below quote -
I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning, and saw the quote below, reblogged from Jakob Lodwick. While the more pressing issue surrounds the Iraq War, it fits perfectly into my morning thinking about the music business as well (on a slightly less immediate note).
I woke up thinking about how a huge step that I have not heard mentioned before in the war to win back music is the regulation of radio (I’m not going to get into other broadcast media here). It is my belief that Clear Channel destroyed the music business by monopolizing radio and eliminating true choice on radio. Music execs talk about how they decided to invest all their money in their top performers and stop developing bands, and it seems to me that this might be a direct result of what Clear Channel decided to play - an extremely limited selection of music.
With all the furor over music bloggers, I have read several articles saying that blogs (and muxtape) might be the new record label, or the new medium by which people discover music. It seems glaringly obvious that this “new medium” is only necessary because the old medium has been controlled by a few companies that refuse diversity at every turn. You want good (relative) music to come back? Liberate the radio.
About the Barstow quote below - I don’t mean to suggest that the government is the evil empire behind the banality of radio, just that they were the ones who deregulated it in the 80s, effectively allowing big business to come in and have their way. Can you name an influential music radio jockey these days? It is pathetic that here in Dallas the best station I can find is a Clear Channel drone pretending to be something better, with “no commercials” (which were recently re-introduced).
Reaching back to my college education, I believe the specific type of propaganda being leveled here is “argumentum ad nauseum”. Can anyone think of a better description of modern radio than the following definition of that phrase?
argumentum ad nauseum - tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited and controlled by the propagator.