Why Music Matters – Beatles and beyond

Why Music Matters is an industry campaign focused on stimulting the conversation around ‘Why Music Matters’. It’s ultimately designed to ensure we all understand and appreciate the ‘value’ in music, by ‘value’ we mean the focus, time, energy and emotion spent on creating music from the artists’s point of view. And furthermore, that we pay a fair price for it.

Distractions

Those of us who are over 30 can all remember when music was the be-all and end-all of our lives. Music was not just somethingt to listen to but a way of life. A movement. For the best part of 10 years music has become just another form of entertainment, another thing to purchase that’s in competition with video games, movies, gadgets and life’s multiple and growing distractions. Or worse, just something you can get for free and share with your friends. There’s nothing wrong with sharing music, it’s often how we discover a  new artist or song. Wholesale file sharing of massive catalogues is not about ‘discovery’. It’s theft.

Movements

Gone are Mods vs. Rockers, movements such as Merseybeat, New Romantics, Hip-Hop, Grunge, British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM anyone?) and more recently, Brit Pop. Movements that created a mass sense of belonging, identity, fashion, pride and importantly for the music business, huge sales. Music was at the centre of all these and other movements. Where would the era of ‘Cool Britannia’ in the 90′s be without Britpop and Oasis v.s Blur? Floppy hair or biker jacket, we’ve all been in a movement at some point. Some of you still are!

Why Music Matters is designed to make you stop and think about the ‘why’ and the supporting artist videos, led this week by support from The Beatles (!) do a great job in giving anyone an appreciation for Why Music Matters. Whether it be personal triumph or combating politics, music and the artists who create it have changed things in the world. Please watch great videos about why  The Jam, Louis Armstrong, Kate Bush and The Beatles all matter to us.

The recorded music business has taken a well documented kick in the teeth over the past 10-20 years (some of the pain being self-inflicted) with the advent of the Internet and file sharing but an appetite for music overall remains quite strong. In a business that’s more risk averse than ever before, by not appreciating why music matters, less artists get signed and ultimately less original music getting produced by the big labels.

Can you imagine a life without Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, The Jam, Oasis? Who will be the the next Beatles? What will the next movement be? What song will be the soundtrack to your life? Exactly the point. And that’s Why Music Matters…