The Internet Eats Music

For a while now, I've been going on about the role the internet has played in the dumbing-down of popular music. My theory went like this- the internet has allowed people who really love and care about music to seek out new material from a multitude of sources. Whereas in earlier times, someone who loved music would turn to radio, MTV, label catalogues, etc., they now turn to the internet. With an audience made up of both serious music consumers and casual listeners, bands like Nirvana or Radiohead could become huge mainstream successes. With the loss, or relative loss, of the more serious audience, the main consumers of music through mainstream channels are casual music listeners. With this audience, there is less of a need to appeal to consumers looking for better music with more content (as subjective as these designations may be), because these consumers aren't listening, they are scouring blogs or getting music from friends through YouSendIt or Mediafire. The same basic idea applies not just to listening, but to buying music through physical media as well.

I'm not sure that I want to make any sort of value judgment on any of this, but it is sad for me that there are unlikely to be any more genuine rock stars, any major musical acts that are shared across large segments of the population. I used to be able to talk about Nirvana or The Smashing Pumpkins with nearly anyone. It's a bit more isolating to love Joanna Newsom or even MGMT. I purposely chose very large indie music acts, as even with their massive popularity (tickets to "indie" act Newsom recently cost me $45), these artists are anonymous to large swaths of the population (less so for MGMT). There is less of a shared music culture, and with this loss, communication and community with dissimilar people becomes more difficult, especially if one of the ways you connect to others is through music.

Tirade ended.

Anyway, I came across a fairly in-depth article about the current problems of the major labels and the ways in which they are trying to change. While the article's focus is not the same as my pseudo-thesis on the music industry, it seems to take the internet concept even further- they explore how the broadening accessibility of finding and creating music is killing the music industry. An interesting read: Record Labels: Change or Die