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We are seeing summer out with a bang. Yes it’s just us three – Megan, Lucy and Charlotte – talking about the changes we’ve observed in the publishing industry. It all began when Meg watched a video on YouTube about the downfall of rock music and she thought it sounded worryingly familiar…
“I recently watched an old video from Rick Beato’s channel where he discusses corruption and greed in the music industry leading to the downfall of rock music. This might seem like a weird place for an episode of Breaking the Glass Slipper to begin, but as I watched the show, I couldn’t help but see many depressing similarities between what happened in music then and what has been happening in publishing in the last decade or so.
In the video, Beato and his guest lament the downfall not only of rock music but of creativity and originality across the music industry. The key factors outlined in the video were the consolidation of ‘taste makers’ and the eventual production of music solely based on what was already selling. But this was the late ’90s and early 2000’s… now we are also facing issues arising from social media algorithms and AI use.
The 1996 US telecommunications act consolidated radio stations, moving from local, independent stations with multiple voices represented to a handful of businesses owning radio stations all over the country. It changed from individual DJs and their musical taste to a very few individual programme directors setting the playlists across the country. DJs were no longer the ones to discover new bands and give them a leg up. Instead, suits in corporate offices were making sweeping decisions for radios across the US (and other markets followed suit).
Music began being made for the one – or few – people in charge of choosing what was played. Certain songs would make the list, so record companies would ask to make more music similar to what previously worked.
DJs stopped getting a choice about what they could play, it left them without any creativity in the job. Now, editors have to take everything to sales – can they prove that something like it has sold well in the last few years? No? Then no thanks. Record executives became afraid to sign artists that sounded new and original because it could be their jobs on the line. If DJs weren’t breaking original artists and the record execs weren’t signing them, it is no wonder that all the music started to sound the same.”
We talk about mergers in big publishing, the rise of “comp” titles, tropes driving sales, the death of originality, the commodification of books and how money ruins everything green and good in this world. Buckle up, listeners, for some hard and dirty truths.
