Jeff Price is the Founder and CEO of TuneCore. This op-ed is in response to a CNN.com piece entitled "What will save rock'n'roll?" from May 20th.
Yesterday, CNN.com ran an article titled “What will save rock 'n' roll?” which included an interview with Steve Van Zandt and some others
The short version, in the article Steven, and others, claim people are not buying music and albums because “they suck” and bands don’t know how to rock.
Somehow, they feel, bands just don’t know how create music that inspires.
I had the pleasure and honor of meeting Steven. He’s a great guy, a kick-ass guitar player and a legend, but with all due respect, bullshit. And shame on CNN for running a news story based on a few people’s uneducated opinions.
There is more music being created and recorded today then ever before in the history of humanity. Although sheer volume of music creation does not make it good, the fact that more people are creating it certainly increases the odds. Hell, just having access to affordable gear and recording equipment (like your Mac) allows more music to come to life, both the terrible and the incredible.
What Steven and CNN don’t seem to know, or acknowledge, is that the real “music industry” is that thing over in the corner main-stream media is not reporting on and not aware of.
There are between 150 to 300 releases a day via TuneCore alone. I have to suspect that Steven has heard perhaps less than a percent of a percent of them. You want the opinion from the guy running TuneCore, now the largest distributor of bands, labels and music in the world, there is more great “rock”, “punk”, “dance”, “hip hop” “classical”, “funk”, “folk”, “country” etc etc than there has ever been before. And this is why IT IS SELLING.
TuneCore Artists have made over $32,000,000 in music sales in just the last 22 months. Some TuneCore Artists are actually outselling Top 40 artists – guess the Top 40 aren’t really Top 40 anymore. Who cares what someone else chart says, the people actually know what’s going on and don’t need an artificial chart to tell them what’s popular, they already know.
And with all due respect, people ARE buying and consuming and stealing and streaming and listening to music. And more and more of them are becoming so inspired that they actually are going out to teach themselves how to “rock”.
So CNN, what will save rock ‘n’ roll – it’s already saved. You just need to start listening.
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