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Homogenized Music
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."
All forms of media really need to take their eyes of the ledgers and look toward the future... otherwise they'll be caught by surprise again.
With the net all neighborhoods are virtual and local.
-johnkarakash-
"History repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, the second time, farce." So quoth Karl Marx.
/.
/. with proposals to change the world.
Of course nobody would admit to being a Marxist or even a Marxian - think of all those killed in the Soviet Union and China.
But it seems that you can't keep a good idea down and those of the Marxist critical theorists of the Frankfurt School keep coming up again and again in
This is what capitalism does, people - it tends to monopoly, and restricts human development.
The great pity is that the left - and nowhere more so than in the US - seem unable to produce a decent theory of politics - the theory of praxis as it was once called - that connects the frustrations of those who post these articles on
Capitalism is still making us pay for the Soviet Union's experience of repression.
DC101 in the MD/DC/VA area plays decent music. sure, it's mostly the same corporate jam it down your throat rock that we've all gotten used to, but they've started playing a lot of songs by "Carbon Leaf", an independent band, and they sponsor unsigned local bands for a lot of the shows they put on. Welbilt is a pretty good band that just opened their Chili cookoff. anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that individual stations have more say in their programming that it at first appears.
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
So what? I haven't listened to music on the radio since high school. Why? Well I can decide what I want to listen to for myself. If you can't investigate new music on your own then the radio telling you what to like shouldn't be a concern of yours.
Checkout some independent or smaller labels. Labels like Matador Records, Prawn Song, Fat Wreck, and may others. It's a shame that labels like Grand Royal were forced out of business for not force-feeding the status quo. Read Nude As The News for non mainstream album reviews.
Find a band you Like and check out their influences. This is a good way to find new stuff to listen to. Like Led Zeppelin? Listen to Muddy Waters. Like Trey Solo? Listen to Count Basie, Sun Ra, or Little Feet. Like Primus? Listen To Rush. Ect.
GO SEE LIVE MUSIC! If you live near a large city there are tons of show to go see, there are some good websites dedicated to finding shows in your area. Check out Jambase for example.
Trade Live Music! There are several communities for the trading of live tapes, a large number of bands ok the taping of their shows and the thousands of tapes are out there for free. One Such community Etree is a great example of this.
Listen to College radio if you live near one!
Don't complain about the lack of variety on the radio, just don't listen to it.
When I lived in Michigan there were a couple radio stations, WHNN & WIOG which pretty much fit that same bill. Result: I stopped listening to them.
I've often wondered, even aloud to others, why radio stations insist upon overplaying music. I once had the complete Led Zepplin collection, but go so sick of hearing it over and over on the radio (usually on a radio at work) that I sold off all but two albums (Physical Graphitti & In through the out door, which didn't get much airplay.)
I still have to be in a very narrowly defined mood to listen to Phil Collins, so scarred am I by years of radio beating me over the head with his music. Pretty good stuff, but not when you hear it all the time. (There was even a radio station which planned a Phil Collins-Free weekend, it was so bad.)
I've got a collection of about 400 CDs (mostly bought in the 80's) most of the newer stuff is alternative, classical, jazz and euro-pop. At the pace I once bought music, I'd think the RIAA and affiliated scum would like to cultivate that, but the influences which built my collection were listening to music from other people's collections (which the RIAA appears dead-set against and even prosecuting me if they could nail one incident. There's the rub, eh?)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you wanted your own daily radio show, Clear Channel would sell you the time for about $1,200 an hour.
Wow! That's really sad and kind of cool at the same time. It shows that a lot of their stuff really is basically extended commercial time, but it's also a chance for something else to slip in the lineup.
Think about it. For about $300 grand (yes I KNOW that's a lot), pretty much anyone could have his own show for an hour a day on weekdays, all year long. Now they probably wouldn't let you do anything "subversive" like rant on about corporate radio sucking, BUT: why not get a coalition of several dozen smaller labels together to get a show?
Clearchannel stations are by nature large-market ones, and if you picked a slot at like 3 or 4 pm, you would get kids after school and it would be before the "rush hour" slot that's so valuable. Say 50 labels chipped in, they could each get at least a couple songs on per week, and take some time to promote local shows, websites, band interviews, and all that.
And since the labels themselves are putting together the shows, rights shouldn't be an issue. I'm sure I'm missing a dozen reasons why this wouldn't work, but it SOUNDS so neat... *sigh*
Is the fact that listening figures are down 10% in the U.S. since the market was deregulated a sign that the market has not been totally successful? You can measure success in many ways. - Profit, Revenue, Listeners, Diversity.
I prefer the British system (and I am biased) where some of the RF spectrum is reserved for public radio (The BBC). This has some varied, and quality stuff. There is also commercial space, with the more homogonized genres. It is probably more workable over here, as we have a comparatively small geographic area.
The point I'm trying to make, however, is that you don't have to divide up the airwaves "all commercial" or "all centrally planned", but you can do a bit of both. (Even if it sounds like a choice between free market and command economy)
I guess you can listen to the BBC World Service ;-)
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
If something is truely "good", or at least something that would be popular to sufficient people to sustain the band, it will be heard. Look at Fugazi. They are a D.C. area neo-punk band that does not have merchandise, is not on a major label, and does not make videos. The receive little to no radio airplay outside college stations, and are completely self-sustaining. They continue to charge only $5 admission to their shows and their CDs (I believe) are $10 post-paid from their record label (which they own and operate).
If you want to do it, and you are talented enough, you do not need major labels or commercial radio.
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
Remember, folks, they're in this for MONEY. So they're looking for widest appeal. That's right. The bland stuff. The stuff that offends as few as possible while retaining an interest group.
Look at it another way: You pay to see bands you like. A bar would book a band that attracts their clientele. If the band is good, expect a cover charge.
That's all well and good. Now do this without the cover charge, for a population of hundreds of thousands, on a daily basis. Do you even begin to see the problem?
Yeah, radio is bland. It's mostly boring because you really don't like what they're putting on the air.
But don't let me stop you. If you feel so strongly, why not put your money where your mouth is, and rent some radio station time for a month. Try to come up with music that will amuse and engage your listeners every single day. Oh, and while you're doing this, try to come up with some way of attracting advetisers to pay your bills.
Good Luck!
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Wilco is proving that the bottom line about sales is the quality of music. They were at 13 on Billboards chart last week. Big lable? not any more, they bought their album back from mr big. Their latest album was available online forever and a day before its market launch. People still bought it, and are still buying it.
The playlists were generated exclusively by listener votes. Ballots were everywhere around town and on every island where the signal could reach. They were tallied every week.
You'd vote for ten songs to put or keep in rotation, ten songs to dump and three songs that would be a hit if radio played it (those songs received proportionately more vote weight).
It made for an eclectic mix, with votes from outside the main demographic also receiving more weight. I heard hundreds of songs on RFH that I'd never heard before, and never heard since--but I loved almost all of them.
Sadly, since the music was so diverse they couldn't claim a single demographic and placed last in the Arbitron ratings that are so necessary for advertising dollars. The station collapsed in 1997 for lack of revenue, despite most of the djs being paid near-volunteer wages.
I know for a fact that the station was the most listened-to station when it was on the air, but the screwed-up Arbitron rating system forced them out of business.
You can see how eclectic the playlist was at the top 300 archive. And also why it was doomed to fail. Back in 1994, this was not corporate music, even though much of it has been adopted by corporate radio since then.
... looks grim.
/.ers are, from what I can tell, aren't mainstream.
Radio is a business, like any other. The object is to spend less money than you take in. Turn a profit. Keep your owners (investors, individuals, corporate sire, whatever) happy. The income for these stations comes from advertising and selling air-time to whoever wants to buy it. The reason "it sucks" is because the advertisers want to get their message to their target audience, and they have very specific target audiences. If "market research" shows the mainstream target audience wants to hear a non-stop beat-mix of Brittney Spears and Weird Al Yankovic, that's what the station will play, because that's what the advertisers will pay to advertise on.
The "mainstream" listeners are the targets. They don't really care about the niche markets or the fringe because there's no advertising money in niche markets or the fringe.
Why are listeners abandoning radio? Lots of factors. 6-disk in-dash CD players for the morning commute. MTV or the CD player at home. MP3 collections on the file server. Simple bordom with "mainstream" mass media music. Tired of 40% commercials. Whatever.
Are college stations, pirate stations, or internet broadcasters an alternative? Of course they are. Are they "better"? If they serve -your- niche market, they certainly are - for you at least. It's one reason I have an internet station of my own - I can cater to my own tastes.
Is radio dead? No. But it's ill. If the radio markets all collapse and the big conglomerates start abandoning stations we may see a change back to "the good old days" when stations took risks and used variety to compete for listeners. I just wouldn't count on it.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
These people have looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Today ClearChannel changed formats on one of their local radio stations here in Seattle to what I like to call "Blipvert" music. It's just a number and a snippet of a given song. The web site for this new assinine format is at http://quick96.com.
Apparently ClearChannel's new target demographic is the former audience for Short Attention-Span Theater.
"Can't pay attention to a song for three and a half minutes, Skippy? We've got the answer for you right here at Quick 96."
Maybe we should start thinking of it as radio for kids whose Ritalin prescription has run out.
All I can say is JazzRadio.net rules!
Has anyone mentioned internet radio as an alternative? Ok, it's broadband only in terms of possible audience... but that doesn't stop me from listening to Bassdrive.com all day, everyday.
Sure it is usually non-mainstream music. Who cares if it doesn't appeal to the widest, most general audience?
The key of internet radio is that you can usually find what you like. I have stations that play early 90's jungle, hard-step, tech-step, garage two-step, jungle-ragga, acid jazz, russian pop/rock, independent US hip-hop, french hard core.
Ok so it might just be me listening to it. Oh, boo-hoo. Either you listen to what you like with the distinct possibility of ostracising yourself from the mainstream, or accept the shill Godsmack/Creed/DMB so you can talk to other folk about music/hit bigger shows with your friends. Of course then you can pay your 400 bucks for a Rolling Stones ticket.
And that is another thing: underground/independent metal, rock, death metal, electronica, detroit house, hip-hop, and jazz have all survived very well without any help of the mainstream. Steve Albini, Martin Adkins, El-P. Sometimes you have to accept that most people aren't looking for what you are serving.
But if you like this kind of thing, this may be the sort of thing you kind of like.
What is music when you despise all sound?
My daughter is a deejay for KDVS college station in Davis, CA and she tells me that they are forbidden to play any commercial songs: Radiohead, Garbage, and Smashing Pumpkins, which I believe were to a good extent birthed on college campuses are now off limits to college stations. This is not to say its a bad thing, but even colleges have their skewed policies.
On another note, I am in a constant process of ridding my life of commercial interests and commercials. I have stopped listening to radio almost entirely on my daily commute, preferring my cassettes. And let me tell you, after listening to good rock or jazz instead of commercials with their jingles and subliminal messages and urging to consume or be left out, I feel much more relaxed, much less anxious. I have successfully reduced corporate influence in my life to a manageble level. It's just one example of 'think globally, act locally'. If all people did this, ClearChannel would die the death it really deserves. Now when I listen to the rock station I used to hear all the time, it's easy to spot the manipulative messages they are trying to put over on me, and when I realize how much of their time is spent inflating their self-importance, I can be smug about being the non-conformist. Of course, I get laid a lot less.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.