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Printer-Friendly ModeMusic industry one big soap opera
April 4, 2005 —
Comparing the music industry to a soap opera really isn't going out on too much of a limb. Music today is the same as it was ten years ago; just the names, lyrics, and faces have changed.
Let me explain the last sentence a little more clearly, because it didn't even make sense to me. You see, if you stop watching a soap opera for an extended period of time and then pick it back up, you really wouldn't have missed a beat. You could easily slip back in and know exactly what was going on.
The music industry is like this as well.
It was no more evident to me than a couple of weeks ago, when I heard that rap superstar and clothing-line entrepreneur 50 Cent was having "beef" with his protégé and fellow G-Unit member The Game.
I was almost taken back into time, about a decade ago to be exact, to when Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G (once friends) were having a feud.
After this startling revelation occurred to me, I decided to see if what I was thinking was true. As it turns out, it mostly is.
Let us break down the last couple decades or so of music and see if there is such a continuous pattern.
I have mentioned above the similarities between rap's current stars to the old. Now let us travel back to 1988 and see a young band coming up the charts; yes, you guessed it, the New Kids on the Block.
They opened the doors for boy band antics and adoring psychopathic fans. Then a decade later came *N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
The early 90s saw an upcoming rapper the likes of which the world had previously never seen: Vanilla Ice.
He was white and could really bust a move. Lyrically, he would never be considered a genius, but he paved the way for his predecessor. Eminem has everything to thank for what Vanilla Ice brought him. He opened the doors against racial inequities and changed the way society viewed music forever.
(I must now change my name and enter myself into the witness protection program, since I just compared Eminem to Vanilla Ice.)
Grunge Rock took over for the middle part of the 90s with the likes of Nirvana and Soundgarden surfacing.
Ten years later rock music was hitting a new high, but this time it wasn't grunge, instead the music industry decided to do a little shake up and import punk, alternative, and hard rock bands. Blink 182, Godsmack, and Incubus all saw success during this time.
Yet there are staples of music that just don't seem to go away, either because of popularity or because they just don't want to die.
For those in this category I have simply entitled them, "The Dependables." They are the bands like U2, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Metallica, and of course the Reverend Al Green.
Sometimes they release stuff that makes you say, "What were they thinking?" But then about every decade or so they make that one great album that lets you forget about the previous ten years of crap and retains their legacy.
It is said that the future of music is a little bit more complicated and maybe harder to predict, with piracy and file sharing being absurdly used.
According to Distributed Computing Industry Association Chief Executive Marty Lafferty, he sees file sharing as a positive thing.
He said, "Entertainment companies would benefit if they embraced peer-to-peer networks. Much as the satellite-TV industry was able to overcome initial piracy problems and the cable-TV industry convinced people to pay for free television, peer-to-peer networks will ultimately evolve."
Which they have. Certain Internet sites now allow you to become members and pay .99 cents per song.
Hold up, pay for songs on the Internet? No thanks. I'd rather do it illegally, not supporting musical artists and watch record companies go under. But I'm evil like that; I like to watch people in pain. I cheered when Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear and applaud every time a person has to hear Donald Trump say, "You're fired."
Anyway, I'm still counting on the predictability of the musical cycle and preparing myself for the uprising of the boy band.
Currently, I have hired both a vocal and dance coach. I plan to incorporate tools from successful music artists into my bands name, like adding numbers and the word "the." Possible name choices I have devised are "Kids on the New Backstreet" or "The Majestic 525" (a.k.a. "TM 525").
If anyone is at all interested in joining the band you can contact me at the e-mail address below this article.