Bob Dylan's new album, "Modern Times," debuted at number one on the Billboard album charts in September, his first number one album in 30 years. Bob Seger's new album, "Face the Promise," debuted at number four, making it his highest-ranking album in 10 years. In recent years, both Johnny Cash and Ray Charles released multi-platinum albums.
What these artists have in common is that they are icons of the '50s, '60s and '70s, long forgotten but now becoming important again. While you won't see them on MTV, that isn't stopping record companies from finding new ways to make money off of them.
"It's popular music reinventing itself in a way," said David Rezak, a music industry professor. "In a way, I actually think that people who buy into the culture of music like to actually have these iconic older artists come back around and validate the new artists."
One example of this is radio stations that play classic and modern rock side-by-side. These radio stations pick modern artists that they believe will be considered classic in the future, and by playing them alongside classic artists, confirm this status, according to Rezak.
"The implication of it kind of goes back to people like Led Zeppelin being seen in the same breath with The Killers," said Rezak.
The resurgence of these "heritage artists" is tied to their domination of concert sales, Rezak said. In 2005, the top-ten grossing worldwide tours included The Eagles, Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Elton John and Jimmy Buffett, according to Billboard. This year, the top ten grossing individual concerts have all been Rolling Stones concerts.
The success of the Rolling Stones' tours has been perplexing given how their last album, "A Bigger Bang," was not as big of a success as expected, Rezak said.
"Ageism is really alive in radio, and radio programmers couldn't buy that that Stones album was a rocking album," said Rezak.
The album's lack of success showed that while bands like the Rolling Stones could still garner excellent concert sales by appealing to older generations, artists had to reach out to newer generations in order to get high album sales, Rezak said. He cited U2 as an older band with a multi-generational following.
Bob Dylan is another artist who has reached out to younger generations. Dylan, who has long been characterized as a reclusive figure, has been more visible in the last few years than he has been for long stretches of his career. He released a book, took part in a PBS documentary about his career, hosts his own satellite radio show and even filmed an iTunes commercial.
"If you can win in both arenas, then you have some really big numbers," said Rezak.
He said Dylan's success has shown how the plan of the record companies is to try to sustain the baby boomers while bringing in younger audiences.
To a record industry where sales are down across the board, looking backward is proving to be the best way of moving forward financially and artistically.
Dave Arey is a contributing columnist whose columns run biweekly in The Daily Orange. Email him at dwarey@syr.edu.
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