korn again

get ready to be sold. emi group is giving korn about a $15 million advance in return for an over 25% stake in their sales, publishing, merchandising and touring revenue.

read the article in the la times, (click header,) and you may get the feeling it is a groundbreaking deal people interested in business should ooh and ahh over. it seems barnumian in so much as the record company is banking on their ability to sell you a product.

the product, of course, is korn's music and image. an emi executive is quoted in the article saying the quality of the soon-to-be-released record played a role in the commitment the company made to the band.

in fact, the company has merely negated the risk they usually confront. by committing the upfront money to a band whose sales have dropped over their last two albums, (and 5+ years,) significantly, they are simultaneously committing to spending enough money to ensure sheep will listen. by sheep, i mean the easy targets of marketing who never consider the fact they are being marketed to and are indifferent about the effect of that marketing on their lives.

emi has assessed the risk and calculated statistical information on how their investment will perform and they have found the numbers wholly agreeable. they are now set to persuade the public and bully their way into markets they were not formerly a part of.

with all the record industry has been going through, you had to know these executives were conspiring on how to save their places in an industry that has produced massive amounts of wealth for a relative few.

i hated the way things turned out with napster. by protecting the artist's rights, courts have chosen to support industry over humanity. a kid in a room in italy likes a record so much, he wants to put it up on his website for anyone to download and enjoy just as much, (connecting him incidentally to a kid in hoboken, and let's face it, there is only so much music one person can consume,) is vilified in favor of the idea that the artist can own this piece of art they created in such a way they deserve the right to collect on it from virtually everyone who enjoys the record too, or even doesn't enjoy it but for whatever reason was allured enough to make the purchase.

the artists are kings, the recording industry is the catholic church and collecting is the divine right.

if this right was taken from the artist, he or she would have more avenues to make money but might be less likely to make the sheer volume of profit that may well be available to korn as they embark on a relationship that will severely hamper their ability to make business, if not artistic, decisions. not only is there not anything wrong with forcing the artist to work harder and perhaps in a more locally oriented way, it would create an environment that would push back on the globalization and homogenization currently having a greater and greater impact on the industry and the quality and diversity of product available.

korn has recently hauled in about 20% of what they did in the late '90s. their angle is clear. struggling band wants to maintain spot in current canon of globally available artists for obvious reasons. by giving up unprecedented control of their business, they get the golden egg of top notch, well funded, marketing.

(go ahead, sing the reel big fish song with me: "sell out, with me today. sell out!")

if you are one who will go out and buy the korn record, you are one of the sheople. you do not mind being manipulated. the integrity of your taste is seriously in question. because of the relationship between the artist and the corporation, the product has to be ba-aa-aa-aaad.