I’ve lived in the Detroit area since 1969, but I never went to the Motown Museum until today. I’d heard great Motown stories from my old pal Bob Dennis, who worked with Motown in its heyday. Still, it was inspiring to actually be IN that room where so many great records were made and where so many careers were launched. Indeed, where so many dreams came true.
And I was moved by what Berry Gordy and Motown achieved in the 60’s and beyond. The music resonates with millions to this day. Hey-just seeing the faces of the people who came today proved to me that this music was an important part of their lives. They sang along with the songs. This was positive music that impacted lives in a positive way. For many of my generation, these were some of the songs that framed the days of our lives. When we hear My Girl or Heard It Through The Grapevine, we remember where we were and what we were doing at that time.
Being there, standing within the walls of this almost mythic music making studio, I was deeply inspired. I’m going to be honest here: my first impulse was to recreate this incredible music machine for a second time here in Detroit. We have the musicians, the singers, the studio engineers and the writers to make it happen. On paper, it all looks like a great dream until…
Until I understand that the music business that allowed this miracle to happen is dead. The computer and the internet killed it. People used to gladly pay a buck for a 45 single of a hot new tune. We were grooved in to the idea that we paid a little money for the privilege of owning a great track. People don’t do that anymore. When they can have it all for a few bucks, there is no longer interest in owning a copy of a song.
Now, we stream to our hearts content using Spotify or Apple Music-maybe Amazon Prime Music or Rhapsody. Well, streaming has made music valueless. Unless you should somehow happen to to blow up viral and huge. But hits like we knew in the 60’s? It doesn’t work that way anymore.
Even iTunes is closing their shop. From now on, it is all streaming. So who does it benefit? It benefits the consumer and the internet companies that do the streaming. It does not help the artists, the musicians or the songwriters who create music. Their intellectual property has been reduced to fractions of a penny. There is no real living to be made anymore. And you wonder why music sucks? Imagine if your career talents were reduced to fractions of a penny. Would you bother anymore?
Right now, we are in a perilous state where genius in discounted, thwarted and made useless. Had Berry Gordy tried to build Motown Records today, he would have failed miserably because there is no real money to be made. Streaming services are thriving as long as people want to hear the old music. Eventually, nobody will bother trying to make a living from making records. It has become a calling card. Hear this and then come and see my show, where I can at least recoup with a ticket price. Or possibly get you to buy merch at an inflated price.
I think we were much better off when radio played the cream of all the genres and folks could by the records, know who produced them, who write them and who played on them. Now, we don’t know anything. The corporations that stream don’t give a damn. A record is just a way to get a customer to pay the monthly streaming fee. Basically, nobody buys records anymore and the losers are the musicians and the public.
If I thought there was a real market, I’d been on the horn to all the talents here in town and I would find a way to make the spirit of Motown rise from the ashes. Artists would rise, songwriters would get paid and records would sell like hotcakes. Motown was a beautiful dream and vision that succeeded in the time it existed, but that time is history. And, to me, it is such a shame.
When I heard all this music today, I thought about all the lives it enriched-both the performers and the audiences. It was beautiful-a perfect symbiotic relationship. And I despise the powers that be that killed it. All that beauty and all that joy-kicked to the curb forever. What is left is a vacuum. Nobody knows what a hit is today. Nobody even knows what is going on in the big picture of music. Everybody is losing-except, of course, for the streaming services that are raping all the parties that once made great records.
To me, it is a sin that can never be absolved. A sin against culture-a sham that was the inevitable result of the digital age. I wish I had known before I let all that inspired me lead me into a life as a songwriter, performer and a musician. Maybe I could have followed my medical dreams and saved some lives.
allthingsal 