A Concerned Jack White Says “Music” is Dying

Guitarist Jack White (in a photo with the Dead Weather line-up, right) is very worried that music as an art form is ‘dying.’

“It’s a dying era right now for music and art, things are crumbling. … Every meeting we have with a label is depressing, and you wouldn’t believe how hard it is, and how much trickery goes into a band just breaking even. It’s going to be so hard for bands in 10 years.”

Not sure what Jack means by ‘trickery.’ I do know that the music industry — for years before the digital revolution — used forms of ‘trickery’ to sell albums.

I do agree with White on one level, when he goes on to say:

“The new generation needs to be taught about the beauty and romance of a record store.”

I completely agree. Songs on digital files, like the common mp3s or 4s, can be so distant from the actual creator of the music. There has always been the notion that the music is the most important factor. But if it has no further connection to the band, or songwriter, it can eventually sap the energy and interest of the listener. The listener, and furthermore ‘the fan,’  will need more.

Some of us are more optimistic than Jack White. Things always have a way of sorting themselves out. Illegal downloading began as a backlash from years of music industry price gouging. Music fans will come around to see the digital file as impersonal and that it often has inferior sound. Fans will soon miss the music release as a piece of art, too.  And, it’s true, we miss something tangible. A lot of us are missing the interactive touch of LP/CD art. For instance, if you choose to download Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti” over owning the album, that’s just depressing. You’re really missing out on a lot of the experience.

Bands/artists will have to learn to give more extras with their product, no matter how small (DVDs have survived wonderfully this way). They are already doing that (even Jack White). That’s not ‘trickery.’ The music listener loves it not as just a consumer but as a fan. And bands/artists have to be smart enough to commit to sample streams of their music on MySpace or their own site. The Napster phenomenon became a problem, true, but it did to some extent level the playing field and drive prices down. The buyer can now experience the sounds of at least two artists instead of one. And for us music lovers, that’s a sort of liberation, without feeling the guilt of ‘file sharing.’

I say, don’t worry Jack White. It’ll be okay.