Big Jim:

Over the last several decades, labels have utilized consultants and market research to determine which songs should be released. A sample audience is given 20 or 30 seconds to respond to a new track. This is partially why there is so much sameness and mediocrity on the airwaves.

As someone who embraces new music (even at 59), I've always found that there are three kinds of new songs, new artists: First, the very rare kind that grabs me by the shorthairs from the get-go with a certain freshness, vitality and/or passion. Second, artists that sound odd, quirky, alien or abrasive - often, although I find the music challenging, these are the songs and artists I eventually fall in love with. Third, there's the preponderance of forgetable, recycled same ol' same ol'. If I'd been given less than 30 seconds to decide whether those songs and artists would be part of my musical landscape, I would have missed out on some of the most meaningful stuff of my life.

Thus, because our world is now about marketing, and not about music, because radio is about selling advertising and not about supporting or exposing artists, and because demographically targetted playlists are programmed by conglomerate corporations - we are deprived of hearing a lot of wonderful stuff. The labels, who still depend on radio to break their product, would probably take a lot more chances if they felt those chances would pay off. But radio resists anything new - even though every break-through artist with a fresh new sound re-vitalizes the music scene.

It's a self-defeating system. I'm hoping that satellite radio survives, because that's where I discover new stuff these days.

Anyway, that's completely off the subject of positive and negative songwriting, but it's my theory as to why so few fresh voices and alternative genres are heard anymore.

Rand Bishop
songwriter/producer/author Makin' Stuff Up - secrets of song-craft and survival in the music-biz
www.makinstuffup.net

Rand Bishop
Songwriter/producer/author