The following is taken from my final review which I wrote for the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians. It gives my ideas about the future of the recording industry.
This is my last CD column for the AAM Journal. I’ve greatly enjoyed the process of writing reviews, listening to CDs, and consulting with many of you about what you’re doing, recording- wise. But I feel that it’s now time to pass the tradition on to someone else, lest the AAM membership have a one- sided view of the recording industry.
When I started this task several years ago, everyone was telling me that CDs would soon be a thing of the past, that downloads have replaced CDs, and that the Classical music market is basically drying up. I have to tell you that the statistics do not agree with the nay-sayers out there. Classical music sales were up nearly five percent last year (and rock and pop both dropped about six percent, and country music dropped nearly eleven percent). And while Classical music CD stores are harder and harder to find, thanks to Amazon, CD Baby, and other sites, Classical CDs are available for anything you might want to hear. Yes, it is true that fewer young people purchase a CD player, or even own a “stereo system” than in the past, but the enormous popularity of listening to music selections on download (basically ALL downloaded from CDs) tells you that there is still a market in making CDs.
I’ve spoken with CD producers like Roger Sherman of Loft & Gothic about the future of the CD market. And while no one anticipates an imminent demise of the physical CD, it’s quite certain that artists will get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. So, why record? One should record if, and only if, one finds the recording process enjoyable. There’s much about the recording process that is tedious at best and grueling at worst. (Consider the reality that most organ recordings are made in the middle of the night; consider the cost of recording, editing, and producing; consider the waiting around while the engineer sorts out microphone placement, then re- placement; consider the hours spent listening to a few takes over and over in order to decide what to use in the final edit, etc.) The recording process, and the tediousness of all that precedes the actual playing, reminds me of a story of John Wayne. Once, on a shoot, a young actor started complaining about all the waiting around that he had to do. John Wayne immediately piped up and said, “That’s what they pay you for! The acting you do for free.” I love that analogy! Yes, it’s the actual music- making that we do when we record that is the dessert. The preparations, and the editing—those are the main courses that you will (hopefully) recoup in sales. But the actual playing is just for fun.
About that notion of recouping in sales, sadly for most of us in the music business (including the church music business), we will not see much of a profit margin (if any) on recordings made today. So, if you must record (and you know who you are if you’re in that category), make a statement that you’re going to be happy living with for the rest of your professional life. Choose a really interesting organ, or really interesting repertoire, or a clever theme, or have a unique approach to the music that you’re doing. Try to avoid CDs that look like someone’s senior recital because, even if you do manage to sell your complete stock, the chances are that no one will listen to it more than once.
All of us who live our lives in the arts want to be stretched. We want to find out something new and fun, interesting and amazing. Most of all, we are far more interested in being moved than we are in being impressed. (If that weren’t the case, it’s pretty unlikely that we would have ended up in church music.) There’s only one reason that anyone walks out the door to hear a concert—it is the hope that the artist(s) will reveal something of themselves. People are hungry to be touched by another’s vulnerability and passion, for in being fully present at such events they find a window that opens to a vision of the Divine.
So, I say, long live the recording industry.It has enabled us to hear instruments from around the world that we would most likely never have heard. Most significantly, it has allowed us to hone our musical skills by listening to the work of other choirs, other conductors, other instrumentalists, and world musicians. Based on contemporary accounts, the level of performing in churches, cathedrals, and concert halls is several orders of magnitude better today than 100 years ago. I can’t help but attribute much of that progress to the prevalence of recordings.
Lastly, I appreciate having had this platform for my occasional rants. I think that one of the most important things we can do is to keep the circuits of communication open and flowing. Perhaps more of us should consider writing blogs. Perhaps AAM could have a central blog site which gives links to everyone who is writing a blog. One of the things which AAM is about is to be a useful tool at communication between our colleagues. CDs, too, are precisely that, communication between those of us who speak the same “language.”
© Jonathan Dimmock, 2014