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Frank Zappa on the Music Industry's Decl...

Frank Zappa explains the decline of the music industry and his perspective on where things went wrong. He also talks briefly about society dealing with edgy music.

  • Tada
  • posted by Tada
  • Date 4/24/2009 9:53:03 PM
  • Views: 3123
  • All Ages
  • All Ages

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15 Comments

Current View: 15 / Show all Comments

minusslade : LVL 21: VP 3: said:

minusslade

25 votes NegativePositive

197 days 13 hours ago...

Zappa always wins, even if he isn`t playing.

The Living End : LVL 58: VP 5: said:

The Living End

35 votes NegativePositive

197 days 12 hours ago...

There`s tons of good music and scads of really great bands out there, you`ve just got to know where to look. I`ll give you a hint, it`s not on the radio or MTV(and the like).

Tada : LVL 43: VP 5: said:

Tada

20 votes NegativePositive

197 days 9 hours ago...

^No one doubts that there are good music out there but the question is why aren`t they being played on the radio or MTV. Remember that The Beatles, The Stones and Hendrix were all in the mainstream, with a level of fame Miley Cyrus could only dream of when they were doing "Sgt. Pepper", "Are You Experienced?" and "Exile On Main Street". Today if you`re trying to do anything remotely experimental which might not sell, you`re going to have a hard time getting a record deal and make a living as a musician. Simple capitalism, the harder it is to make living doing something the less likely people are in doing that. A lot of people might want to focus on music but if it`s between paying bills and feeding you kids vs. doing music, the large scale outcome is obvious.

The truth is that exposure counts, people don`t just automatically find good music. They don`t know how, if the industry did something to help them do that and not just shove the latest from whomever in their faces, the world would be a much better place in terms of music.

exploder : LVL 49: VP 5: said:

exploder

8 votes NegativePositive

197 days 6 hours ago...

^ The whole music industry was nearly virgin territory for selling new music to the baby boomers. And the industry rode that wave of free money, and eventually figured out that that the music is mostly just an excuse for the real product, which is culture/image goo, created by marketing. Once the big players had consolidated nearly total ownership of the entire business, they had the full control they needed over the marketing venture, so they no longer had to worry much about pesky details like artistic virtue and integrity.

And of course it has not been in the interest of big business to sell or promote anything that can`t be mass marketed and manufactured. So once music became a well established massive industry, they promoted values in line with their business interests, not values that might be more in line with true spirit of the musical arts, like experimentalism.

It fit well in a world with 13 channels on the TV. It`s not a creative artistic venue, it`s a mass marketing capital venture.

Simple capitalism: big mass markets always produce plastic crap that reliably fails to feed the soul.

IMHO, we need to impliment a absolute cap on maximum total earnings for everyone. Make it high, even millions a year. But keep it small enough that people might as well do something more creative or ethical or interesting, because they simply aren`t allowed to make infinite money doing mass market bullshit. It would also help discourage the motives for massive corruption. Until we figure out that there is such a thing as too much, and admit how badly it fucks our culture up, we are going to stay in a heap of trouble.

Sev : LVL 42: VP 5: said:

Sev

25 votes NegativePositive

197 days 6 hours ago...

I love how they censor the word "masturbation". It kind of undermines the message.

Alphamatroxom : LVL 33: VP 4.2: said:

Alphamatroxom

Hidden (Show Comment) -12 votes

197 days 2 hours ago...

I can`t even watch this. My former room mate was such a Zappa freak I loathe his very existence

Pfeil : LVL 34: VP 4.2: said:

Pfeil

9 votes NegativePositive

197 days 1 hour ago...

Frank Zappa for President 2012!


(yes i know he is dead fucktards)

johnpaulbland : LVL 39: VP 4.7: said:

johnpaulbland

-3 votes NegativePositive

197 days ago...

CD`s are obsolete and way too expensive. If there happens to be a music industry manager out there I have the solution. Sell the albums in the sd card format in little jars at supermarket checkouts, off licences and such for a price of 3€ per album (5€ max). The sd card you sell needs to hold each of the three formats in one: sd ;mini sd and micro sd to fit the various devices we can use it on. The jar would have the advert for the band on the front and would be self service. I know i`d buy a reasonably cheap album but i`d rather have a kick in the face than buy an album for 18€.

hg_Gt : LVL 41: VP 4.9: said:

hg_Gt

2 votes NegativePositive

196 days 17 hours ago...

wtf did i see @ 2:17-2:20?

Flynn_2006 : LVL 45: VP 5: said:

Flynn_2006

1 votes NegativePositive

196 days 16 hours ago...

Sigur Ros is my kind of music for life.

ParticleMan420 : LVL 40: VP 4.8: said:

ParticleMan420

2 votes NegativePositive

196 days 10 hours ago...

i usually find Exploder full of shit, but he`s spot on this time (except the profit cap thing).

its the consumers that need to get a clue. if the mindless sheep dont buy the shit they put out, they wont put it out (kind of like whats going on now w/ the industry). people are sick of shit music and arent buying it, the labels are struggling and blaming piracy on their shitty sales when in fact its their shitty albums and even shittier pricing that is driving people to piracy.

"you expect me to pay WHAT for that piece of shit album for 1 song worth listening to?" fuck that.

and thats no different than when back in the day you would borrow your friends tape and make a copy of it. we`ve just got a worldwide cache of friends willing to let us borrow their tapes

tito_valasques : LVL 32: VP 4.1: said:

tito_valasques

3 votes NegativePositive

196 days 8 hours ago...

Frank Zappa was a great man who fought vehemently for the rights and freedoms of all musical artists (even the ones he didn`t like and made fun of in his music). He was as far as I know the only one that stood up in congress during the mid 80`s and argued against censorship in the music industry.

On another note - Whenever I hear that yet another "artist" has gone Platinum it doesn`t impress me one bit. With all that marketing and radio backing, it seizes to be an accolade due to its musical merits. On top of that it undermines what bands like the Beatles actually accomplished as they did it on their own so to speak. It almost seems like every idiot out there is making it to Platinum nowadays so my solution is to raise the bar on one million sold units to maybe five or even ten million.

^johnpaulbland - I`m not sure whether the printing of CD`s is to blame for the overinflated price tag. I think it`s just greed.

[sic]jester : LVL 34: VP 4.2: said:

[sic]jester

3 votes NegativePositive

196 days 8 hours ago...

Since when is masturbation a curse word?

ryanjm : LVL 30: VP 3.9: said:

ryanjm

-4 votes NegativePositive

196 days 7 hours ago...

A lot of people seem to think anything `mainstream` is bad, and that there are all these hidden gems everywhere that `just never got a break.` While there are a few gems, a lot of that is bullshit. People get rich and famous because they have talent or are selling something that people want (image, sex appeal, etc...). There are a million garage bands and wannabes that think they can sing or have talent (American Idol auditions anyone?), but only a few actually do, and they usually rise to the top.

BudZilla : LVL 15: VP 2.4: said:

BudZilla

0 votes NegativePositive

195 days 11 hours ago...

I could go for some masterbeeeeeeeep.

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