2008 Woodie Awards
Music-industry conglomerates stifle creativity
Artists such as Wilco have seen success outside of mainstream distribution practices and production companies.
By: Jon Baird
Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Opinion/Editorial
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Whether the listening public realizes it or not, the record industry is collapsing, and not just financially speaking. Sure, there are "giant" losses due to piracy, but there's something bigger going on. Music fans aren't just getting the music they used to pay for on the Internet black market. They are abandoning the bland feeling of what happens when money makes media all the same.
In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission loosened and dropped some regulations on media ownership with the Telecommunications Act, which the FCC originally expected to create competition between media owners. What happened instead could become one of the biggest problems in our country.
Media began to consolidate, and big companies bought out their competition, swallowing up smaller media owners. The act has, in effect, set sharks free in the aquarium. All the little fish have disappeared, and we now only have about five or six conglomerates owning our entertainment-and a fish tank full of sharks.
This is a specifically significant problem for the world of music, which includes listeners. When all of the alternative-rock stations in the country play songs from the same playlists, which have been selected from various avenues of promotion and cross-promotion, what exactly is alternative about it?
Radio stations used to be the closest link between artists and their listeners, and the connection was actually somewhat intimate. It sounds almost laughable now. Disc jockeys were important, because they were the crucial link between the artist and the listener. The DJs chose music to inspire and affect people; music that had touched them.
The artists of the '60s and '70s that every rock musician these days tries to be like were a different breed in a different time. The reason a lot of those artists are on our posters and T-shirts is because their music convinced some DJ to play their record, and it was so good that the listeners demanded more. The ones that had talent stuck around. It was the ultimate test to gain popularity.
Do you think Miles Davis would be an icon if he had to come up through today's promotion setup? Probably not, because he'd have to have several hit singles. They would have to be less than five minutes, so as not to encroach on commercial time.
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