With the global downturn in the economy it seems that almost every industry has been hit, including music. While many will be gleefully cheering the demise of the traditional major record labels as the economic downturn speeds up the process begun by a changing of the way we buy and listen to our music to an increasingly online format it is worth taking a minute to ask if it’s really that good.

Of course independent labels have always existed alongside the major labels, offering a niche market alternative to the commercial heavyweights in the game. However even these lower overhead outfits are feeling the pinch, with last week’s fall of independent distribution company Pinnacle leaving many independent labels without the means to get their product out to the marketplace. As independent labels find themselves struggling too we have to wonder how safe it is at the majors?

With major labels like EMI suffering losses recorded last year at £757 million, Warner seeing it’s share-price plummet to 28% of it’s value three years ago and BMG cutting ties with Sony, it seems that the major labels are not in a healthy state either. But this doesn’t affect the artists surely?

Unfortunately, it does – and not just those who are no longer relevant and may find themselves squeezed out by budget cuts. Those looking to get signed will find it more difficult as labels seek to justify the expense of launching a new act to the public while elsewhere labels will be less willing to take a chance on edgier, less formulaic sounds from those acts who they do maintain on their roster. Many executives will feel more comfortable dropping sure-fire hits over anything that may not sit neatly into an easily marketable box.

The result could be a terrifying new world where the boundary-pushing acts of the past will be left out in the cold in favour of a saccharine sounding pop onslaught that will no doubt move numbers and please fans – but only those who demand little artistic merit from their music. Reality music television programming may become the staple of the pop charts as Simon Cowell’s no-risk brand of assembly-line pop takes hold amid fears of taking a chance with something that may not offer the necessary returns financially. This will be exacerbated by the public’s feeling that they should be able to get their music for nothing via downloads and media give-aways (Prince recently gave a new album of material away to readers of a British newspaper) further hurting the coffers (and therefore the risk-taking) of the labels. And, as consumers seek to get their music for less expense (if any), those genuine artists that write and record the songs will find that they have an ever-decreasing incentive to remain in the game until, perhaps one day, they are priced out of the business altogether leaving a conveyor-belt line of Cowell’s personality-less pop automatons in their place.

In the end it will be all of us who lose as the labels become increasingly conservative and the latest releases become inter-changeable pulp. Brave new world where the consumer is king and the labels are sidelined? Not if it means an end to those who produced innovative product for a not-so mass market….

Tom  Clover- WWW.GRINDMODECONNECT.COM & WWW.GRINDMODEPRESS.COM