I’ve seen a lot of stories, blog posts, and columns in the last week about the sad state of the movie industry. The chairmen of Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Studios were both told to hit the bricks within the last two weeks. DVD sales have fallen over 10 percent in the last three years. The chief issue seems to be that the economy of the movie industry is geared around the big tentpole releases. One multi-million-dollar movie can bankroll their entire year’s slate of films. That seems to have led to a system where studios release the uber-huge moneymaking releases over the summer to pay for the award-chasing movies in December, which almost invariably lose money. When a movie like 2007’s The Golden Compass that cost $180 million to make (and a comparable amount to promote) only makes $70 million domestically, that’s when people get fired.


Unfortunately, the entire music industry is built on that system at this moment. And the tentpoles are getting shorter and shorter.


In 2008, Coldplay (8.1 million), AC/DC (7.2 million), Metallica (5 million), Katy Perry (5 million), and Rihanna (7 million) did fine for their labels, but overall album sales were down 14 percent. Total album sales for this year are already down 13.9 percent from last year, even with the resurgence of back catalog sales for the Beatles and Michael Jackson (currently the best-selling album… not bad for a six-year-old best-of compilation). New albums from Eminem, Dave Matthews Band, U2, and Green Day have all been huge sales disappointments, and at least in the case of U2 and Green Day, that‘s entirely justified. Record sales have now dropped year-to-year eight of the last nine years.


In this kind of economic structure, labels are much more reluctant to take chances on an artist for fears that it will bring the entire house crashing down. Bands get dropped from record labels left and right for disappointing sales on one record. Velvet Revolver sold nearly 7 million copies worldwide of 2004’s Contraband, but 2007’s Libertad only sold just over 200,000 copies. Dropped. Local favorites… okay, local tolerateds Story of the Year sold nearly a million copies of 2003’s Page Avenue, only 150,000 of 2005’s In the Wake of Determination (didn’t even know that record existed, did you?), and found themselves on the business end of a pink slip from Maverick Records. Panic at the Disco couldn’t even afford to keep the exclamation point on their moniker.


This has led bands to get creative in the ways they release their music, to attract attention, keep their music from getting bootlegged, or generally try to continue to make a living from their art. Kiss, AC/DC, The Eagles, Foreigner, and Bruce Springsteen have all signed exclusive deals with Wal-Mart; Pearl Jam signed an exclusive with Target for last month’s Backspacer. Bloc Party and Radiohead tried digital pre-releases to try to get ahead of the leaks. Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay both released albums for free online.


But so far, no one has cracked the code on how to really make things work in this new climate apart from: record an album; pray that you have a hit single, or preferably two; spend the next two to three years touring to make up what you spent in the studio; sell a song or six for commercials; and sell lots of T-shirts. Lather, rinse, repeat.


The question is: Where does this leave the new artist? When a first album has to go gold to keep your job, what can you do to break through the clutter? I’m not sure I have an answer for that, unfortunately. I just know that if someone came up to me and said they wanted to become a rock star, I’d sit them down and warn them that they are most likely going to lose lots and lots of cash.


A couple years ago, I heard an interview with Gene Simmons of KISS where a kid called in and asked if Gene had advice for a young band, and Gene told him, “Get out of the business. There’s no money in it any more.” I wish Gene had told him to try selling merchandised coffins or condoms, but maybe he’s trying to corner that market.


But really, the record industry has only themselves to blame. They spent most of the 90’s commodifying music to the point where no one valued it any more. Then when the Internet came along and made it easy for people to get their Backstreet Boys singles for free, the industry, rather than figuring out a solution to utilize new technology, panicked and resorted to trying to sue MP3’s out of existence. Now a decade too late, they’re trying things like iTunes LP (an added-content digital album) and purely digital sales.


But because artists now have ways to access their fan base that they never did before, it seems like the music consumers are becoming more fragmented. The audience is bigger than ever, but they’re separating into smaller and smaller groups. As such, I don’t think we’ll ever see another band touring football stadiums after U2 finishes their run next year. Of 2008’s top grossing concert tours, the youngest group was Rascal Flatts. Most of the top acts were from the 80’s (Madonna, the Police) or the 70’s (Springsteen, Eagles, Neil Diamond). And in today’s all-consuming media culture, bands seem to get eaten up faster.


At the end of the day, no one really knows where to go from here. It’ll probably take a decade to shake everything out, and most likely one of the Big Four companies (Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI) will get brought down. But hopefully as the top end gets brought down, the bottom end gets brought up, and smaller bands can figure out ways to put things together. But I’m glad I’m not the one who has to figure out how to do it.


Joshua Hamer is guitarist and multi-instrumentalist for Vote for Pedro. You can follow him on Twitter at @schwastl.