Blogging For Sony BMG

So you want to be a rock star, buy too big a house, bribe a plastic blonde with some sparkly carbon to live in the house that’s too big, and maybe even order one of those A380’s after a few international tours? Don’t send Sony BMG a demo disc, then.

The talent recruiters at the media megalith have been looking to blogs and scouring MySpace for bands willing to sell their souls for many months now, and the company has stated it’s officially banning “hard copy formats” to discourage unruly rappers, tenors, and shredders from sending CD mailers in to their demo department.

And that’s not all. Now that there appear to be more bands than individual profiles on MySpace, Sony doesn’t want to bother with searching for talent. They want to have the pimply dreamers settle down at Columbia Demos and RCA Demos to blog about loops they can’t quite get right and even upload their self-made, self-mixed recordings and music videos to be vetted – and possibly picked up for a deal.

It’s almost as if at a point at which the record labels should be trying harder to go out and find talent, they’d instead enjoy getting the next Stevie Ray to start on his travels to fame and fortune by a few clicks of a mouse. That sounds very…American. And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Sony BMG run from some place in the EU?

Stereotypes and geography aside, this doesn’t look like it’s going to end up giving Sony the boosts - or successive miracles – that it’s apparently searching for. Scouts can spend as many hours as they wish passing from profile to profile on MySpace, prowling for hidden gems; and now will do just that at its own websites. They’ll find more duds and less genuine musical strength than they do at café gigs and the 1am slot at neighborhood bars.

Of course, because Sony’s execs and the managerial ladders at similarly large corporations spend so much effort (aka: money) making somethings that are nothings into somethings that offer substantial returns, there’s little left for to make investments in those with the facilities to actually utilize musical instruments the way they were meant to be utilized. So the record companies milk hits to the extreme, with the hopes that the artist budgets balance out and that profits result with no room and no patience for the many local acts that can actually play – well.

If this doesn’t ring true, just look at who the industry labels as musicians today: karaoke singers standing on a big stage, belting out samples of singles already recorded by notable acts, many of which contain lyrics not written by those notable acts.

There definitely is a much longer tail of bands and solo musicians getting recognition today than there was prior to the MP3, prior to broadband access, prior to MySpace. But if establishments like Sony BMG continue to look to the musician to do the work that the big studios traditionally do, the musician will no longer look to the big studios for that coveted contract. No cool blogging or audio streaming software will make up for the lack of executive interest in the product the sales machine below hawks to the world.

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