Musicians Are The Poets Of The 21st Century
Echoing a sentiment I’ve eschewed many times, Derek posits that musicians may be the poets of the new millenia. This has the ring of truth to me. We bemoan the fall of the ‘music industry’ but, thing is, the music industry (really, the recorded music industry) is a very recent and modern creation and perhaps not something that was meant to erect huge corporations and monuments to eternity. You know, things don’t have a right to exist. It’s not that there should or shouldn’t be record labels. They are. That’s all. It’s not God. It’s not the will of the divine spirit. They exist for a reason and as long as that reason is alive they’ll be around.
The masses have been mobilized and armed with the tools to create. They are now doing that, regardless of what old men like Bob Lefsetz say or think.
If you were a poet, you’d never think writing poems was a way to get rich quick. Maybe you’d think if you toiled away for years, and you put out a couple of books of poetry, people you respect might pay you some notice and you’d get to exchange some ideas with some interesting people and maybe somewhere sometime someone would read your poem and see how you shaped the words around themselves and their lives would change in some small way and it would be good.
And maybe that’s how it will be with songs. They are small things but they are beautiful.
Here’s the quote from Derek, which I agree with:
The music business might be like the poetry business some day. Which means: almost no profit, and people do it because they want to, never for the money. I’m sure there are some companies making money off of poetry, but not many. Not making millions. So labels still have to get incredibly lean and efficient, so they can actually profit off of something that sells only 10,000 copies.
