X-Factor isn't ruining the music business - that pass was sold before Simon Cowell was born!

On one level X-Factor is the encapsulation of the entertainment business’s shimmering deceptiveness – thousands of “hopefuls” are whittled down to a final few from which one “winner” is chosen. And that winner is chosen by the public – this is victory for the market. Or is it?

Last year I pointed out that Simon Cowell’s modus operandum was to exploit what I called the “Bestseller Syndrome” – to take advantage of our tendency to follow the herd. Especially when it comes to matters of taste. Now some see this as some sort of indictment for the music industry – symbolising how Simon and his demon hordes manipulate our choices for their own profit.

We suppose, I guess, that unscrupulous business-minded impresarios are some kind of modern invention? That the entertainment business has somehow been corrupted by Simon Cowell’s evil manipulation leaving us with less than we had before? But this is not new – we can go back into history:

The company owners, wrote the young United Company employee Colley Cibber, "who had made a monopoly of the stage, and consequently presum'd they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people, did not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave a set of actors whom the public were inclined to support." Performers like the legendary Thomas Betterton, the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry, and the rising young comedienne Anne Bracegirdle had
the audience on their side and, in the confidence of this, they walked out.

The actors gained a Royal "licence to perform", thus bypassing Rich's ownership of both the original Duke's and King's Company patents from 1660, and formed their own cooperative company. This unique venture was set up with detailed rules for avoiding arbitrary managerial authority, regulating the ten actors' shares, the conditions of salaried employees, and the sickness and retirement benefits of both categories. The cooperative had the good luck to open in 1695 with the première of William Congreve's famous Love For Love and the skill to make it a huge box-office
success.

London again had two competing companies. Their dash to attract audiences briefly revitalized Restoration drama, but also set it on a fatal downhill slope to the lowest common denominator of public taste. Rich's company notoriously offered Bartholomew Fair-type attractions — high kickers, jugglers, ropedancers, performing animals — while the cooperating actors, even as they appealed to snobbery by setting themselves up as the only legitimate theatre company in London, were not above retaliating with "prologues recited by boys of five, and epilogues declaimed by ladies on horseback".

This manipulation of public taste is a feature of entertainment and has been an especial feature of the music industry – whether we talk of the song factories of Tin Pan Alley, the mob connections of the swing era or Berry Gordy’s Motown business, we see exploitative businessmen taking advantage of ambitious performers (and particularly singers). A moment looking at the contract disputes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and, come to think of it, just about every top performing artist of the 1960s and 1970s reveals the Faustian deal most performers enter into with promoters – sign here and we make you rich but only so long as you do what we want you to do.

I’m not sure Simon Cowell is of an honourable tradition – although his understanding of what the public will buy is essential. Just as Berry Gordy sustained Motown on the (very cheap) unique sound created by his in-house backing band, Simon Cowell works from a limited palette in terms of music. There is not a “Cowell Sound” but it is striking to see how most of the performers who get through to the public votes in X-Factor conform to a limited set of stereotypes – strong female singers usually black or mixed race, pretty young boys (singly or in groups) with light voices but a degree of sex appeal and slightly scruffy blokes with high voices.

This is the Cowell model and the performers are them squeezed into a lowest-common-denominator approach by recycling songs from within the bounds of expectation. The focus is on the money note, the song choice and “movement” leaving some songs destroyed by the need to fit in a ‘top C’ or wailing arpeggio. But we’ve always known this sells – plenty of opera scores were fiddled with so the big stars could have their note and Cowell merely continues this tradition (albeit with less good singers).

We should not moan about X-Factor spoiling the music industry – that spoiling was done long before Simon Cowell was born. Instead, we should wonder at how fantastic singers, musicians and composers still get success without selling their souls to the “industry” – like this! Or for that matter…this!

Who needs Simon Cowell!

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Simon Cowell and the bestseller syndrome

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Now all the hoo-hah about this year’s Christmas number one record is over, I thought I’d take a rather more sideways look. Plenty of others have loudly proclaimed the (frankly rather ludicrous) politics of the campaign, a further set have seen it as a big dig at Simon Cowell for his terrible crime of making huge amounts of money from selling other people’s music and others – perhaps more quietly – have just gone out and bought the dreadful dirge that Mr Cowell is flogging to us this Christmas.

Instead of taking sides in the Joe vs. “Rage Against the Machine” debate (for the record I can’t work out which record I dislike the most); I thought I’d look at how Simon Cowell – and others in the music business – exploits what we might call the “bestseller syndrome”.

The “bestseller syndrome” is where we are more inclined to buy something because it is (or has been described as) a bestseller. Mail order marketers have known this for years – and when we say know in mail order we mean that we have tested it and shown that we get a measurably better response from calling something a bestseller than when we say nothing. And Cowell makes great use of this syndrome – watch how the guest acts on X-Factor are always introduced as “best-selling” artists and at how past volumes of records shifted is the central predictor of future success.

The new artists created by X-Factor are made to be bestsellers from the outset – none of this tedious audience-building is needed since the x-factor Christmas record is a bestseller. Throughout the programme the focus is on selling records – for the past year or two a charity record by the X-Factor finalists has been a feature thereby creating another number one record, another bestseller.

The point about the bestseller – and the psychological truth that Simon Cowell exploits – is that we are drawn to the safety of the bestseller. Just as in times past “nobody got fired for buying IBM”, we scuttle to the safety of numbers and buy the mass-produced tunes that Simon Cowell and others present as “popular music”. Indeed, this approach to music isn’t new as anyone reading the history of Motown (Berry Gordy is feted now but was a very similar businessman to Cowell) or the song factories of Tin Pan Alley would know. And we have always had a choice and the artists or song writers have always had a choice. We can either buy something else or nothing at all. And the artists can – as Gershwin did, as Elvis did, as the Beatles did and as Will Young appears to have done – the artists can break away from the production line once their name and fame are set.

But in truth we will return to the bestsellers – Simon Cowell and whoever comes after him in the popular music business will carry on manufacturing music and using brands and the bestseller to create a new generation of artists to “exploit”. And with each renewed generation there is a backlash – a call for “independent” music, for authenticity, for artistic control. And this backlash – taking advantage of the spirit of youthful (and not so youthful) rebellion – will see some artists and writers become rich and famous enough to achieve the accolade of “sell-out”. At which point they can appear as guests on X-Factor!

And tell me how many set out to be rock stars without even a passing thought for the cash?
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