ClearChannel Heads

Despite the title, I am NOT interested in all those urban legends about songs being banned by ClearChannel for being 'inflammatory' - although, maybe I am.

Dave, aren't there as many failed 'manufactured' chart pop acts as successful ones?(This may of course be part of the "throw enough shit at the wall and see what sticks" conspiracy theory...)It's the gap between producer and audience - in terms what IS and ISN'T 'bought' (in every sense) - that still makes chartpop interesting.

And I'm not sure the collectables market comparison is an accurate one, 'cos that's based on inflating demand by creating (supposedly) 'limited' editions, whereas chartpop is all about "unlimited supply".

There are obviously top-down forces at work in (indeed, controlling) the music industry, payola still exists, etc., but because some millions of people end up liking the Backstreet Boys anyway this hardly makes them dupes or something. People buy chart pop because they LIKE it, not because they THINK they like it (your assumption being that they only think they like it because someone told them to), unless, that is, you know something about every one of those people that they don't (in which case, by thinking so you'd be making the exact same mistake that the uppers can--and do--make: i.e., no one can, ultimately, make any solid assumptions or predictions about the audience, at least not any long-ranging ones). Anyway, I'm probably as weary and cynical about how the record industry is organized as anyone, but that doesn't mean I can't still cherish some of music (even the most marketed and hyped) that comes down the pike. That doesn't make me a minion, it makes me a fan.

One other thing: you're damn right I "invest significance" in stuff I buy, be it records, action figures, or cutlery. Would you really want it any other way?

Two models for lyric writing.
MODEL A: Band members write lyrics themselves. Results in arcane drivel that is only meaningful to the writers.

MODEL B: Lyrics writing department of multinational megalocorporation writes lyrics to be approved by marketing department who sends it to record company to send to record label to send to A&R to send to the bands management, who then in turn checks it over and hands it to the band. Results in silly piffle that isn't meaningful to anybody.

If you want some reaaaallly insteresting conspiracy theories, check out the "Corrupted CD" thread I just put up.

People buy chart pop because they LIKE it, not because they THINK they like it (your assumption being that they only think they like it because someone told them to)

Yes, they like it - but that doesn't mean they like it (Backstreet Boys, as an example) more than they would have liked "Joey and the Dream Knitters" - if only some corporate exec had given them the same push. The music industry is not a democratic society, nor is there a hierarchy based on talent. It's based on which side of the bed the exec wakes up on, who has the best hair, who's got the payola, what reminds the decision maker of his junior-high choir recital, and whatever other factors apply at the second the decision is made... "Who are we going to push?" determines what is successful - it has nothing to do with craft.

It's entirely possible to say that "People like pop music genuinely" and "The range of pop music that people hear should be greater" and mean both. I do. As it is, records from a huge number of genres and styles do get pushed - most of them preach to the converted, sales- wise. A more interesting question perhaps - assuming the business is sewn-up, what would you *like* to be pushed?

(NB - the UK with its no-airplay charts requires different manipulation and corruption methods to the US, of course.)

Dave 225 (same person as Dave Q?), I don't actually disagree with you- -yes, "the music industry is not a democratic society." It's horribly un-democratic; Dave Marsh rightly calls the labels "cartels." My point was that this does not somehow make the audience's response to the music on the radio any less valid or genuine. Such suggestions inherently assume that people are sheep.

Andrew has a good point in mentioning that not all heavily pushed bands manage to succeed. A case in point--Brendan Benson, a musician who was heavily promoted in the early-mid nineties to no avail. His debut album was selling for $1.99 within a year after its release. In fact, I would have completely forgotten about him if it weren't for his recent re-emergence (apparently he has a new album and new promotion--a second chance almost unheard of in this industry). This seems to support the "throw shit at the wall" theory, and also the theory that the masses who love Britney actually do really love Britney by choice as opposed to through brainwashing.

I hate to say it, but it's damn difficult to underestimate the taste and intelligence of the American population.....

Liner notes to a Rub-A-Dub Dancehall comp I own describe relative lack of sonic innovation in early 80s, attributing to poverty b/c new beats A) cost more to produce and B) meant record buyers would have to take a risk. Possible parallels to low-consumption (12 cd) pop fans & also to no limit?

Am I alone in listening to a lot of pop, and a lot of other music, and thinking that pop serves the function it plays in my life/society - i.e. being played in public a lot - better than any other music I listen to? I mean I love Piano Magic, say, or the new Acid Mothers Temple album but I simply would not enjoy it as much (beyond the initial gosh-wow novelty) if I flicked on my radio and heard "Industrial Cutie" or "Universe Of Romance" instead of "Izzo (HOVA)" or "Closer To You".

But doesn't it taint that pleasure just a little when you realize that whoever's selling this music is ALSO thinking, "Get this played in public alot, people will associate it with going out or whatever, so whenever they want to summon up that feeling we've already embedded the triggers into this pre-fabricated soundtrack so deeply the consumer will believe they made the association themselves, ker- chinnng!" Not that that's EVIL, it's just marketing. But while pop fans just BUY it, critics (and aforementioned) collectors edge on celebrating having stuff sold to them so cleverly without even knowing they're doing it!

I don't think you are Tom, but what kind of pop comes out when you turn on the pop-box gets batted around endlessly by the likes of VH-1 in a kind of sociologic amateur night, where America's (or insert Western possessive noun here) imperatives and desires are reflected by what pop they "demand" - not hair metal but rap, not 'conscious' rap but bling bling, not new wave but grunge ("the kids want this, they turn away from that, etc"). Even this is dubious history and wilfully ignorant of cynical record co. strategies, but to try and draw some kind of futher social insight from what specific groups make it or don't is just pure fictional skylarking after the fact, because there are a whole host of both coincidences and strong- arm tactics involving CC, record companies, promoters, and etc that have far more to do with the success or failure of singles and albums than any actual mass decision-making by the public. There is a TON of music out there and economies of scale will dictate what makes it past a certain threshold. Crucial exceptions being the Cha Cha Slide, Mambo No. 5, the Macarena, and Who Let the Dogs Out. After I write this I feel that I'm missing something. Anyway: uh, I'm with Dave.

Tracer- exactly. Said it far better than I could've.

I think though that the kind of VH1-esque commentary you're talking about is trying to be about America's aspirations and desires, or rather the commentator's relationship with those aspirations - and as long as this is kept reasonably explicit, no harm done. History and logic have little to do with it - pop is a convenient symbol-set for writing about anything else you want to. A social and economic history of all mass-produced music would be a history of occasionally conflicting but mostly complimentary marketing strategies, sure - but where does acknowledging that actually get us?

My hunch that consumer preference still plays a role (albeit a choosing-from-a-menu role rather than a home-cooking role) isn't based on my hobby of pop-listening (I still find the listening habits and thought processes of most pop fans really bizarre) but on my job as a market researcher. As Mark S is fond of saying on the ILE political threads, the conspirators are simply not that clever - they wouldn't pay the likes of my employers funny money to be told things if they had the iron grip on the consumer mind being posited here.

(BTW - I'm a different Dave than dave q...)

I don't think that the people listening to the music don't genuinely like it. But as I said above, I think they accept it as being the best thing the record company has to offer, hence its popularity. In reality, there are 1001 suitable substitutes that never see the light of day & that the fans would just as readily listen to. They would still "like" it because it's fun, entertaining, free-spirited music. You can't call it artistic (well, maybe you can) - but the people that listen to N'Sync don't care about artistic, they care about fun, which is just fine. But one fun band is as good as any other, and the reason one is more successful than 1001 others is purely luck and marketing.

"luck and marketing".

But what is marketing if not an extension of the artistic process? It gets talked about here as if it's some kind of magical fairy dust.

marketing = kerrazy fractalization of art into varied material nooks and crevices; California Raisins beach towels, Britney lunchboxes. YES it is "art" and powerful too; the "essence" (i.e. official branding) of the ostensibly valued objet (the CD, or "the music") gets dispersed in many vectors - the subway platform, TV specials, money passed from hand to hand at radio stations - all blessed by the talent controllers. agreed there are many misses among the hits, which makes me wonder why the labels take such enormous risks by putting so many eggs in one O-Town basket. but surely it is due to the genius of the industry accountants that they can pull it off, like successful gamblers at the racetrack - not of the marketers, who are often laughably not n*sync with what is "cool". [can "mistakes" in marketing yield fantastic pop culture, like the rolling stones fucking up bo diddley to extremely entertaining effect? (jem and the holograms anyone?) do the somewhat dire examples of this reveal how limited marketing is as an art form?]

you know this whole thing can turn real chicken and eggy if i keep on like this so someone steer me straight. i really don't want to turn this all into "who makes the nazis". but i think success and failure of chartpop as barometer of national mood IS more problematic than it has been in the past, due to the forces dave q describes (and nonsense dave you explained it quite well really; if this question were a bottle you did most of the loosening) but ALSO due to 2) increasing atomization of genre and audience.

Precisely this atomization may be then the indicator? No?

of what, Sterling my silver machine?

indicators of national mood. nation != one nation, mood != one mood, dynamics between atomized demographics = way to approach dynamics of nation. & coz, regardless of who the chicken and egg are, there is a relationship between work/audience, then it doesn't even matter if ppl. are being marketed to or not, because people are marketed to in all walks of life.

Co-branding (the Britney lunchboxes) is a subset of branding which is a subset of marketing. Maybe in pop threads we need to get an idea of what marketing actually is. So here's my idea:

You buy a record - any record, Britney or Aesop Rock or Travis Tritt or whoever. Marketing is a) however you heard of/noticed that record's existence; b) whatever anticipation you might have as to what that record is like. Marketing can be done badly, or crassly, or unethically - of itself it is neither evil nor escapable.

You can substitute almost any noun for "record" and almost any transitive verb for "buy" too.

Tom, I hear you saying that it's more fun to listen to music that's marketed to a lot of people than it is to listen to music that's marketed to few people, or not marketed at all. I understand this feeling; it's the same feeling I get when I read the New York Times, or when I follow CNN's account of an air travel disaster instead of NY1's. You're hearing what other people hear, and you feel connected to them. This phenomenon is known elsewhere as "print capitalism" - mass-distributed "news" (and pop surely is news in some way) consumed privately and individually, but whose scale suggests a national framework of co-consumers. You read the paper alone, but with the knowledge that 10,000 eyes are reading the same thing, at virtually the same instant. You hear Jay-Z on the radio and you hear it alone, but with the knowledge that 10,000 other ears haven't just switched it off the way that they might switch off, say, Piano Magic. What determines which groops gets switched off, and what groops are allowed the privilege of visiting in your home or car? Marketing, I guess you will say. And you are probably right.

It is my contention that almost any dickhead who really likes music and has been playing an instrument for a while could be in almost any band that ever existed. I have another contention, too. I think most of the lyrics out there could have been written by any darn fool. It's great when bands make it to the top all by themselves, but most people don't care enough about childhood fantasies to bother embarassing themselves weekly in clubs, living in reclusive weirdo hipster scenes, chasing dreams of money, respect and groupies.

All that aside, nothing NEEDS to happen and no band saves the day, really. It's the same generation of people that graduate from college and pursue entertainment careers as those who pursue non-entertainment careers. So the A&R guys who earn $20k a year and a bunch of free tickets to events grew up on the same available music as everyone else and are out there looking for something different or something really moving. And the people in bands are looking to make something different or moving. And it all comes in spurts. (!) After a decade of hard music, soft music seems more interestering to a lot of people, but music that is even harder than before or harder in a different way seems interesting to a lot of people. After 4 man bands playing powerchords, it's suddenly more interesting to have 2 guys getting the most out of their instruments or 6 guys playing different instruments or one girl singing to a prerecorded digital mix or bands playing instruments that seem long-forgotten like accordians and ukeles. Everyone's a fan of music, whether you're in the audience or in the band and for every band that breaks big there's got to be at least a handful of other bands doing the same thing that are never heard from.

In short, bands don't really impress me or inspire me much. Often, I just feel embarrassed for them, although there are exceptions here and there and most of those exceptions are probably in the rock n' roll hall of fame, boringly enough. The performers that are just hugely legendary are often just as embarrassing to watch as the new brats, but there is usually something very fine-tuned about the entire presentation that is the reason for their legendary status.

When a band comes out of the woodwork with a self-produced album that is just different and amazing, I am really impressed. When a band evolves out of a scene that is produced by Mr. Guy on the scene, it's expected.

Spock - I agree up to a point, but you're still positing all this activity in an economic vacuum - A&R guys looking for something 'moving'?

re 'Print capitalism' - everyone seems to really resent that in pornography, so why is it OK in pop?

Pornography affects to replicate what has traditionally been a 'private' activity (fucking), whereas pop affects to replicate the making of and listening to music, traditionally a 'public' activity.

If 'pop' is a replication, and pop/music = pornography/actual sex, then does that make popcrit a closed-system pursuit like the 'collectors' indulge in? Are pop fans just consumers of Polygram like Star Wars heads are Hasbro's core revenue source?

The analogy is recorded/performance = porn/sex rather than pop/music, which suggests generic boundaries I'm not intending to draw. And like I said on ILE yesterday, porn and sex are different activities requiring different frames of discussion. As for revenue streams, not quite sure what you're getting at here but I get all my porn and most of my pop free.

If marketing was the issue, it wouldn't be so bad. It's more like, if you listen primarily to any kind of mainstream music in the US, be it top 40, AOR, R&B or country (or all of them), Clear Channel is pretty much single-handedly deciding what you will get to hear and not hear, no matter where you live in this country. There's no way that this can be healthy.

I agree that its unhealthy for the reasons monopolies generally are. But you-the-listener never really had any control over what you listened to on broadcast channels, surely (bar request shows). It's purely its monopolistic practises that make Clear Channel worse than any other playlisting radio station.

Isn't there an element of masochism in engaging in a pursuit in which you have no control over? And even more so when the control is exerted by people you have moral objections to? I know, most of LIFE involves doing stuff you object to, but consuming music does involve a small element of choice, or effort.

On the contrary, you have total control in a sense because you get to decide, as an active listener, how you wish to understand and react to what you hear.

Sort of like I have total control over how I react and understand to that hand slapping my face.

Or how I have total control over which washing-up liquid to buy. There are so many choices, and all of them are fairly high-quality!

Equating result of music to hand slapping face = crass determinism, except perhaps for Lou Reed's MMM where the result is fairly predictable. Also, you have options of tabs or bleach or colorsafe or concentrated or non-concentrated or fruit scent or pine scent or.. I mean, christ, what would you rather wash with?

Not to mention which laundry detergent has immediate use value, wheras the very question of the utility of music is still not fully answered.

Okay, I know that was totally unhelpful. But I'm just sick of always hearing about how I can "read" Britney Spears "oppositionally" or something. It's cold comfort if I hate her music (which I do, mainly, though I don't hate her, or what she represents).

What reading oppositionally then? I mean -- you don't hate what she represents, which is what an oppositional reading would be about, but you just don't like the music -- which reminds me that the second and oft forgotten componant of active reader theory is the ability to *turn off* something you dislike.

Oh, no, I wasn't saying it was all up to the A&R guys. I was saying that everyone eats from the same pile whether they're the sort of people who'd be in audience, in the band or backstage waving contracts. Certainly, not EVERYONE listens to the exact same music, but in general there is one pot of music for all. So, what I was saying is congratulating bands for breaking barriers and pushing the envelope or whatever is kind of like congratulating the sun for rising every day. If these shleps didn't do it, someone else would have. And I was also trying to make the point that, while I think this is generally true, there are some performers who just have "star power" that is so obvious it makes them special. But, this doesn't make them any less embarrassing to watch. Basically, I don't agree with the idea that a band should be treated like they were the first to land on the moon or something because their album "changed everything", as VH1 might say. That's all. For the record, I never heard of ClearChannel, so I probably took this whole thing into left field. Sorry about that.

but spock there are quickly becoming MANY pots of music, each one more specifically defined and more aggressively marketed to. a general "music magazine" can't begin to cover it all anymore. VH1 and mTV (and maybe TotP in UK) are the last venues to even pretend to speak for - and to - the whole listening public. but because so many strands have quickly spiralled utterly beyond their control (witness the confusing and overlapping grab-bag of demographic genres on the billboard charts), those tie-it-all together narratives about "what the kids like" put out by VH1 are like alibis or cover stories for what they want to sell us NOW. not, Tom, evil smoke-filled-room shams to "put one over on us" but just the easy way out; wahtever makes the most sense to industry execs and doc writers at the mo, given their extremely narrow field of actual interests and current projects on the boil.

i feel like this is fairly self-evident. the next qu, and maybe it belongs on tom's marketing thread, is why ARE smart and informed music listeners so wary of being marketed to, of having stories told to them about their music by the corporations that finance it - even though, as has been convincingly argued, it's these stories that build much of the goodwill and acceptance that lays the groundwork for the music to be successful in the first place? gurk!

Er, um, this very place kinda runs contrary to what you just said. There's one big pot and it has nothing to do with MTV or any magazine. How else could there be so many opinionated people on this one little board spouting off about the most obscure acts ever heard of back to back with the most popular acts of today? Obviously, we aren't stuck in little niches and certain music isn't only available to card carrying members. The fact that so many Britney Spears lovers here have plenty to say about obscure 60s garage rock and oddball stuff like Happy Flowers and Anal Cunt is a pretty good indicator that the "pot" I'm referring to is not some quantifiable result of promotional marketing. The pot is word of mouth, period. That's how everyone runs into some of their favorite bands... and then it just keeps happening until suddenly you find yourself staring at a bunch of records that map out your lifelong treasure hunt. If you were to start putting little notes in the sleeves of your albums that said where you heard about this album and then organized them in a timeline fashion, you'd probably scare yourself one day as you went back through and read the notes again: "1983- Thurston Moore said something about Captain Beefheart. I bought 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby'" Opening Lick My Decals, another note reads: "Didn't like this one too much but the guy in the store said 'Trout Mask Replica' was Beefheart's ultimate classic." Opening Trout Mask: "It took a while but this is really cool and weird. Guy in record store also suggested Pere Ubu and seems a lot more talkative and friendly now that I got this stuff." Opening Pere Ubu: "Man, this sucks..."

Afterthought: I just burned a mix CD at the request of my girlfriend's dad, a 53 year old contractor. Some of his selections: Jim Carol's "People Who've Died", The Mission's "Mr. Pleasant", The Kinks "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", the Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star", Psychedelic Fur's "Pretty In Pink" and Modern English "I Melt With You" and Taco's "Puttin' On The Ritz".

I won't bother listing the rest, but Jim Carol surprised the hell out of me, as did some of these other weird selections (he's a big Classic Rock fan). My girlfriend never heard the Jim Carol song and when I played it for her she laughed and said, "Yep, my dad's a little off".

I'm highly suspicious of anyone who claims to be above or immune to marketing - usually what they mean is that they can withstand the pull of one set of press hype by focusing in on another. One of the things that made me hate Travis, Moby and Macy more than was strictly necessary last year was that, quite apart from being all quite bland, they were heavily marketed (at least in Australia) as the choice for consumers who didn't like being marketed to or 'following the herd' - inevitably they were massively successful. Which wouldn't matter to me in the slightest if it hadn't given so many people I know cause to behave smugly over the music they were listening to when in fact it was by and large awful (to turn this around, I can equally understand why anti-pop people would find the argument that "we listen to pop because we're independent, not indie-drones" meaningless and hypocritical, though I reckon that argument has almost always been inferred rather than articulated).

Ultimately, we are all subject to the same processes of interpellation, so we either focus on the level of autonomy we share or we conclude gloomily that all taste = subjection. MTV, Pitchfork, Freaky Trigger, whatever - all are pushing an agenda that certain consumers are going to lap up precisely because that agenda appeals to them. Taking pride in the economic independence of one's chosen agenda is as far as I'm concerned a very weak argument for the superiority of one's tastes.

The difference, I think, is that the Pitchfork agenda probably and the FT agenda certainly are exempt from the profit motives of the MTV agenda. Not that I'm being normative about "indie" sites here anymore than I am usually about "indie" music.

I guess I missed what this entire thread was about, thanks to not understanding Clear Channel. Tim completely lost me, especially with the last sentence about superior taste in music, as if there is such a thing. If it had anything at all to do with my posts, I'd like to point out that I never said economic independence of an artist that I appreciate means I have superior taste or that they are superior in some way, nor did I imply taste was anything other than subjective. I've noticed the tendency on the IL* boards for very wordy, heady arguments about really simple subjects. I find it hard to dive in an unmurk the murkiness of these debates. IL*ers muddy shallow waters to make them appear deep!

taking sides: muddy vs. shallow

Shallow!

Nude Spock, I wasn't referring to your posts at all, so rest easy - though I'm shocked and appalled that you imply I'm wordy (how could anyone think such a thing?!?).

I was in fact referring to what I read as being one of Dave Q's initial suggestions - that pop fans actually liking music is irrelevant when they're basically told what to like, and then the ensuing debates over the level of influence marketing holds. So, yeah, "superiority" is the wrong word to use - I'm referring more to concepts like the "independence", "autonomy" or "authenticity" of one's tastes.

The question is, where does the process of interpellation-through-hype/saturation stop? When does one's listening habits escape such constraints? Is the person who buys what NME suggests more autonomous, or is that reserved for the Wire subscriber? The counter-argument is that the savvy listener co-ordinates information from a number of different sources, but hey! So do a lot of pop listeners, and not only self-conscious ILM-frequenting ones.

Of course the monopolistic nature of US radio stations and labels is a terribly disappointing state of affairs, and I don't think that MTV or its equivalents' role as a profit-getter can be easily discounted from the issue, but at the same time I don't think that has any bearing on the ability of the MTV-watcher to make valid and independent critical judgements of the music they listen to.

Hey, I wasn't naming names!!