There was a time when the sounds that came through the speakers of someone's radio really meant something. Ask Richard Connolly about it. Connolly, chair of the Communications/Media Arts program at SUNY Rockland Community College, grew up practically tied to his radio. In the late 40s and early 50s, Connolly said he used to bike around Rockland with his radio in search of the clearest signal of the only rock and roll station whose frequency made it to the suburbs. "My life was changed by radio, and rock and roll music," Connolly said. He added that there was no other way that he could've heard the sounds that came from his toy radio, and that his life wouldn't have been the same without it. Like so many others from that time, Connolly discovered the great artists of that era on the radio, and then went to the record store to buy their records. The way people listen to and purchase music has drastically changed since then, while some things remain the same. For one thing, music still changes peoples' lives. More practically, the model for buying music stayed the same until very recently. Young people would find out about new bands from the radio-and later MTV-and then go to the store to buy the artist's work. More recently, the record store has become a personal computer and music is bought and sold in digital files, rather than plastic disks. According to data from Nielsen Soundscan, Americans downloaded 16 million albums in 2005, which is almost three times as many as in the previous year. At the same time, CD sales fell 21 percent since 2000, from 785 million to 619 million albums. These statistics are proof that the music industry has entered the digital age as gracefully as a man running full speed down a hill with his pants around his ankles. If nothing else, the industry has yet to give consumers any good reasons to buy CDs. Why drive miles to Tower Records for a few hours of music when you can more easily download hundreds of hours of music into a tiny, transportable mp3 player? All of the options for musicians on the radio as well as on the Internet make the music world intriguing, but hard to navigate. On the one hand, there are a select few artists who get massive amounts of airplay on the major TV channels and radio stations. Compare that with the countless bands and artists whose music can be found fairly easily online. It's like choosing between swimming in a pool that's only 2 feet deep or a polluted ocean. Overall, it seems that many are shifting away from the traditional formats for finding music-radio and record stores-and doing it all online. "I used to listen to a lot of radio when I was a kid and up through my early teens," said Matthew Perpetua, founder of Fluxblog.org, which provides reviews of underground artists and posts their mp3s. "Before the rampant telecommunications mergers that came after 1996, mainstream radio in the Hudson Valley was much more interesting - the rock stations were a lot more adventurous and played a fair amount of older obscurities and new indie rock along with the big hits by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, U2, etc.," Perpetua, who grew up in the Hudson Valley said. "It felt like you could get a reasonably good education in music from regular radio stations back then, which is virtually impossible with the super-tight playlisting that goes on today," he said. A quick glance at the radio giants confirms this. The weekly playlist that Z100, a Clear Channel, pop station, posts on their website reveals that a total of 30 songs by 28 artists were put in heavy rotation during the week of April 25. Hot97, a hip hop and R&B station, lists 24 songs by 22 artists that got heavy rotation that week. As for modern rock stations-there are none in New York City, after the demise of 92.3 K-Rock in January. Many RCC students are disenchanted with radio and prefer other ways of getting their music. "I barely listen to the radio anymore" said sophomore Laura Kanaplue, who co-hosts a radio show called "Ourspace" on Rockland World Radio, which only broadcasts on the Internet. "It used to be a form of entertainment and musical content where I got to hear new and interesting kinds of music, but I think it's all so over-played now, it's hard to really listen to a station on a regular basis," Kanaplue said. There's no doubt that in this day and age, not only has radio become filled with irritating commercials, it's extremely commercialized. Only the most "radio-friendly" artists have a hope of ever hearing their voice on the airwaves. "I used to listen to the radio all day when I was younger. It has gotten worse, just seems like one big commercial," said 19-year-old, Patrick Berwise, a sophomore. Many in the radio industry agree that it is now harder for alternative artists to break. "If Jimmy Hendrix, or Janis Joplin, were emerging today, they would have never been signed to a major label," said Ian Rygiel, the station manager for WSOU 89.5, Seton Hall's student radio station, which has often been praised for playing rock music that would never have a chance on corporate stations. Rygiel said college radio still has an advantage over Internet stations because record labels still look to them for up-and-coming bands. He credited WSOU for helping bands like Thursday and My Chemical Romance get their big break. Some studies show the decline in sales and shipments of CDs to be directly linked to downloading sites, while others contend there is no connection. A study done in the fall of 2002 by researchers from the Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that downloading has essentially no affect whatsoever on CD sales. The study was unique in that it relied upon data pulled directly from file-sharing services, and observed over 1.75 million downloads take place. In a press release concerning the study, the results were striking. They found that at the very worst, it takes 5,000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by a single copy. If this worst-case scenario were true, file sharing would have reduced CD sales by 2 million copies in 2002. In reality, CD sales actually declined by 139 million copies from 2000 to 2002. Other studies have found just the opposite. A study done by professors at the University of Pennsylvania found that "the US music industry lost one fifth of a sale for each album downloaded from the Internet." Some student accounts appear to reinforce this finding. "When you were younger and you liked one song, you would by that band's or musician's album," Kanaplue said. "Now, if you like the single you can just download it via iTunes or Limewire or whatever you prefer." Others point the finger right back at the music industry when it comes to their struggles to maintain sales and listeners. "Somehow I get the feeling that most mainstream music has become empty, loud, and often brainless because artists and producers focus more on the [money] to be made, and less on the artistic value of music," said student Carlos Brizuela, 20. There is no denying that the quest for the dollar is the driving force behind every business, and the music business is certainly no exception. "The music industry's woes are a direct result of their own greed," Rygiel said. Rygiel said that CDs have an extremely high mark up price from what it costs manufacturers to produce them, and that artists receive only "pennies" from each sale. "Taking $20 from a nameless, faceless corporation does not seem like so great an offense. Couple this with the perceived decline in music quality, and people are less likely to spend the money when they know they can get a song they like for free," Rygiel said. So what is to be done about all this? Following the example of musician Richard Quinn would be a start. Quinn founded Rockland World Radio five years ago, and although they broadcast exclusively online, they have been able to "take their art to the people," he said. The democratizing effect of the Internet has turned out to be a very good thing, he said, because it gives bands "more opportunity to be heard not only in their neighborhood, but across the country and the world." It appears that artists cannot only be heard without mainstream exposure, they can thrive too. "Honestly, there is not much that commercial radio is doing now, that cannot be accomplished online," Rygiel said. "Playing the same four Rolling Stones songs on a station has become moot," Rygiel said, "especially when a Rolling Stones fan can easily have their entire catalog on an MP3 player in their car."
Outlook Student Press > Entertainment
Lost signals, lost dollars
The decline of traditional music formats
Published: Thursday, May 18, 2006
Updated: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 02:08
Be the first to comment on this article!