Turn on the radio, to the pop station, the rap station, or just about any station. What’s probably playing is someone or maybe even a group exploiting the modern industry just to make money for the corporate executives for the record company. The music industry has declined from a business of talented groups of musicians spreading their music, to just the opposite; the industry includes a monopoly of executives with an agenda supporting looks and their collective greed. Although this is not always the case, there is a shred of hope in the music industry.


The music industry has declined to supporting looks before talent. Music used to require talent and hard work and looks were not always an issue. In today’s industry all anyone needs is a computer and to look good. With auto-tune anyone with a computer can “sing” with perfect pitch. Although this is good tool in some cases its purpose should not be to help Idealize what’s wrong with the world through the music created by it. The worst yet is the hit formula, to make endless repeats of the same song into hits. They all follow the same lyric structure and basically the same song. Expunging all the expression music was supposed to represent.

The music industry has declined to supporting money over all else. Today’s music is all about the #1 single on iTunes, not the message, not the album, not even the band. Yet there are few bands left; today’s modern “artists” are just one person, with a computer making up his or her ensemble. The song’s lyrics don’t matter anymore as most are just the same phrase for 2 minutes. Even so, the most important factor has become money and everything else is merely secondary. For years bands would be ridiculed for “selling out”. In today’s music “selling out” to something has become a rite of passage, and ridicule moves to those who have not.

Although in some ways the industry has improved. With bands making a name for themselves, and many new record companies starting, bands don’t become absorbed into the big time corporations as they used too. Because of this the big time companies are losing their power to push bands around into gigs like they used too. Hopefully this trend of grassroots record labels will continue, but they are still currently the minority.

Today’s music industry is in a terrible state of affairs. The general consensus supports looks before talent and money over all else. Even though this state of mind is still the majority, a few also feel it is not the way to go and many bands are not buying into the old model of corporate greed. The problem lies in the revolting fact that the majority of music is on a steady and rapid decline. I hope this is no intimation to what music’s future holds. But at the moment, it seems we are headed in the wrong direction.