December 8th, 2011

Breaking An Artist

First and foremost, making and breaking and then sustaining an artist in the music industry is no easy feat. Doing so takes time, effort, dedication, and lots of American dollars. That is not to say artists like Justin Bieber or Kelly Clarkson do not come and go every now and then, but when starting from scratch and not getting a “break,” so to speak, it is extremely difficult to thrive in the music business. The common misconception among the general public is the only break one really needs to succeed is to get the material they produce into the hands of an executive at a huge record label. Once that happens, according to this view, it is only a matter of time before the new artist is being flown around the country (or world) on the company dime playing shows for thousands of people. That dream could not be further from reality when it comes to starting out. The simple act of getting an Artist and Repertoire representative from any record label is difficult in itself. It is possible however, if an artist or band receives enough publicity in order to attract the interest of a record label. If someone at the label is impressed, they may send an A&R rep out to check out the artist, in which case the artist is on the right track to gaining a contract.
Developing a successful artist takes much more than allocating a lot of money into production and marketing. It takes the culmination of a community of response as well as the right time and place for things to flesh out. It is not just work from the record label standpoint: the artist must put in the same, if not more effort than the people working on a brand for the artist or creating a marketing plan. The artist must create an identity he or she wishes to convey not only to fans, but to professionals in the music industry as well.
In order to successfully market a new artist, one must target what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as the “early majority” (Gladwell, 2002). The flow of trends follows this model: innovators, then early adopters then early majority then late majority all followed by the laggards. The innovators are the ones who start trends, so to speak. They allow the trend to be noticed by the early adopters who, in turn, are followed by the early majority. An example of this would be the early popularity of Rebecca Black’s song “Friday.” The song itself received mainly negative reactions by those in the music industry, but if we look at how the song rose to such prominence that Rebecca Black appeared in Katy Perry’s music video “Last Friday Night” then the same rules apply to Rebecca Black. The song “Friday” was uploaded on YouTube on February 10th, 2011, and within a month received roughly 1,000 views. For a low level music video (Black’s parents paid $4,000 for the video to be made and song to be written specifically for her) that is not too bad. On March 11th, something happened and the video went “viral” on the Internet. It spread like wildfire and received millions of views within days of going viral. TV personality and comedian Daniel Tosh featured the video on his blog, citing terrible lyrics (Pomranz, 2011). He then provided a link to the music video. Rebecca Black’s video was the most talked about thing on Twitter within days of becoming an Internet phenomenon. The fact that Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” garnered so much attention is amazing in itself, yet the majority of the attention she received was negative. The song somehow managed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 topping out at 58 and the New Zealand Singles Chart at 33. Everything that encompasses Rebecca Black’s “career” represents in a small way how an artist in the music industry can fly under the radar for a period of time, rise very quickly to stardom, becoming the subject of everyone’s conversation, and then finally, just as quickly drift away to be forgotten, or at least, less talked about. That is not to say Rebecca Black’s career is over, necessarily, but she is not in the limelight right now as she once was.
The amount of time and effort required for making an artist successful can all be for nothing if there is no community of response. Granted, if an artist has been signed then there must be something a record label sees in them to devote energy into making them successful. Yet, the record label’s primary interest is to make money by promoting or exploiting the artist. Whether the artist knows that or not, is another story, but when a label signs a new act, they are concerned with making the artist into the most successful person possible