The Homogenization of Music

I was scouring some of my favorite mp3 blogs this morning to check out what else is out there in the world and I stumbled upon an interested piece of an interview [in addition to some great music.] I've never heard of this guy giving the interview but he had a very interesting thought process when it came to commercial music that I thought the rest of the world should see so I'm paying it forward.

From the folks at Captain Obvious...


Obvious: Dude, I was surprised to see that you have an artist page on CMT.com. Which brings me to this.. why does popular country music suck so terribly?

Burr: That's another great question. First off, it's always funny to me to see myself there, because it's just an odd combination. But I still take it as a compliment. If anyone's willing to accept my music as it is, and introduce me to a new audience, then I'm game. Anyway, I'm not real sure how pop country came to be this way. I think the nineties and the Clinton de-regulation of the airwaves killed commercial pop as a whole because it just got so homogenized. I mean commercial airwaves is how major labels have to sell their product - that's their only shot because their overhead is so ridiculously high. It's really a broken model... but when de-regulation happened and now 90% of domestic commercial airwaves are owned by two corporations, you have this homogenization that's occurred with playlists being forced down from on high and accommodating less diversity of sound and artists...The people at the top care about maximizing the profit dollar only - I mean it *is* business - and the way to do that is to water down the sound so each song/record hits the widest market segment possible. Pedal steel now becomes "too ethnic." And banjo too, etc. You've got a bunch of people hailing Cash and Townes Van Zandt, but none of these artists sound anything like them. It's a weird thing. I don't fully understand it. But there's plenty of people in line that just want to make it. They just want to sing - doesn't really matter what.

And there are times you just can't follow something so eloquently said.