Culture for Dollars, Part 1: The Music Industry

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A trend in our society today seems to revolve around sacrificing culture for the sake of increasing profits. This is not an isolated event; the music industry, agriculture/food industry, the movie industry, and many other sectors have been affected. During my lifetime, I have personally witnessed the downfall of the music industry. Mainstream music, in my opinion, has progressively lost any shred of musical innovation over the last few decades. If you need specific examples, turn on the radio. It is just disgusting that this is what is deemed "popular" and shoved down the throats of the masses. Most mainstream music is created purely for the purpose of making money and lacks artistic value, lyrically and musically.  This is due to the music companies' choice to spend less money to create the music, as to increase profit. In many cases, record labels will simply "remix" an already popular song; allowing them to make more money without actually creating something new.

The way the music industry is structured gives record labels a majority of the profits made by the artists under their name. If music-buyers knew the money they were spending would go directly to the artist (see Radiohead), they would more likely purchase the albums rather than download them for free illegally. I believe this, increasingly lower quality mainstream music, and the availability of online file-sharing services/sites have led to the downfall of the music industry; as indicated by music sales cutting in half since 1999. It's only going to get worse from here if music doesn't return to its state as a pure art form, untouched by greedy businessmen.

Read more:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/
http://www.asuherald.com/opinion/mainstream-music-lacks-soul-1.2381202