Motown -- in the wilderness in the 70's.

[jsmith]

Motown seemed to loose it's way quite soon after relocating to LA. By 1973 & right through to at least 1980, it was no longer at the cutting edge of recorded sounds.
Lots of it's 60's hit makers were still there but just seemed to be treading water. The company missed out on / ignored [[?) many commercial music trends in the 70's. It still had the 'Norman Whitfield' sound but by 73 that was getting very repetitive. It had Stevie & Marvin, but the new paths they were following had been resisted by Motown bosses until they'd been proven big sellers -- so the company can't really claim those as 'cutting edge sounds' that they fully supported.
When the Philly sound was conquering the world, they were very very slow in going with it or trying to amalgamate the 60's Motown vibe with a 70's Philly vibe to get their own version of 70's soul.
There were a few other acts who were more cutting edge -- Syretta had her own sound but that was due to Stevie not the company. Willie Hutch was an innovator but he seemed to only get a small promotional push from Motown.
The Commodores had their own sound but it was self-generated and they lost their image as time passed by trying to be both a 'funky disco' act and a 'power ballad' act.
Motown largely ignored so many black music genres in the 70's, even when they had the acts to join in the fun.
They never really went with funk in any mainstream way, apart from with Rick James towards the end of the 70's. James Brown stuff was not their thing. Then that funk sound was expanded into new areas by the likes of War, Sly Stone, Graham Central Stn, Kool & the Gang, Funkadelic, Ohio Players, Earth Wind & Fire, BarKays, Rufus, Tower of Power, Brass Construction, etc. Again Motown ignored the trend.
They also ignored the jazz funk genre -- George Duke, Roy Ayers, Mandrill, Osibisa, Herbie Hancock, Grover Washington [[& yes, he was on Motown at the end of the 70's), Donald Byrd, James Mason, Ronnie Laws, etc.
I know they got the Crusaders via a side label deal and tried with Hugh Masekela but why didn't they steer Jnr Walker that way instead of parking his career on a dead end street. They had the top jazz studio players in the whole of the US in the 60's but abandoned them in Detroit when the move west was made.
With the right handling, the Funk Brothers could have been the top jazz funk band in the US in the 70's.
It never even fully exploited the 'disco' era but just seemed to spend a lot of the time cutting 2nd rate disco versions of it's classic 60's songs -- another opportunity gone wrong.