Grammy.com gets cynical
The above poll was found residing on Grammy.com this week, asking visitors to vote for the "least healthy" sector of the music business. The options:
-- Radio
-- Retail
-- Online music services
-- Music labels
Retail is probably the area suffering the most, what with Tower closing and big consumer electronics chains dominating sales, but the key word here is "least healthy."
It's certainly not "online music services," as digital sales grew 45% in 2007. Music labels would be an easy answer to take, especially from the chorus of online bloggers/readers who endlessly rail that the major labels don't understand the Internet (they're getting better -- dropping DRM is a start).
But the "least healthy" sector is and has been radio. Just revisit this story from the New York Times' Jeff Leeds to get all fired up against radio. As music fans have turned to the Internet as a discovery tool, radio has tightened up.
Leeds' article makes the case by citing the amount of times radio played OneRepublic's "Apologize," with some stations allowing as little as 50 minutes to pass between spins. The strategy: Take even less risks, and keep the listeners you have rather than court new ones.
Have you heard it? "Apologize" is an overly melodramatic tearjerker, filled with mournfully manipulative strings and some over-the-top, oh-so-sorry vocals. It's less a song than a cheap soap opera, but it carries with it the same addictive appeal, and that's likely why radio has stuck with it. But at a time when music fans are more readily adventurous, radio isn't there for them.
But radio isn't what's winning this Grammy poll, and OneRepublic will probably score a Grammy someday.
(Screenshot via Grammy.com / Tip via Idolator.com)
