Seems to me like just a few scant years ago that the music industry was doing fairly well for itself. I don’t know, maybe I just have a bad memory or something, because as of late they seem to be falling onto their own sword as they try and hold onto their monopoly of the distribution system.
And yes, it IS a monopoly no matter how it’s divied up. Five companys more or less controling every facet — from production to promotion. It’s no wonder they want consumers in the dark and the internet to die a horible, miserable death. How else are they supposed to keep us ignorant masses under their thumbs? The simple facts are they can’t, and most of the masses just aren’t that ignorant anymore.
All you have to do is take a look at this year’s Grammys and their extra-low ratings this year, which this article does a good job of. And then there’s the look into commercial radio as it exists today:
"Such stations, as identical as Gap stores and McDonald’s franchises, exist not to turn you on to cool new music, but to keep you from turning them off before the commercials; that’s why the stuff they play is so robotic and formulaic. ‘It’s like a spiral,’ says Peter Edge (no relation to U2’s The), the A&R executive who signed Alicia Keys. ‘It starts with corporate pressure for labels to have more results because they’re owned by bodies that want to keep squeezing more profit.’ So. Corporate HQ demands you sell large numbers of records. You do that by putting out music predictable enough for radio and MTV. This music, promoted by endless, ubiquitous airplay, outsells the competition. And soon there’s nothing within earshot except what Edge calls ‘McMusic’ such mass-marketed, replaceable confections as NSync and O-Town, or such calculatedly ‘alternative’ outfits as the hack rap-rock of Linkin Park."
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. It’s the collective turning from the current music industry that has helped to restore my faith in American taste and culture, because these people surely haven’t given up on music. They’re just not buying into the crap Hollywood is selling to us as often. Free will is slowly going to creep back into this industry, or the industry as we know it will die and be replaced. In my opinion, there are no other options.
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