A brief interruption, if I may, from blogging about ACORN employees with “contacts” in Tijuana advising a “pimp” and his “whore” how to operate a whorehouse without getting caught and smuggle girls into the country to turn tricks. (And claim the child tax credit!)
I developed a weird fascination with how digital technology has changed the music industry. I still have it. In fact, I’m trying to set up an interview with…Fun stuff. Basically, the microchip altered the whole game, the industry’s scrambling, and the “hit” has been defined down. Radio has suffered, and it’s hard to sell millions of records or even be heard these days. It’s not about the mass anymore; it’s all about the niche.
Some artists try to make up for the attention/access deficit by licensing music for ringtones and games, offering free songs, and interacting with “hardcore” fans and cultivating new ones on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. A few lucky ones get to hear their music in commercials, and on TV and movie soundtracks.
Guess which movie soundtracks are coveted above all (at the moment?). If you’re thinking about fangs, blood, and deliciously engorged veins, you’re on the right track. From the New York Times:
The major labels long viewed soundtracks as low-risk, high-reward vehicles for promoting mega-singles. And until that model was eroded in the early 2000s by the rise of single-track downloads, there was a steady stream of multiplatinum hits. “The Bodyguard,” from 1992, has sold 11.8 million copies. But along with recent films like “Juno,” “Twilight” has emerged as an example of a new approach: choosing songs that are entwined with a film’s narrative, and which appeal to viewers through emotional resonance rather than superstar familiarity. “There have always been amazing soundtracks, like ‘Flashdance’ and ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ where the music was attached to what the story was about,” said Livia Tortella, general manager and executive vice president of Atlantic Records, which is releasing the album on Oct. 20 with Ms. Patsavas’s label, Chop Shop. “Somewhere along the lines it became about a single tie-in opportunity and not about the film itself. It diluted things.”
…
For bands placement in a “Twilight” film means huge potential sales and wide exposure.“If you’re an artist that’s successfully branded with a film as enormous as ‘Twilight,’ you get a lasting benefit beyond the movie and the soundtrack itself,” said James Diener, president of A&M/Octone Records. “You’re able to access marketing dollars that the film company has been spending beyond what a record company could or would spend.”
Love it or detest it, there you go. But don’t you have to be somewhat well-known to have a shot at being on a mainstream movie soundtrack? A Christian band called The Wrecking isn’t what you’d call “well-known,” but they’re trying to get on the soundtrack of “New Moon,” the movie based on the second book of Stephenie Meyer’s four-book Twilight series.
Christians and vampires don’t mix, you say? Tell that to Christian writers like Eric Wilson and…others.
Downloading: a blessing and a curse?
Unrelated update: It’s getting old, but I had to try it.
