I wrote this article about the music industry several days ago and was keeping it for a rainy day…or should I say a snowy day. Let’s just say I was keeping it for a day like today, where my morning started out shoveling snow instead of writing. This is the perfect day for a rant. Here it is.
Last week I picked up Wired Magazine which is all about how the music industry may come to an end in the very near future. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened yet. The industry has gathered its statistics and wants us to believe that it’s the wide spread practice of illegal downloading that is to blame. I would suggest it is more subtle than that. Does the word Karma mean anything at all?
For years now the music industry has almost entirely lost sight of the baby boom generation as an audience. This is the demographic with the greatest disposable income, yet the record companies have continued to target the youth market. Easy pickings they thought. I might add that the last ten years of popular music is perhaps the most banal, forgettable and regrettable period since Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Now the industry is reaping the rewards of its own greed. People over 35 yawn with boredom when exposed to new music because it is so tepidly derivative, and people under 35 don’t give a baboon’s red ass about stealing disposable overpriced twaddle.
In a time when we feed our youth a stream of gangsters and porno queen look-alikes as role models, how can we expect them to feel all warm and fuzzy about the protection of copyrighted work? The music industry signed its death warrant when it turned its back on responsible, ethical people as their primary target audience and decided to cater to the lowest common denominator emotions in its target audience; teenage rebellion, anti-societal rage, and virulent juvenile delinquency which has become an entire generation’s design for “cool”. The music industry only has itself to blame for having haphazardly cultivated an audience that prides itself on its rebellious, anti-corporate, digital pickpocketry.
The internet has supplied artists with a next to free distribution network, and those that are driven, gifted and resourceful will find innovative ways in which to use technology to create successful rewarding careers in music. Music will likely become more diverse and reinvigorated, driving out the stale, overly regurgitated sound we now find ourselves subjected to. It is unlikely that we will see the likes of another Michael Jackson any time soon. And is this a bad thing?
And so a new day begins…
Very well said, Mark. Thanks for summing up what countless people I know (including me)have been thinking and saying for months. You know things are bad when HMV moves the DVD section into the main CD space of their downtown superstore. I only wish that so many talented artists hadn't been lost in the process.
Could not have put it better. So many creative, innovative and talented artists have been displaced by prefabricated puerile glop. Real musisicans have been reduced to manning job centres and serving nouvelle cuisine to exec fat cats pontificating whether adding tartrazine to CD packaging might increase the shelf life. Sad.
Thankfully there still are great artists out there, who have taken the initiative to go it alone. And hat's off to them. These are the REAL Virgins. EMI right or EMI right? Sony a matter of time before the big boys realise that to nurture an artist, they need to find an artist in the first place.
Check out www.nataschasohl.com
This girl's going places.
Greetings! I am researching baby boomer demographics on the web and found my way to your site. It's something else!
After 9/11 I came to the conclusion that there are only two things that can not be taken away from me - my art and my spiritual life. Then I realized that they are the same thing.
I have written a song called, dirty money, that addresses the modern day greed you talk about in your 3/5/03 essay. There is an MP3 of it on my site - if you want to listen.
anyway - back to my research and keep doin' what you are doin'.
best
the dudess
I'm doing research for a speech i am writing on the corruption of the music industry through the greed of record companies and the media and i found your website very useful. Although i am only 16 years old and you are aiming your speech at over 35 year olds, I do agree with most of your points. I do however think that there have been a lot of worthwile bands around over the last 10 years although most of them not mainstream or popular music. I dont think that i am particularly suceptable to the media but there are a large number of upcoming bands that i think are really talented and the mainstream seems to be slowly coming back around to music that isnt manufactured and all based around image. Thanks for making the website and writing the speech, well said.