Death of The Cool

If you're interested in the music business, you should read Bob Lefsetz. He is loud and keenly aware of the ineptitude of the major music labels. I don't know if anyone who matters is paying attention, but I hope someone is.

In one of his recent offerings, Bob compares the sales of the top ten albums of 2000 with the sales of the top ten of 2007. After showing (among other things) the disproportionately high drop in sales of the top albums versus the drop in total sales, he makes, and then develops, the following point:

People still want music. In prodigious amounts. They just don’t all want the same thing.

I find something marginally frightening and very interesting in the numbers and the conclusion he draws. I agree with him, and anyone who is paying attention knows that this isn't just happening in music.

Here is a list of the 100 top-grossing films of all time based on their box office gross and adjusted for inflation. You have to get all the way down to #19 before you hit a film (Star Wars: Episode I) that was released in the last ten years, and that was part of a franchise that is thirty years old. The next one? Shrek 2 at #29. A kids' movie! Next? Spider-man, based on a character that was created forty-five years ago. The reception of original material at the box office in the last ten years hasn't been nearly what it was before that time.

You can argue that that's a skewed way of looking at things. For a couple of bucks, you can get a crystal clear version of your favorite movie without moving your butt off the couch. So one would naturally think that people aren't going to the movies. But box office receipts reportedly have continued to trend up and outpace inflation for quite some time. People are going to the movies. They're just not going to the same movies as everyone on their block.

If you consider the changes over the last ten years in how we receive information, this should come as no surprise. I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I remind you that, ten years ago, you couldn't sneeze without finding a channel that played music videos. Flip channels for the next twenty-four hours and see if you can find an entire music video. If you were an Atlantan ten years ago, you listened to one of eight or nine major FM stations or a CD player when you were looking for music. Between the possibility of satellite radio (over 70 music channels on XM) and your iPod, your choices are far more numerous and customizable then they were back when. If you happen to hear a (or should I say "the") song by Starland Vocal Band on your radio, you can find similar material and own it virtually effortlessly, virtually immediately, from virtually anywhere. If you were bored in 1998, you may have rented a movie, or watched a VHS you owned. If you don't like anything on television this week, why not rent an entire season of an interesting series you have missed in the past? As of today, you will be able to do that from the comfort of your couch (which, if you're like me, is a couch that you did own ten years ago). Or you could, of course, watch any of the material you may have recorded with the touch of a button in perfect quality on your DVR on any of your 100-or-so television channels.

The point is not so much to be amazed at how much technology has changed as it is to realize how many more choices we have about the content we absorb.

Furthermore, there is a very good chance that you spend much more of your day isolated than you did ten years ago. I don't have the numbers to prove it, but I know that the number of phone conversations I have is a fraction of what it was ten years ago because of the ability to communicate by email, web site, IM, or text message. I know that I am much more likely to bury myself in my iPod on an air travel day than I would have been to haul around a significant portion of my CD collection. And long gone are many of the accidental conversations, the small talk, the word of mouth, and the shared impressions of our common experiences. I will listen to my Steely Dan and scarcely notice you and your Shins, Imogen Heap, Kenny Chesney, or Soulja Boy.

How many of this week's Top 10 singles do you know? My money says less than three for anyone who reads this, simply because no one is telling you what is cool.

We are as isolated from each other and as free to choose what content we absorb than at any time since the rise of the cities. Because of this, we share fewer common influences than at any time in memory. Ubiquity in media rides off into the sunset. For most everyone except the lonely middle-schooler trying to get some attention, "Cool" is dead.

So, what does all of this mean? I don't know. You can read Bob for some opinions. Or your can read Alvin Toffler, who said he saw this coming. I think the bottom line is that we live in a time in which I can more or less do my thing, and you can do yours. Hopefully, that's good enough for the people calling the shots.