It’s safe to say that one of my least favorite bands of all time is Nickelback. I can honestly say there is nothing I like about them. Not one single thing. Nothing. But here’s the problem. Nickelback has sold over thirty million albums over the past several years. Let me repeat that because I don’t think you read that correctly: Nickelback has sold over thirty million albums over the past several years. My favorite bands barely sell over one hundred thousand copies. These are the bands that critics and music snobs tend to gravitate towards, but the general public couldn’t care less about. So is it my taste in music that’s completely off? Am I into the wrong bands? When I try to find bands for my label, am I looking for the next cool thing, or the next big thing? Can it be both? This has been on my mind a lot lately, and it’s starting to bother me. I’m trying to figure out what causes people to buy the records they buy, and stay away from the records they stay away from, no matter how many critics, bloggers, and music snobs rave on and on about them.
(By the way, yes, I’m aware that thirty million album sold doesn’t mean thirty million different people bought the album when you take into account repeat customers over the course of their discography, but you get my point—If not thirty million, at least one can safely say millions upon millions of people have purchased Nickelback…but I digress).
I like sports to a certain degree. I am in no way a sports junkie, I don’t get into the nitty gritty of it all, but I know some basics. For example, I’m aware of, say, who plays quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons. However, I have no idea where Matt Ryan went to college, or who the second-string quarterback is, or even the name of the team’s wide receivers. I like to watch a good game, in fact, I might even go catch one live at the Georgia Dome if given the opportunity, but I don’t get caught up in too many details. I can take it or leave it. This makes me a passive sports fan. If it’s on TV I’ll watch it. If the Falcons got to the playoffs I’ll watch it, you get where I’m going with this. I’m a passive sports fan.
I’m not a passive music fan, I’m an active music fan. Music is a major part of my life, it’s a large part of who I am. I think the majority of music consumers, probably the majority of people in general, are like I am with sports; passive listeners who casually tune in and out of what’s current, or what the radio is playing, or what song was on during the make-out scene on Grey’s Anatomy. They’re passive music fans who consume (and who, for the most part, still purchase rather than illegally download) the music that happens to cross their path. They don’t actively seek it out necessarily, it’s just there, and they could take it or leave it.
Most of the people who run in the same circles as I do are music junkies. If I go see an obscure band at the Drunken Unicorn or the Star Bar or wherever, I’m pretty sure I’m going to see a lot of familiar faces. We’ll watch the band, and discuss the goods and the bads, and have a good time doing it. But what happens is, we tend to forget that we are a small minority; the general public doesn’t live and breathe music. While we get caught up in the latest, say Arcade Fire record (for sake of discussion) we forget that pretty much nobody outside of our little world has ever heard of the band, or at least has ever heard a song by them. When we get too close to something we tend to lose perspective and we end up thinking that everyone else is experiencing the same things we are, but when we look up we soon discover that millions upon millions of people bought a Nickelback record while less then ten thousand bought the album that I’ve been obsessing over for days on end. I have two sisters. One does HR at a small business in Ft. Lauderdale, and the other is a professor at private college in Palm Beach. I promise you neither of them has ever heard of Arcade Fire; it’s not in their world.
When it comes to digging deep into the newer offerings in the music world, the general public consumes in much smaller, slower quantities than us. Conversely, if I were to roll into Stats (the sports bar near my house), I would be completely in the dark when it came to the general conversation being had at the bar (unless the conversation was about who the Falcons quarterback is, and then I’d have about a three-second part in it). The folks in there are there because they have their love of sports in common with everyone else in the place.
The question is, within the passive listener’s world, what makes one song among thousands rise above the rest to become a monster hit, and in turn translates to major CD or download sales?
My theory next week.
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