Posted on 09 March 2012.
BY DREW DANIELS-ROSENBERG
ONLINE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
It should be obvious to anyone who is not musically oblivious that the standards of the music industry and the artists involved have significantly dropped during the past decade. The popular music currently streaming the radio waves lacks quality and any form of talent on behalf of the artist. Aside from producers and a select few musicians, popular music today is nothing more than archaic sounds and untalented millionaires.
It is undeniable, for the most part, that this music is catchy, but the credit is not placed in the right hands. Instead of the artists (and I use that term loosely) getting all the credit, it should be the producers. Producers are the masterminds behind the writing, mixing and mastering of these tracks, not the artists. Of course, there are many exceptions to this, but for the most part, the artist is nothing more than the talking head and the personality presenting the music.
To make this even worse, a countless number of these untalented artists cannot even sing. Performers such as T-Pain and LMFAO simply run their voices through a computer and call it a day. Even artists like Katy Perry, who doesn?t need auto-tuning, resort to it. The labels might as well find a random person from the street and give him a record deal. The quality of music is so low that on some occasions the trained ear can pick out Garage Band samples in professional tracks and recordings. Steven Spielberg wouldn?t use iMovie when editing his movies, and there is no reason for producers to use an amateur program in their professional tapes.
All of the blame cannot be solely placed on the artists; the industry itself has continued to make mistake after mistake. Butch Walker, one of the biggest names in producing, has witnessed first-hand since he was 17 how poorly the business functions. When Walker was performing with his band South Gang, the major labels took advantage of his naivety and adolescence. They took his money, his equipment, and his artistic pride. This left Walker disenchanted with the industry and his book Drinking with Strangers describes his battle to get where he is today as well as countless accounts of how the industry fails.
?I pledged I was going to make it in the music industry without getting screwed,? Walker said. ?By now, I?d been ripped off so often, I knew I would never let it happen again. Of course it did.?
The business has become even more complex since then, according to entertainment lawyer Don Passman, who wrote All You Need to Know About the Music Business. Contracts are now hundreds of pages instead of 15-17, and piracy problems have recently put the industry on edge. They now work out complex algorithms and use unoriginal song formats to insure success and consumer approval. As a result, this minimizes creativity and the true roots of music are lost and traded in for guaranteed cash.
The state of the music business is in complete turmoil. Lip-syncing performers have replaced what it truly means to be a musician, and the industry is too busy trying to make money to realize how poorly they treat the artists. Talent and creativity have disappeared in popular music and predictable, generic garbage has taken over.
Supporting independent groups and DIY artists can help get the business back on its feet. Some true musicians like Jukebox the Ghost, a talented soft rock group with extreme talent, are struggling to gain a solid fan base. Childish Gambino is an actor trying to bring his name into the music scene and MC Lars is DIY rap artist who?s attempting to spread the popularity of independent labels. If people begin to support actual artists such as these by purchasing their songs, following them on Twitter and spreading their name, music can be revived and restored to its true artistic self.
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