catapult magazine

The internet, Courtney Love, Ani Difranco and certain technological advances present challenges for a music industry that’s still structured according to a fifties and sixties model.

Labels typically act as loan companies that help artists pay for studio time, as long as it promises a return. This gives the label, which often cares only about profit, too much say in the final product. But now there are more Mobys, artists who can record anything they need to in their bedrooms or basements without needing a big budget or financial support from labels. Labels are still needed for mass-marketing, of course, but look what the marketing machine turns out these days: phonies like Alicia Keys while the real deals like Wilco get cast off.

The question is not IF the music industry has become irrelevant or WHEN it will crash and burn; the real question for Christians is how the industry should be structured now? Christians should be way ahead when it comes to reforming the industry, since Christian musicians and many Christian music listeners have been complaining about the limitations of Nashville’s CCM industry for decades now. What should an alternative to CCM and the broader music industry look like?

Yes, I like those ideas. I do think that we have some networks in place already but need to re educate them in the skills required to be Godly members of our cultures. There are thousands who attend our churches and colleges but still never learn to discern culture. I would be great to put a group of people together who have thought hard about these issues and to travel to these places putting on workshops and events in which education happened. It could be more than an hour seminar too…instead, it could be retreats or month long visits in which the larger questions could be more fully examined. We could bring artists, theologians, and pastors to help in giving the message.

What other ideas do you have?

An interesting site as well as company. Check them out:

http://www.incubatoronline.com

Very interesting place. Don’t know if I like the word minstry thrown around with the word art though. When done, it assumes that a certain message follows. We don’t do this with other creative acts so why do we do it with music. For example, no one looks at a Christian watch maker and says, “are those watches Christian?” or, “what ministry does that watch maker have?” no, instead we decide if they are good watches or not, and then we decide whether we should buy one.

agreed. I think that Incubator tends to cater more towards the church environment, so they throw around alot of Christianese. Their plan is really good, however. They teach the artist everything they need to know about the business and get them going so they become more attractive to the “labels” and can get picked up (or bought out) when the artist is ready. It keeps the artist wise to the ways of the labels and helps them to keep from getting ripped off.

The ideas that Grant has been throwing around have reminded me quite a bit of Incubator. It would be good to utilise some of their tactics when establishing a community distribution concept.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that the best way to unite Christian musical artists without trapping them in some kind of clean and neat restrictive category is to think in terms of a union of sorts. A union that would offer the co-op opportunities and connections they need (like a drummer) and not hinder the artists. I know there is something like this in Hollywood for Christian film-makers/actors etc. Jabird, do you know how that works?

Good to see this discussion going again…

I very much like your idea Grant. As far as production goes, Jesus People has had a co-op of sorts going for years with their recording projects. The have a state of the art recording studio and a community filled with talented musicians who bow in and out of many different projects. Perhaps one of the largest factors that allows them to continue is a sharing and distribution of costs and profit.

Is there a sense of identity with the JesusPeople group? I would like this united group of Christian artists to have a clear identity but not be restricted to one genre or certain “Christian” words that have to be in the lyrics. I was thinking also about the way Spielberg/Katzenburg/Geffen’s Dreamworks has such an identity. I know sort of what I’m going to get when I go to see a Dreamworks film, eventhough they’ve supported lots of different kinds of films.

I am not sure of any official organization here in Hollywood, but it’s possible they are located outside of the LA metropolitan area. Some links that might get you to what you are looking for are:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christianactorsorganization

http://dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/Acting/

http://www.christianfilmmaker.com/

Yes, I think that there are concerns with what JesusPeople do but I like the sharing component. By living in a community and sharing most, if not all of what they have, they are able to funnel large amounts of cash into their projects which results in high quality productions. I don’t always like the actual content but I can appreciate the quality.

The problem with any org is that at the end of the day the big question will be, “where is the money, and who gets it?”

money is power and power offers presence in a big industry

But, again, as we’ve been saying, money can also be too much of a confining pressure on the artist.

How do the JesusPeople set up their studio environment so that quality is more important than efficiency (which is more cost-effective). How would the JesusPeople like it, for instance, if I came in with my band and spent two years, three years, five years working on an album, draining their funding because our album was not yet good enough to be a signpost for God’s Kingdom?

That’s the kind of freedom I think Christian artists need to have, the kind of freedom that doesn’t think too highly of money in the process.