Alternative overkill

With the decline of record sales and the airwaves overcrowded with Pearl Jam sound-a-likes, it seems concert goers are no longer willing to pay high prices to see their favorite artist. The music industry has decided to lower concert prices.

by Kelly Ann Monahan staff writer

No more working an entire weekend to pay for one measly concert· ticket at over $20 a pop.

To see Jewel in concert at the Tower Theater it only costs $20. Fans of Beck, who was named artist of the year for 1996, can pay $16 to see him at the CoreStates Spectrum. The Breeders concert ticket costs as little as $11.75.

The saturation of alternative and underground artists has not only affected radio and record sales, but also concert prices.

Jesse Lundy, assistant publicist for Electric Factory Concerts, says the industry at large decided to drop concert prices within the last few years because audiences have not been willing to pay.

Is the drop in concert prices due to so many alternative bands or their generation of consumers and listeners?

Jen Scott, assistant manager for The Wall in the King of Prussia mall, says that she remembers when the Eagles toured in the early '90s and people paid $100 a seat. Phil Collins is playing at the CoreStates , Center on March 29 and people are paying anywhere from $27 .50 to $50.

Generally, artists such as these attract audiences older than the audiences of alternative music. Jewel This raises another point. Are other music styles besides alternative saturated?

"No, because the fastest changing area of popular music is alternative," Lundy said.

According to Lundy, record companies began to see a trend in alternative music by the late '80s.

Following the explosion of artists like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, record companies started to sign countless numbers of new alternative and underground bands. Now the market is saturated with these artists.

This would not be a problem if there were about a million or so radio stations that could play all the music. The fact is that airplay is limited.

Y-100 now has even more pressure from alternative and underground artists for exposure, especially since WDRE has been bought out by an urban station.

So what happens to these new and unpublished bands? Are record companies J glVlng their artists time to i develop or [ just basing a [ record cons: tract on the ;. strength of one song? (b - Lundy says the bands that breakthrough with one big hit usually somehow fade away in the midst of all the other new talent.

Hey, did you hear that great song on the radio? That is really a shame, because you might be waiting a heck of a long time to hear it again.

The flooded market has also affected record sales.

"Looking at this as a trend. sales have been down because young people have less disposable income right now. The money is spread thin because there are so many bands," Lundy said.

Scott, however, argues the opposite.

"Record sales at The Wall have increased lately because our targets are higher this year as a whole,·· Scott said.

The discrepancy of sales may lie within each individual record store location and its quotas.

Stores like The Wall in the King of Prussia mall could have increased record sales as a result of not typically carrying the music of smaller artists.

Selling mainly larger artists like Alanis Morissette, who has sold 18 million copies of her album "Jagged Little Pill" since its release in '95, would explain such increased sales.

One thing both alternative and other styles of music have in common is their success with record sales as opposed to singles recently, according to Scott.

The answer to this is clear.

Record companies want to increase profits.

Why do they want to increase profits?

Pertaining mostly to record companies which are signing endless alternative and underground bands, it is because their strategies for artist development are not well planned.

If plans were executed, many artists would not be disappearing, and they would not need to keep signing so many bands to increase profits resulting from previous failures.

It is an endle~s cycle that begins and ends with the record companies.

If this was an ideal world, we would all turn on the radio and hear the song we want to hear. Every artist would get a record deal and every musical release would skyrocket. Unfortunately, this does not happen in the real world.

The biggest shocker, however, does not even pertain to the dropped concert prices or how competitive and fierce the music industry is as a whole.

Rather, it is in regard to those who have yet to discover this unfortunate reality: record companies.

For more information on upcoming concerts in the Philadelphia area call (610)667-INFO.