by Benn Ray
Sometimes the natural inclination of media to follow a meme, especially a flawed one, can yield remarkably nonsensical results.
Take for example the popular story that all things digital/internet/downloadable are revolutionary, positive and changing and improving the way we live. You can't click through any newsblog and not stumble over story after story that subscribes to that narrative.
The story type itself is ludicrous, and when it appears on internet-based media, it also seems like highly suspect media type cheerleading - like if every time you picked up a newspaper or magazine it told you that print media was still dominating the world of reliable journalism or if every time you turned on the nightly news there was a story about how more people still watch tv news than pay for online news.
But Lucas Kavner's story "2011 Year In Culture: The Music Business Redefined (Again)" on The Huffington Post wants so much to cheerlead for digital media and subscribe to the narrative that the internet is a positive force in redefining the music industry by using a handful of questionable anecdotes, it buries its real point - which is that the internet continues to destroy music culture.
Kavner tells the rags to implied "riches" success story of Trevor Powers, AKA Youth Lagoon, "The internet gave him attention and a voice. Then all he had to do was actually perform his songs in front of real people. He had to prove he could do everything else a musician does."
He cites Lana Del Rey, "who was introduced to the world by way of a scrappy YouTube video featuring her sultry, catchy song and her bedroom eyes, made a name for herself seemingly overnight," and Mac Miller, "a teenage hip hop artist from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, [who] took a similarly contemporary route to success."
He also curiously cites the story of Norman Kamaru, an Indonesian policeman who "became a viral sensation after releasing a grainy YouTube video of him lip-synching to a Bollywood song."
And, of course, he obligatorily mentions the embarrassing brief phenomenon that was Rebecca Black.
The thrust of this story is something like "Hey, look at the internet. It's making all these people famous. It's a great and important democratizing tool for music."
And while it is true that Youth Lagoon produced a worthwhile record, it's entirely too early to say the success of Lana Del Rey may not be as unwarranted as Rebecca Black's. Plus, remember Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Exactly.
And finally - someone getting a record contract for a lip syncing video seems more like an indictment of this new way of doing things than something to celebrate.
He romanticizes, "The rules for success in the music industry have changed rapidly over the years," playing into the fallacy of a democratic revolution in the music business. But the very last line of his article reveals a truth that he fails to understand because it doesn't fit into the story he wants so very much to tell.
He admits, "as labels lost more of their power, radio lost listeners, and albums became even more of an afterthought, the music industry continued to redefine itself in 2011."
If labels are on the decline, radio is losing listeners, and no one is buying albums, what exactly is being redefined? Music culture is continuing to collapse, and instead The Huffington Post is celebrating Rebecca Blacks and 6 figure record contracts for lip syncers?
I can't tell if this is just utter nonsense, blatant digital media cheerleading, or both.
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