Music Industry? What Music Industry?

"The music industry is gone," says the former creative director of Motown Records. "We'll see if there are new pioneers that are going to rebuild it."<br /><br />Question: What changes have you seen in the music industry since you began working?Carol Friedman:  What music industry?  The music industry is gone.  I come from... You know, I was head of creative at several of the big labels, Elektra, Motown, and the music industry was filled with people and filled with departments, legal departments, marketing departments, A&R, promo.  Now a label that had 250 employees has 7 and that is not an exaggeration and then there is everybody just flying out here flapping in the wind on their own because they're saying well we don't need a label.  They're kind of right.  They're right and they're wrong because the whole machine has changed.  Record sales used to be...  Listen to me saying record.  Okay, so that dates me.  CD sales, but there are no CDs either and therein is the answer to that question.  It used to be that something called a phonograph record or a CD sales were spurred by musicians' tours, so Eric Clapton would go on tour and boom, you know, that record would go up on the charts.  There was also something called radio and that doesn't exist, so the combination or radio and touring is what established somebody to, you know, move up the charts and be a number one record.  The best example to show you, you know how there is no more music industry, a number one record on the Billboard let's say the Hot 100.  Let's say a single.  No, let's say an album.  To be a number one album you were selling two or three million records.  Now the number one album is selling maybe 70,000.  Nobody is in a store buying recorded music, so the music industry as far as that goes is over.  You know, so it went from an album cover this big to a CD this big then to one of those little flipbooks with just the discs and not the booklets and no one cared about that then straight to the ear and now that is going to...  You know now that is gone too, so I don't know how...  Hopefully there is still going to be a need for visuals because I like what I do and I don't want to stop doing it, but that paradigm is long over.  It's the bad news and the good news because they flattened it and we'll see if there are new pioneers that are going to rebuild it.  We'll see.Recorded on April 21, 2010Interviewed by Austin Allen<br /><br />Question: What changes have you seen in the music industry since you began working?Carol Friedman:  What music industry?  The music industry is gone.  I come from... You know, I was head of creative at several of the big labels, Elektra, Motown, and the music industry was filled with people and filled with departments, legal departments, marketing departments, A&R, promo.  Now a label that had 250 employees has 7 and that is not an exaggeration and then there is everybody just flying out here flapping in the wind on their own because they're saying well we don't need a label.  They're kind of right.  They're right and they're wrong because the whole machine has changed.  Record sales used to be...  Listen to me saying record.  Okay, so that dates me.  CD sales, but there are no CDs either and therein is the answer to that question.  It used to be that something called a phonograph record or a CD sales were spurred by musicians' tours, so Eric Clapton would go on tour and boom, you know, that record would go up on the charts.  There was also something called radio and that doesn't exist, so the combination or radio and touring is what established somebody to, you know, move up the charts and be a number one record.  The best example to show you, you know how there is no more music industry, a number one record on the Billboard let's say the Hot 100.  Let's say a single.  No, let's say an album.  To be a number one album you were selling two or three million records.  Now the number one album is selling maybe 70,000.  Nobody is in a store buying recorded music, so the music industry as far as that goes is over.  You know, so it went from an album cover this big to a CD this big then to one of those little flipbooks with just the discs and not the booklets and no one cared about that then straight to the ear and now that is going to...  You know now that is gone too, so I don't know how...  Hopefully there is still going to be a need for visuals because I like what I do and I don't want to stop doing it, but that paradigm is long over.  It's the bad news and the good news because they flattened it and we'll see if there are new pioneers that are going to rebuild it.  We'll see.Recorded on April 21, 2010Interviewed by Austin Allen