The Music Industry, or Why I Don't Listen To The Radio Anymore
Okay, first of all, this needs to be linked: A while back, someone decided that Nickelback was a prime example of the suckage of modern music. The biggest problem? All the songs sound the same. How much the same? Well, they decided to figure that out by mixing Someday with This Is How You Remind Me. As in, one song plays in the left speaker, the other plays in the right speaker. This produced the 'song' This Is How You Remind Me Of Someday (mp3). There is no dissonance, the choruses play at exactly the same time, the bridges play at exactly the same time, they are exactly the same length, the rhythms and chord progressions never ever clash. Formulaic? I think so.
A while ago, Frontline had a program called The Way The Music Died (watch online in that link). It's about how the music industry is now run by businessmen instead of musicians, and thus is about making money, not music. It's also marketed very carefully to fit niche markets, so innovation is frowned upon if it doesn't fit the prescribed model. Combine that with the monopoly of radio play, and you get very few artists in rotation and most artists going unnoticed. It's a good series and highlights a lot of interesting aspects of the (corruption of the) music industry.
posted by Heather Ann @ 1:19 PM
2 Comments:
This comes as little surprise. How many artists do you hear of now are "discovered" and their own music shows up on the albums.
When you have situations where 2 companies control 90% of the radio market, they can dictate what is considered good or bad art, as the public never gets exposed to the majority of it to judge for themselves. Instead of bands like the Beatles, which hammered it out in bars for years and artistic clashes between the 2 front members of the band being what ultimately broke up the group, you have nsync which is told what to wear, how much chest to show, and somebody else writing the lyrics.
Radio used to be a huge variety. The same channel would mix in all different styles, now all you get is the “urban/hip hop” or “pop” or “rock” channel. The CBC radio channels are the exception, but only because they’re government run and are looking for any Canadian content to play, be it Rock, Classical, or very strange.
It still scares me that people are still trying to push for more deregulation on ownership of the Canadian market (I think currently there are limits to the percentage of a local market one station can own). It's bad enough that CHUM now owns so many stations, it scares me a lot to think Clear Channel could come in and gobble everything up.
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Chris
I think its quite true that the industry is to blame for the formulization of rock. Bands still slog it in bars before they get signed though, and are generally far more original when they are actually working for their money. As an extreme example, I saw nickelback a few times in a little bar in Nanaimo when I was about 17, and nobody had ever heard of them, and they didn't suck. As soon as they were signed, the monotany (sp?) commenced.
That being said, this isn't a new occurence. Rock, and music in general has been formulaic for a couple generations. Its only now that the creative and original use of said formulas is degrading. You don't have to look terribly far to find a song based on a 1-5-6-4 progression. Let It Be, by the Beatles, or No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley to name just a couple. Do these songs sound similar? Not really, but thats the creative use thingy... Anyway, thats my two cents for the day.
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