As someone who spent the greater part of five years of their life touring the country and playing music for a living, the state of the music industry today is embarrassing. Almost every song is about sex, there’s seemingly no depth or effort put into the song-writing, and it seems like just about every top 10 pop song is written by some combination of Max Martin, Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco.
Couple that with the fact that records aren’t selling as well as they once were, and I’m not surprised that labels are going to such outlandish extremes to promote the few artists that DO still move records. But does anyone really want to go to concerts where the artist is making the crowd chant the names of the tour sponsors while giving out free (sponsored) phones? Is that really what this industry has come to?
Sure, SOME records are still selling. Taylor Swift’s “Red” sold more in a week than any album in a decade. But with the virtually uncontrollable piracy of music on the Internet today, it’s amazing to me that record companies still put so much archaic importance on the number of records sold. But the record industry has never been one to adapt to change. And that may well be their ultimate demise.
MICHAEL ADAM RAY 