Can't Find Nothin' on the Radio
I loved the radio between the ages of 10 and 13. Turns out that that was a high point for radio -- pre-MTV, post-punk. I grew up thinking that radio was supposed to be good. Little did I know, I had just lucked into a moment in which the big capitalists were snoozing. When Michael Jackson and Madonna took over and financial interests pushed homogeneity again across the dial, I quit listening to the radio; this may have coincided with an impulse to start looking around on my own instead of being fed by DJs. Either way, I rarely listened again. When the music didn't suck, the commercials annoyed me.
On the one hand, not listening to the radio is a good thing. One can avoid a lot of mass-think media-rap without the radio, and allow tastes to develop on other bases. On the downside, one tends to find out late about a lot of great music, and to have occasionally less-than-productive periods of insular listening.
Besides recommendations from people, how does one participate in music without listening to radio, watching video, reading magazines? (While I mean this rhetorically, there are a couple of other ways. One curious alternative is the "family tree" means of finding music: find bands you like; listen to everything by them; locate solo albums, and/or albums featuring related music or players; even follow cover artists. I did lots of this, and mostly it led to the aforementioned non-productive insularity. A second method is to listen to music completely at random -- but you have to be somewhat insane to keep this up for long.)
All hail the Internet, once a-fuckin-gain. Hail to the broadened spectrum of music brought to us by online radio stations, streaming samples, filesharing and AllMusic. Legal or ethical or not, it is now possible to sample and browse as widely as one cares to.
The big companies whine about (and sue over) filesharing and the possibly-resulting dropping profits, but does anybody feel bad for them? Ruthless capitalists cry unfair when they lose money, and Suck It Up when they're fucking us over... ie. selling water for 4$ at shows, 135$ to see Springsteen (hero of the common man), and 25$ list for a CD.
Perhaps after fifteen years of this massive screwing with the inflated price of CDs, people are owed some free music. Perhaps the record companies should realize that they're not actually losing money, they just took it all at once, and didn't save anything for later.
Music corporations destroy music as much as they advance it. Watch the pattern: big money gets involved in a musical scene, they consume it and leave it in ashes. See early American rock and roll, punk, disco, hip hop, grunge; why do the people who invent the scenes retreat and find something else underground to enjoy? Money hurts art. (The argument could be made that it advanced the Beatles, who ate up studio hours and equiptment by the bushel; but it could be rebutted by pointing out that this was because their wealth was so great that they were no longer under the control of the machine.)
Maybe the money in pop music should dry up. Maybe this house needs to be burned so it can be rebuilt. I do not care about filesharing. I don't care if it's wrong. I think the reason for the dropping sales has more to do with the safe, cynical pap that radio/video sell. People who love music are still buying it. The music business is worthy of disdain. Pull the plug on the big money, and lets see what happens to the art. Maybe.
But there's more than filesharing for exploration. The amount of information in Allmusic is incredible and thorough, and there are plenty of gems among the trash in the rest of the web, too. Online Radio is so vast that one can always find something new and interesting if one is so inclined. Filesharing and information-sharing make it possible to explore the gamut of music, which is otherwise only possible for millionaires. It seems to me that widened options has to be good for the music business in the long run. Nevertheless, the important element in the whole debate is the music, and what music does for people. Big business does not care about music. Music shouldn't worry about big business.
Please don't sue me.
--jep clayton,
BadMonkeyX
summer 2003
PS: Rest in Peace Johnny Cash. BMX Music
