My post is about the video we watched in class today (July 9, 2008) and not about the readings. The video showed how the music industry is actually a huge industry like any other consumer product. I knew that the industry thrived on money to make it run, but I didn’t realize how cut throat it truly is. One of the things that shocked me the most was that most artists receive very little royalties for the albums they make. In the video they said that artists will receive roughly $1 per album sold and the rest would go to the record company. A good example of how the record company’s seemingly “rob” the artists is the story of the group, TLC. They were at the top of the music industry, but they were getting paid so little for their work that they were living with nothing and had to ultimately file for bankruptcy. The artist’s response to this was the emergence of new record labels being developed by artists to avoid such an injustice.
Knowing what I know now I feel that the few major record labels who are owned by larger parent companies need to be broken down so that there can be more competition in the market. I feel there are anti-trust laws that are being violated by these conglomerates because people all around the world are feeling their powerful bite. The artists, the smaller record labels, radio stations are doing what ever these big companies say because they are able to pay the big prices to do it and leverage them just so, to make sure they get what they want out of it.
I think there should be investigations by Congress into these powerhouse company’s to figure out if there are anti-trust laws being broken and if there are taking action by breaking the companies down.
Pregnancy in the media
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Question: Does the media glorify teen pregnancy?
Thesis: The media portrays pregnancy unrealistically, thus negatively
affecting teenagers and their likelih...
17 years ago
4 comments:
The problem with the idea of break-down into a more horizontal market is that it will inevitably reconsolidate into a conglomeration for as long as business managers are thinking about the bottom line, that is profit.
Interestingly, this wasn't much different several decades ago, the almighty Frank Zappa himself stating that times were actually better when the cigar-smoking arms dealers who knew nothing of content simply allowed the artists to do as they pleased.
As far as anti-trust laws go, the Big 4 (it's 4 now, go figure) have pretty much tethered themselves off the edge of a cliff especially in rules to merging. Powerful lawyers, maybe even powerful people helping powerful people.
In this sense we can regress back to paragraph one where I mentioned inevitable regrouping; in other words, sooner or later, a manager (and it only takes one) will get tired of squandering and get busy, saving for that Rolls Royce.
Independent labels have always had the option of staying true, but as soon as a giant appears, lawless or not, it becomes a game of "beat em or join em". If it were me, I'd have at least gnawed up one of its toes off before saying lights out.
It is true that what the Big 4 conglomerates that make up the industry have done should be a crime. But like the first comment says... rich, educated, powerful people are gonna help eachother stay rich, educated and powerful people.
I feel that in our current business system, you cant really say theres much to be done against these big players, but more to be done on the behalf of the artists!
They're all mature (for the most part) adults... it blows my mind that they havent taken the time and gotten themselves some sort of entity like a Musicians Guild or Union to have a platform and unite against the music industry...
problem is... musicians tend to work on they're own and the industry has made every artist a competitor. So none of them think to work TOGETHER.
I totally agree with you here that the major record labels need to be broken down. I believe each major company should only be allowed to own a certain number of smaller labels. The conglomeration of these companies is essentially killing the music business in a lot of ways. It forces bands to adhere to what the record label wants, and it makes it nearly impossible for smaller labels, with artists whom have non commercial sounds, to break through and get their music heard. This is making all the popular music of today sound the same, I can barely listen to the radio and I can’t listen to a pop station for more that five minutes at a time because all the music is either terrible or all sounds the same. If smaller labels could compete perhaps this wouldn’t be the case.
Industry and systems in general are a bad idea. They are created to destroy individuality and classify everyone. I don't understand how they aren't shut down for censorship. Your words are their words and if they don't agree then you don't have words. Music is all the same for the same reason that most people today are still involved with some religious group, no matter how corrupt they've become, people still depend on them because they are afraid to question authority or be different. Originality and culture have been temporarily destroyed and creative progress as a society has been halted. In my opinion, we need a new medium for the music of independent artists to reach a mass audience through little filtration and at a low cost. Perhaps we should just ake back the radio?
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