The music industry attitude Neil Young called “a bunch of bullshit”
Neil Young has made a career out of being his own man and tossing the map for navigating the music industry to one side – it is why the Canadian is a unique entity that’ll never be replicated. Young has never been afraid to use his elevated position to pick out the pitfalls of the industry, and there are several areas of the modern music business that he sees as deplorable, not just Spotify.
Young has always released music at a break-neck speed and has never been particularly protective of his material. Throughout his life as a recording artist, the Canadian singer-songwriter has amassed over 40 albums to his name, and once a project is completed, he is usually ready to share it with the world almost immediately.
Despite streaming platforms allowing musicians to release as much music as they desire, many choose to drip-feed their tracks and share countless social media posts in anticipation of it arriving on platforms. This highly considered marketing strategy doesn’t sit well with Young, who believes an artist’s job should only include their art.
As a result of his carefree approach to releasing music, Young admits that some of his albums “aren’t very good”, and although he didn’t specify which ones, he doesn’t regret anything about the records. During an interview on The Zach Sang Show, the former Buffalo Springfield member said of his back catalogue: “Some of them weren’t very good, some of them were pretty good, but it doesn’t matter because they are there.”
On the method he’s adopted, Young said: “You can do whatever you want, people just need to free themselves up”. When the host intervened by saying that many are unsure of what road to take, Young detailed how the most important factor was to “go ahead and do it, don’t wait”.
Young also claimed he “never noticed” at the time when an album didn’t quite meet expectations because he’d already moved on to the next project, meaning there was no time to dwell. In response to a comment regarding how much “stock” is put into a release of just a single song by most artists, Young brutally replied: “That’s a bunch of bullshit, it really is. I don’t like that part of it. People are already trying to figure out what they are going to do with the shit they haven’t even made.”
Ultimately, as Young wisely notes, music is truly the only thing that matters, and each project should exist within its own world, which doesn’t need to be overthought. As Young has shown throughout the last 50 years, not every release needs to be a hit to create a long-lasting legacy, and the most important factor is perseverance.
The pressure from the demands of the modern music industry is taking its toll on artists, who need to take a leaf out of Young’s book and accept that failure is an unavoidable part of life’s journey. Focus solely on the art; the rest will take care of itself.
