RS8 - Manufacturing the Song of the Summer

            In the podcast that we had to listen to called, “Manufacturing the Song of the Summer”, I learned how much money it really costs to produce a block buster song.  Planet money broke down the expenses to the exact dollar. Just listening to the podcast I learned a lot about the work and preparation that goes into the work as well.

            The podcast mainly focused on Rihanna’s song “Man Down” and how it was built to be a summer anthem sort of song. It turns out the song did not end up living up to its hype because from what Planet Money said they actually lost money. One of Rihanna’s coaches was interviewed and was asked how much it costs to produce a song by a big name artist who is planning to have this song be big itself.  The coach of Rihanna responded by saying a song of decent hype as “Man Down” cost over one million dollars to make.  From the camp costs, to the expenses for the coaches, to personal expenses for the artist so they are most comfortable when they are recording.  A lot more then you actually would think goes into the cost for the production of music.

            Another thing that Planet Money talked about was how producers will get their songs know by the listeners to potentially create a large amount of popularity for the song.  Planet Money mentioned that in order for producers to get their artists songs out there to be heard by everyone is to actually bribe radio station DJ’s in order for them to put the song on the radio several times per hour.  This is fairly common these days as you listen to the radio, hear a good song, then you start to hear it overplayed and suddenly the song is not pleasing to you anymore and you begin to dislike it.  Today music has become more of a business and all about making money then it is to make music for the entertainment for the people.  The money gets to peoples heads and once they build a big fan base then for some artists their music ratings start to decline because they will just make songs to put out to make a quick dollar.  To me the best artists are the ones who start of underground and don’t reach mainstream until they have made a few albums.

            Going back to the “Man Down” single created by Rihanna, I believe another reason that the song didn’t create a profit like it was suspected to is possibly because in today’s day and age people do not buy their songs.  Instead people will go on the Internet and download them for free which in most cases is illegal.  But it is so easy to do so that it is almost impossible to do anything about it because almost everyone does it.  That would be a good explanation to why iTunes has boosted its songs by thirty cents for purchase. They had to do this because they aren’t getting the income that they used to get so the only way for them to still pull in a profit is to increase prices.