Did you see this? The Houston Press had a great article recently about the decline of CDs and music (and radio!). John Nova Lomax points out that "record companies" are churning out lots of bad music and part of the reason is the catering to radio, which is continually asking:
"...'send us some more of the same crap that is sinking our whole medium, please.'
"The people who run commercial radio have made a conscious decision to abandon musically discerning people. The managers at radio conglomerates like Clear Channel and Cumulus concede that true music fans will be listening to burned CDs, iPods or satellite radio in their cars, so today, their target audience is made up of a combination of the least-technically savvy among us and/or those who have the least interest in new music.
"Take a look at the ratings here in Houston. The top 20 stations are as follows: two hip-hop; four Spanish-language, one pop music; two contemporary country; and one modern rock station that often sounds stuck in the 1990s. The other ten are either news/talk outlets or "classic" stations, ranging from the solid gold soul and R&B of Majic 102 to the pop balladry of Sunny 99 to the inane '80s blather of the The Point."
And Lomax says it's because mainstream radio caters to rap and country fans, blue-collar immigrants and people who are either poor, old, new in America or not interested in new music.
Lomax writes, "Music's place on the radio seems destined only to shrink, and the stuff that makes it on the air is going to be very formulaic and familiar. The best places to hear new rock bands today -- at least in the old media -- are TV commercials, teen dramas like The O.C. or films like Garden State.
So what about the future? "...It seems more and more likely that a good chunk of America's pop, country and R&B stars will be anointed by American Idol rather than by the traditional music business machine."
See "DISConnect" on the Houston Press website.
"...'send us some more of the same crap that is sinking our whole medium, please.'
"The people who run commercial radio have made a conscious decision to abandon musically discerning people. The managers at radio conglomerates like Clear Channel and Cumulus concede that true music fans will be listening to burned CDs, iPods or satellite radio in their cars, so today, their target audience is made up of a combination of the least-technically savvy among us and/or those who have the least interest in new music.
"Take a look at the ratings here in Houston. The top 20 stations are as follows: two hip-hop; four Spanish-language, one pop music; two contemporary country; and one modern rock station that often sounds stuck in the 1990s. The other ten are either news/talk outlets or "classic" stations, ranging from the solid gold soul and R&B of Majic 102 to the pop balladry of Sunny 99 to the inane '80s blather of the The Point."
And Lomax says it's because mainstream radio caters to rap and country fans, blue-collar immigrants and people who are either poor, old, new in America or not interested in new music.
Lomax writes, "Music's place on the radio seems destined only to shrink, and the stuff that makes it on the air is going to be very formulaic and familiar. The best places to hear new rock bands today -- at least in the old media -- are TV commercials, teen dramas like The O.C. or films like Garden State.
So what about the future? "...It seems more and more likely that a good chunk of America's pop, country and R&B stars will be anointed by American Idol rather than by the traditional music business machine."
See "DISConnect" on the Houston Press website.
