Ah Middle School. I remember counting down the days with anticipation to see the premiere of the new Sum 41 Video on TRL, waiting in my parent’s parked Volvo to finish listening to a Brand New song on the radio, and of course eating up every second of Blink 182 closing out the MTV Video Music Awards by jumping around with fireworks and little-people on trampolines. Now it may just be that I’ve gotten older, or possibly that I want to feel hipper, but to me these more traditional outlets I used to look at for music seem to have faded. MTV has canceled TRL and the New York rock radio station K-ROCK switched to an all talk format for over a year. Does this scary trend where reality shows and talk radio replace music point to something more significant? Are people really listening and demanding less music than they were just a couple years ago? No. But one thing that has changed that is the way that people are discovering new music.
What are the typical ways that someone has found music in the past 60 years? The dominant force has been radio which is a format that has had a rather tumultuous history. The payola scandals, where DJs were paid to play certain songs, have been on-going since the 50s. In an interview with Alternative Press, legendary DJ John Gorman said in the 1980s, in order to get a song on a major market radio station, the labels would have to pay an average of $5,000 per song. For Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” to be played, each station had to be paid $10,000. New forms of payola took place in the 1990s where labels could buy blocks of radio time to play their own music. With new laws and pressure from the government, the scrutiny has cooled down a bit in recent years. Still, radio now looks to another force on what to play. MTV.
In the past 29 years, MTV has become a powerful force in youth culture, and a considerable source for new music. While the network began as a hot bed for new emerging artists and sounds, it quickly turned into something different. The current MTV playlist is hardly based on creative videos or great songs, but rather what will attract viewers and advertisers. Atlantic Records video commissioner and owner of Refused TV Cathy Pellow said in an interview with Paste Magazine, “Everything is based on numerics and statistics, and that’s what has ruined both commercial radio and MTV; you used to have DJs and VJs who could pick music to play—now it is all playlists made by the corporation. There is no room for soul, or intuition or instinct.”
While these companies are playing what they think will attract viewers, quite the opposite is happening. According to kingsofar.com, radio just had it’s worst year since 1954. 2009 also marks radio’s 9th consecutive struggling year. MTV is not fairing too well either. According to Variety, MTV’s ratings dropped 23% in the fourth quarter of 2008 with their key demographic, 12-34 year olds, and as a result they unveiled 16 new unscripted reality shows in 2009. This is in addition to hundreds of layoffs at the network and the recent announcement that they will be dropping “music television” from their logo.
So what does this all mean? It seems to show that rather than discovering music through commercial radio or MTV, people are discovering it through each other. With the advent of file sharing, streaming sites and cd-rs, people can trade music they enjoy freely and discover it more organically. Less people are hearing what they’re “supposed” to hear and are instead embarking on their own aural journeys.
This isn’t to say that people aren’t looking to sources about what to listen to. Services like Pandora and Last.FM are popular and for good reason. They give music recommendations based off music qualities and what people with your tastes are listening to. Sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum are also thriving, and podcasts as well as blogs continue to take off. And although these services are still functioning as businesses, they aren’t aiming to please the masses. Since they aren’t yet part of large-scale corporations, they can focus on the niches and quality content in order to profit.
For me it is nice to think that music listeners aren’t just quantifiable numbers and an age group that some man behind a desk can try to manipulate into buying something. It’s kind of cool to be able to think of listeners again as art appreciators and not just consumers.
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