New Music

So it's been a while since I posted, and the font may be off, because I'm posting for the first time straight from the blogger website. I wanted to comment on a few things that I've noted about the music industry. 

For one thing, since all pop music sounds the same anyways, I think it's interesting to note that there's been a distinct shift from really base heavy, slower rap songs to more fast paced, dance oriented rap music. I mean to call it rap is almost disrespectful to the idea of rap music in general. I guess rap music can never be pop music, because real rap will never be mainstream. But groups like the Pussycat Dolls, who are very much pop artists, have much more electronica sounds to them. They use more synthesizers to accentuate their vocals, and their songs have much faster tempos than say... the popular hip hop and pop music of the late 90's and early 2000's. Britney Spears' new hit single, for instance, is much faster than her older singles. I mean good times, you know, it's easy to see why this is currently popular; everyone likes a song they can work out to, run to, do something fast-paced to. That's easy listening, that's background music. It's easy to see why it's popular, and it's easy to see why it doesn't have any real staying power in the market. This is the kind of music that gets played several decades later at themed parties. Just like I spent my college career at parties featuring 80's music, future college students will party listening to music from the turn of the century, that is 2006, 2007, and 2008. Very cool, right?

That said, there are definitely real artists out there, but as my younger brother so aptly put it, "they fly under the radar." I honestly believe that quality artists are simply much less likely to get signed to big deals on big labels in this climate, the record companies want a sure thing with a reliable sound, so they sign artists that all sound the same, that they know can make a reliable hit and sell records. They don't want to sign unusual sounds for other reasons as well; people who like unusual sounds tend to be the ones savvy enough to get it for free. 

Speaking of getting it for free, it just occurred to me that the internet is really a two-edged sword for record companies. It gives them the opportunity to market individual songs directly to consumers, and has changed the game that way. In addition, it gives the chance to try out singles, and their success, prior to recording an entire album with an artist. While radio ratings and song ratings that are linked to them are a bit abstract, the number of times a song is downloaded or listened to online is hard data that can be verified and analyzed. I wouldn't be all that surprised if albums were intentionally leaked by the record companies to see how they fare on P2P and bit torrent sharing sites before they go to all the trouble of pressing a ton of CDs and LPs.  Leaking an album early allows record companies to do a test run, especially if the album they leak is poor quality, or has other noise intentionally embedded on it, as a lot of it does. As we've seen from recent album releases, records can still sell, despite the availability of online music. I think for record companies, success will come from controlling how music is downloaded, as opposed to their current strategy, which is to simply prevent downloads at all costs.