The path to success is no longer labeled

No longer needed?

By Geoff Boucher
January 31, 2010

BROKEN RECORD: Music and money in the download era

Hunting for a record deal won’t cut it anymore. Modern bands are focusing more on the Internet, looking for film soundtrack opportunities and piggy-backing album sales on designer T-shirts.

The Troubadour, awash on a recent night in indigo light and chiming guitars, doesn’t look all that different than it did in the 1970s, when music history plugged in to the club’s stage amps and earned the tiny West Hollywood venue the audacity to relentlessly advertise itself as “the world-famous Troubadour.”

The description still fits but, well, the world isn’t as big as it used to be, not for the recording industry or the young musicians who come to Los Angeles with dreams of gold and platinum. There’s an odd postwar feeling these days in some music-industry circles, a sense that the revolutionary front of the Digital Age knocked down all the familiar structures but forgot to build lasting new ones. At the same time, others see a ragged charm and wide-open opportunity in this new order.

The walls of the Troubadour’s front bar — the spot where future Eagles members Don Henley and Glenn Frey met — are lined with framed photos of the storied past. The fact that Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Pearl Jam, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, Metallica and so many others came to the club for key early career successes isn’t lost on the new generation — nor is the current situation of a recording industry that makes more money off its past than it does off its present.

“The path used to be clear — you got a major-label deal, they got you on the radio, you toured and recorded albums,” said Steven Scott, guitarist and singer in an L.A. band called the Afternoons. “Now all that has changed, really, and the new path is . . . well, what is it? And where does it go?”

Read full story at the LA Times Web Site