The title of Sunday's New York Times Magazine cover story was "Can Rick Rubin Save The Music Business?" The answer, apparently, is No, although Columbia Records, of which Rubin is now the co-head, would like to believe otherwise. Rubin, as well as David Geffen and Columbia exec Mark DiDia, who are also quoted in the article, have a great sense of what's wrong with the music biz, but not a lot of great ideas about how to fix it.
Rubin has made a career out of selling records by artists who don't normally sell records. In the '80s, he helped put hip-hop on the white suburban map with the Beastie Boys' zillion-selling debut album. In the '90s, he turned the Red Hot Chili Peppers into superstars by encouraging them to branch out from their funk-rap roots into pop fare like the ballad "Under The Bridge." He took the moribund recording careers of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond and almost singlehandedly revived them by having them make records that appealed to a new, different -- and younger -- audience.
But almost all of those records were made in an era when people who listened to music also bought music. Today, when that audience is just as likely to get its music for free, either by home CD burning or illegal downloading, Rubin's as clueless as any other music exec about how to grab people by the wallet as well as the ears.
In the article, Rubin claims the way to save the business is the oft-touted subscription model, in which customers would pay for access to a downloadable library of music. Eventually, this probably will be the dominant mode for acquiring music. But it's a solution for years if not decades from now.
The immediate concern should be to slow the erosion of CD sales -- a proven cash cow -- as much as possible, while at the same time getting the major record labels to sit down and figure out exactly what's needed to make an online subscription service work. How to get the majors to even talk to each other, let alone agree on anything? Rubin doesn't have any better idea than I do.
Rubin's most boneheaded plan is to create Columbia's "word of mouth" department. According to a Columbia-sponsored focus group, word-of-mouth is how most tweens and teens find out about new music. No surprise there, considering that with the demise of radio and the music press, and MTV's evolution from a music channel to a lifestyle channel, there aren't many other outlets left.
But Rubin thinks word-of-mouth can be artificially created by a multinational conglomerate. The whole point of it is that it's NOT manipulated by the powers that be -- it's free of the bogus hype that labels like Columbia are known for. That's why marketing-savvy (and viral marketing-savvy) kids believe it. Co-opt its integrity, and you lose the appeal as well, not to mention the audience.
In the end, though, Rick Rubin is right about one ingredient that's necessary for the music business to survive, and one that he's proven to know a thing or two about. In the words of David Geffen, "... the top priority at any record company has to be coming up with great music. And for that reason, Sony was very smart to hire Rick." Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to sell that music. Maybe Sony still has Clive Davis' number handy?