital country music sales are up 31% over last year. While it might have been true at one time that country music lovers were slow to get into digital music, that’s obviously no longer the case.
- Acts that perform at halftime during the Superbowl get an average sales bump of 555%. Critics may pan them and you might hate them, but you still buy them.
All these numbers (which mostly come from Nielsen Soundscan and the IFPI) show that the music business is still huge, is still extremely diverse, and is still as quirky as ever. It is changing, morphing, shifting, and evolving, but it is definitely not dying.
No one knows where the first song came from. Did Neolithic men sing around the first campfire? Did Adam croon a tune to Eve in the Garden of Eden? We may never know. Many believe that rhythmic chanting with percussive accompaniment from weapons may have been the first form of song. Prehistoric Rap? Well, sort of….
At some point, ancient people discovered that blowing across a hollow tube, like an animal bone or reed, produced a pleasing tone and that a string under tension (like a hunting bow) sounded pretty cool. An archeological dig in the Ukraine has uncovered 20,000-year-old flutes made of wooly mammoth bones — you won't find those at your local music store!
The First Song, the First Songwriter
Most songs and songwriters of the pre-Renaissance world have been forever obscured by time. Even after the development of musical notation, songs were mostly passed down through the generations by rote and modified to suit the changing times without reference or regard to the original songwriter.
We have no idea where the first song originated, who wrote it, what instrument was used, if there were lyrics, or what culture fostered its conception. What we can be sure of is that whoever wrote the first song probably had no idea of the importance of what was occurring, only that something wonderful was happening. That feeling is common to all songwriters, whether they are professionals or amateurs, rock stars, classical composers, Music Row hit-makers, or any other lucky soul who writes songs for fun or profit.
Tribal Music
Some of the first music happened in a tribal setting. Early tribes used drums and horns to communicate across long distances. Setting music in the context of a language and encouraging the development of a musical vocabulary probably hastened music development. Ancient people also used music for religious rites, festivals, and as a form of oral history.
Work Songs, Chanties, Marching Songs
One of the earliest song forms, worksongs, were sung to relieve the boredom of repetitive labor and provided a rhythm to keep a work crew in synch. One of the basic forms of the work song is the field holler, sung by farmers, serfs, and slaves while tending crops.
Work songs were usually written by the ordinary working people who used them. From these humble beginnings have sprung a wealth of past and present musical forms; work songs influenced most later musical forms. Today, historians find work songs a rich resource of information about the people and times from which they originate.
Another work song variant, the “chanty” was a favorite of sailors. To prepare a large vessel to sail, steer, drop anchor for the night, or make the ship safe from an oncoming storm requires large crews of people to work together in precise coordination. The sea chanty provided a rhythm to keep things running smoothly at times when a mistake could mean disaster for the whole crew.
You could say that marching songs are a subset of work songs. By establishing a beat, marching songs helped people walk as an organized group, thus moving more quickly and at a uniform speed. By setting a pace, marching songs allowed for precise timing in processions and parades. One of the most famous marching songs is undoubtedly "Yankee Doodle" , sung by American soldiers during the Revolutionary War. In many cultures, work songs are still a part of everyday life.
