Thursday, April 05, 2007

Take back the TV

This interesting and doubtless widely linked op-ed in the New York Times correctly identifies the role of record company idiocy in killing their market as they now watch the digital music revolution pass them by, but it could also have mentioned the industry's disastrous passivity in allowing MTV to control a key part of its marketing infrastructure -- the distribution of music videos. MTV (US) told rock fans a long time ago to go to hell, unless what they liked was on their current 5-10 song heavy rotation list, and even that gets played fewer and fewer times a day. Which is pretty much what the wasteland of FM radio did as well.

You can't sell new records when most of your market can't hear (or see) them. Notice that the MTV Empire does allow viewers to see lots of hip-hop videos through the widely available MTV Jams and VH1 Soul channels. Is there any rock act with the means of generating the buzz that a new Kanye West or Jay-Z video can create?

No comments: