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Homogenized Music

Posted by michael on from the emulsified-and-pasteurized dept.

Mansing writes "The connections between broadcast radio and music industry are well known. In the old days, payola was the method to increase a song's (or album's) exposure. But now, the same "free market" corporate music that infects the music industry is also infecting the broadcast radio industry as well. What makes the article so informative is not the business angles, but how business has changed what is broadcast. Seeing the parallels between the recording industry's force fed music and Clear Channel's "nothing is left to whim or chance" programming, I now understand how hard it is for any non-corporate sanctioned music to become widely heard."

2 of 469 comments (clear)

  1. Bandwidth solves this problem soon? by Andy_R · · Score: 5, Informative

    i think the problem here is one of bandwidth... here in the UK, we have a small number of large indepedent radio networks, as well as regional stations that are currently peddling almost exactly the same type of music as each other, all going for the least offensive (to the average listener) and most bland music 'product' that they can find, in order to maximise advertising revenue - a 'one size fits all' system.

    However, I can't see that this will last for long, as soon as any of the following technolgies reach the average consumer household: Net radio, Stand alone recievers for audio-only channels over satellite, digital radio (we are a long way ahead of the US in this field, I believe, as the BBC have pushed the technology) and increased spectrum avaialbilty due to theproposed switch off of terrestrial analogue TV transmitters (which the UK governement are keen on as they stand to rake a fortune in from selling the bandwidth off).

    When any (or all) of the above technolnogies are mature, then it will be possible to deliver cost-effective radio to much smaller markets (with tightly targetted adverts), so the constant search for the lowest common denominator will no longer be the best way to maximise advertising revenue, providing a wide spectrum of choice will be more cost effective.

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  2. For a more thorough look at ClearChannel by Tony+Tastey · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out the extensive coverage they've gotten over at Salon for the past year or so. There's about a dozen articles about various aspects of their business practices.

    http://www.salon.com/ent/clear_channel/