Challenges in The Music Industry Essay Example

There are many problems present in the music industry. The music industry overworks popular artists. Sometimes this can lead to problems in the artist’s physical and mental health. The industry or the artist’s individual manager can have full control over an artist’s life. The manager will decide what an artist is and isn’t allowed to wear, say, do, songs they can release. In addition, the artist’s manager is able to pick an image in which fans will see the artists. An artist can be given as many images as their manager wants. It doesn’t matter if they contradict each other either. Thus there are many problems present in the music industry.

First, the music industry overworks popular artists, like One Direction. In the case of One Direction, they released five albums in the span of five years. Many other artists/bands will maybe release two, maybe three albums in that time. They had written and recorded their albums while touring the previous one, and would sell out a tour before the album was even recorded. This led to the members being exhausted, stressed and even led a couple of the members to develop health problems. Zayn Malik, decided it was best to leave the band during their fourth world tour due to an eating disorder he had developed from their busy schedule. This also led Liam Payne to turn to alcohol to relieve some of the stress from everything, which almost caused him to take his own life.

Secondly, a majority of the time, the industry or an artist’s individual management will have full control over the artist’s life. For example, Liam Payne’s manager lives right next door to him so he can check in on him whenever he feels necessary. Liam does not have the passcodes to any of his social media accounts, and when he does have access to them he is highly monitored by his manager. The livestreams that he does are all scripted and if Liam strays from the script he gets scolded by his manager. Finally, Liam had been one year sober when he had been asked to do a photoshoot for a line of Hugo Boss underwear. When the photographer asked him to strip down for one of the shots, Liam did not feel comfortable, so his manager took out a bottle of tequila and made him drink it so they could get the photos.

Lastly, an artist’s management is able to pick and choose an image for that particular artist. There are many images an artist’s manager could put to a person, womanizer, homophobe, homewrecker. The image they put on a celebrity determines how people will see them. Take Harry Styles for example, when he was in One Direction, he had been given the womanizing badboy image, when in reality, he is neither. During an interview he was asked how many women he had slept with, he said that he was not comfortable disclosing a number. The interviewer kept nagging and tried guessing, “is it more than one hundred?”. The womanizer image that was put on him since such a young age makes people like this interviewer think he has been with many more women than he really has.

There are many problems present in the music industry. The first one being popular artists are overworked which can lead to mental and physical health issues. It may also cause stress and exhaustion. An artist’s manager can have full control of their public and personal life. They are able to tell the artist what can and can’t do or say. The artist’s manager can also put any image they’d like to the artist. It doesn’t always matter to the manager whether or not the images contradict one another, as long as they are happy with the way the artist is being seen. Therefore, there are many problems present in the music industry.