Risky Business

In Who Controls the Music, author Mark Crispin Miller dicusses the developmental route of the music industry. In his discussions, he recognizes profit as being one of the major prospects for the six major corporations that seem to dominate this industry. Decribing it as being a cutthroat business, he suggests that profit is the main influence behind it all. Every man is one for themselves, always trying to get a step ahead. For instance, just as CD's have replaced vinyl, the music industry is now trying to replace the CD's with DVD's. The purchase of all new equipment due to the new format would bring in more money. Instead of trying to find ways to bring in more profit, with a few changes, I think the music industry would really start looking up again.

These days the industry picks up labels rather than acts. They know what sells, thus they encourage that with their musicians and copycat it all. In doing so they are allowing attributes other than talent to help decide what musicians they bring on with the company and very easily pass by excellent musician who are very talented. If companies would be more willing to take a risk, and truly invest time and money into more independent-like music, they could potentially find something quite popular amongst the masses and certainly different than the mainstream. With technology advances as successful as the internet, it doesn't seem like too much time would be neccessary to find a truly authentic musician.

I honestly think that if not everything was so much about profit, the industry could really excell. With efforts to actually find a good musician, rather than someone who will simply sell records because they're good at doing what everyone else already is, it would really make the company stand out. In turn they could potentially be very successfull because they'd be the only ones doing it. As a consumer I know that I don't just like the kind of music that appeals to the masses, and I think that goes for a lot of other people as well. If it didn't, why would the underground music industry be so hot right now? The big companies just need to be willing to possibly saccrifice their maximal profit and take the risk with musicians that make great music and play a part different from what's already being done.