Downloading Killed the Rock Stars
“I’m pretty much a t-shirt salesman.”
The statement was made recently by Exodus bass player Jack Gibson, whose band is one of the purveyors of thrash-metal music, a subgenre if there ever was one. But it resonates for any professional musician who isn’t a contemporary superstar like Taylor Swift, or a superstar of a bygone era like Mick Jagger, who is worth millions, but still loves the limelight.
“It isn’t just that I’m jaded,” Gibson told interviewer Danielle Bloom, “it’s that there’s no music business anymore.”
Gibson is bemoaning the absence of a corporate and independent-label musical industry that once existed to seek and sign artists or bands that could draw fans and deliver quality music, advance those artists’ funds for a professionally-produced album, and pay them commensurate with their success. These days, a band like Exodus, who are on par historically with mega-metaliers like Metallica, Slayer, and King Diamond, goes into the studio, crafts a banger-pleasing album of breakneck-paced rock, and then must tour with a van-full of merch—t-shirts, caps, belt buckles—hoping to earn a living.
“Once they started giving the music away,” Gibson told Bloom, “there’s no business. We don’t sell shit for records. If we don’t go out and sell t-shirts, we don’t make money.”
This is the legacy of music you don’t have to pay for, and pennies-on-the-dollar streaming sites like Spotify. Bands can’t make real money on CDs. The only people who buy CDs are old guys who haven’t adapted to devices that can play music in their vehicles. I purchased three this summer. I own the first three Exodus cassettes (1985-89), purchased with cash.
It’s almost 25 years since Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by the late Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to the effect that file-sharing was robbing musicians. Ulrich received pushback from penurious fans under the delusion that music should be available to the public with no recompense to the creators. Everything Ulrich warned about ultimately came true.
Case in point for how things work now is Judas Priest’s recent album release Invincible Shield. Three singles from the record were released in succession to create buzz, and then the album dropped. The entire record was immediately available for listening on pay sites like Spotify, but also for free on YouTube. There may be an initial flurry of physical-copy sales to fans who want to support their favorite bands, but the amount earned doesn’t come close to offsetting the costs for a band like Priest to hit the road. Ticket sales, and the merch—a Black Sabbath t-shirt I bought at the Portland show on their 2016 farewell tour cost $40—is what matters most.
For a band like Exodus, who can sell out mid-level venues but not arenas, the math may or may not prove profitable.
Long ago, starting with surf music and then later the Beatles and British Invasion, onto to classic rock and metal, fans spent allowance money, and then adult income on singles, albums, cassettes, CDs, shirts, action figures, movies like A Hard Day’s Night and Woodstock to the tune of billions of dollars.
Nowadays, rock fans who don’t go to shows or buy a t-shirt, who opt instead to listen to the superlative new Deep Purple album for free on YouTube, are complicit in a charge KISS bassist Gene Simmons made in 2014, and continues to reiterate: “Rock-and-roll is dead. The fans killed the thing they loved by downloading and file sharing.”
It’s fitting to note that KISS, never outdone in the merch department, began offering caskets—the Kiss Kasket—in 2008. Get yours today?