by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
Lately a lot of people have been noticing that the pop music produced and mass-marketed by the big five record labels has become insipid, repetitive and not worth the cost. A large part of the problem is the industry's monolithic structure, which has developed over the past decade and is creating a huge barrier to new artists.
Music began the process of industrialization as far back as the 1960s, but its effects began to be felt at the end of the 1970s with the demise of disco. Disco was, like much of today's music, shallow and uncreative. Its time had come and gone. The major record companies, who were still producing and promoting disco albums, began to see a sharp decrease in sales.
Searching for a scapegoat, they found the perfect one: audiocassettes. This recently released medium had a feature the old LPs lacked; they could be copied. These record companies automatically assumed that if it was possible for consumers to copy music, then music piracy was the cause of their lost profits.
A short-lived war against audiocassettes was waged, with record companies on one hand decrying the new form of piracy and consumers on the other hand loving the portability and quality of cassette tapes.
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Before that battle could become too heated, like it has today, a new promotional tool debuted. An upstart cable channel called MTV came to the public's attention in 1980 and began exposing viewers to music they'd never heard before, much of it innovative British music. Demand for the music shown on MTV skyrocketed and record sales again went up.
Today we are faced with a similar but more serious problem in the record industry. Back in 1980 the music industry was a loose collection of recording artists and labels. More recently, however, they have consolidated into a single monolithic cartel that seeks to dominate all consumer music.
The Recording Industry Association of America controls 90 percent of CD sales in the United States. Most of these sales are by the big five labels: Universal, Warner, Sony, BMG and EMI. MTV has gone from an independent music-video station to a corporate propaganda machine, dominating the music video industry and spanning several channels.
The industry prefers music that it believes will sell, pouring its resources into creating the next Britney Spears rather than listening to new kinds of music. Because there isn't anything new out there, album sales are falling. Once again, the industry began looking for a scapegoat.
This time it was not hard to find. The Internet spawned numerous file-sharing networks, like Napster, that allow people to trade music online without purchasing CDs.
Studies by groups like Forrester Research and Ipsos-Reid have shown that this music trading may actually help album sales by acting as a form of free advertising.
Even so, the association has set out on a quest to ruin digital media forever. Getting Napster shut down was only the first part of the organization's plan; now it is pushing numerous "copy protection" schemes that only hurt the consumer.
For example, they are developing a new form of portable media called DataPlay. DataPlay discs are smaller than CDs, hold less data and have built-in copy protection. They will be designed so that copying the music from them will be very difficult, and the association is pushing for laws that will make it very illegal to try.
The association also is trying to control the music industry in other ways; by preventing computers from being able to make CDs, by making it legal for them to launch denial-of-service attacks against internet file sharing programs, and a dozen other tactics too numerous to list here. A quick search of the Internet will reveal the ongoing battle between music lovers and the industry that wishes to control them.
There are ways to fight the growing blandness of popular music. Buy used CDs. Support local used CD stores. Write to your government representatives and tell them not to pass legislation that restricts your right to use the Internet. Stay away from DataPlay when it comes out.
Most importantly, support local and independent bands. Go to their concerts and expose yourself to new types of music you may never have heard before. The soulless pop music of the late '90s is dying out fast, and it's time to see what else is out there.
