There was an interesting story in one of my local newspapers yesterday. Sundays are always good days for newspapers, everywhere. They have a backlog of wire features they stick on pages they've already sold advertising for and while you and me read right past the 'pick the best pizza contest' on the back of the article, the display sales folks get all sweaty and worked-up about the readership.
Anyway, the story was about the success of SiriusXM and it was probably in your local paper, too. Not too many years ago there were two satellite radio services each one making just enough to survive without prospering. When they decided to merge they had to persuade Congress they weren't a combination in restraint of trade as alleged by Clear Channel Communications who were, themselves, regarded by many as an affront to people everywhere who enjoyed music for music's sake.
I have no love of Clear Channel as I'm sure you just realized. In their heyday, they were the successors to Drake Chenault, with no heart at all but now they are no longer the dominant FM music programmer in the USA (I don't know if there are ball caps to that effect anywhere or how much they'd cost). I listened to Sirius when it was just Sirius in the days before car radios had satellite as part of the standard equipment packages which meant a sort of blast from the past, with FM converters of the early seventies when AM radio was king.
These were tuners you plugged into the back of the dashboard AM radio and then tuned to 1600kc or thereabouts which was a part of the spectrum rarely used and at which you could then employ the FM synthesizer to tune in the FM Rock stations who were to dominate so much of the radio landscape for the next decades. The trouble was the folks who owned those stations got bought by the suits who needed more profits and knew how to make that happen: standardization and syndication.
Yeah, it made for sound-alike radio stations that were cookie-cutter creations, but most of us didn't care and in the big scheme of things as pursuit of MBAs became paramount over original thought and independent ethics and morals, it was the perfect soundtrack for the lives we led. Eventually it led to the invention of satellite radio which brings us to SiriusXM and now, reading the article, the next iteration of music delivery and programming. And Jose Mangin should tread more carefully. If he's hanging his hat on the crap and pap that often passes for music on his employer, he'd be best-advised to go bareheaded.
I stopped my subscription to SiriusXM shortly after the two services merged because of the attractiveness of alternatives like Slacker, Pandora, Spotify and, much more recently, Ear Bits. The latter offers me an almost unending stream of new music and musicians whose acquaintance I had not previously made. I can always fall back on one of the other providers when I need a Bruce fix or a dash of Amazing Groundhogs or Frightened Rabbit.
I realize music is a business-but it's more magic than money, or should be. It's one of the wonders of the world that has too often become part of the machinery and scenery surrounding us on all sides of the journey. We are in danger of forgetting it's an expression of our experiences, the good and the bad, and that we should celebrate it always.
-bill kenny
No comments:
Post a Comment