Yup. Another rant. This time it is on the shelf life of pretty much anything. TV shows last a couple years, and only a few, like Friends and ER, are able to make it last that much longer. ER and Friends are both trend breaker's, and even they are stretching things these days. Survivor is and has bee pathetic since the beginning. they began a trend that was doomed to kill someone and I am shocked that three years later it hasn't. It sure has come close.
So, the cause for this article. I was at the store, yeah, I go there a lot, once a day at least, but anyway, I saw a few interesting magazines while waiting in line to ask a question or two. I saw, on the rack, a freshly placed copy of a tribute magazine. Was it a tribute to Paul McCartney and his new bride? Nope. Was it a tribute to the late Darryl Kile of the St. Louis Cardinals? No way, too mushy I am sure. Was it a tribute to any of the many famous names who have been lost in the last year or two? Nope.
It was a tribute to, get this, The Osbournes! A show that has gone great for the year it has been on the air, and the family who stars is now making millions, but the show has already begun to fizzle and die out. Ozzie and his kin have signed for multiple millions of dollars and in the same week it was announced that the ratings for the show has begun to drop off. Go figure. After a year Ozzie and his kids have begun to get boring, but not after his daughter has launched her own musical 'career' with a debut song which is a remake of a song that sucked when it first came out.
So, in this day, music artists that last are few and far between. Rarely would you find an artist like Ozzie, or Metallica, or ZZ Top, hell, even Kenny Rogers, who after decades of performing are still going strong and selling out the places they play. Today's canned artist's and singers just don't have it in them to last. they get over played, over promoted and over sold for a very short time and then they die out, or should die out.
Eminem? He is lucky that he hasn't had his ass kicked for his lyrics. Then there are those who whine that he only got the 5th best selling album, and how he could have done so much better if his album hadn't been leaked to the file swapper's. Oh, don't worry, I always ignore him when he get's off on a anti MP3 tangent.
Britney? No, the little 'virgin' who dresses like a slut, dances like she is the sleaziest thing on the Vegas strip, and then tries to claim she is pure and innocent, she won't last. I'll give her marketer's credit for pushing her this long. Must have kept her clean, or at least any drugs out of the news. She will get pregnant, or be admitted to a rehab like Betty ford, and then her 'career' will be over. Her looks are the only reason she has gone this far, and she knows it.
J-Lo, as she is known, may make it, but she is actually a decent singer. If I actually listened or cared about the latest boy bands, little girl looking singers, or bad ass alternative groups, I might be able to list a couple hundred of the bands who have come and gone within weeks or months. They have brains, some of them, they make a few million, see how the industry is, and take off before they are ruined and drugged up to the point of addiction.
The reason I am mad? The one hit wonders have always existed. They are a fact of life. the music industry knows that there are a much larger percentage of OHW's then there used to be, so they have simply made up for it. Less solid artists means less income, but if you make up for every 10 album sell out artist that no longer exists with 12 OHW's that have one well selling album, Well, then you have made up for the loss, right?
All the better if you hit on a solid artist while doing this. Record Labels take a risk? Hardly. they pump so much crap onto the market that they know will do something simply because they sound like a solid artist, that they have diluted the decent stuff and made even the remotely interesting sound like crap because they have paid enough low income DJ's to play the latest single once an hour that the bands with potential to become solid turn out to be overplayed, over hyped THW's. Big fucking difference.
This is why the recording industry doesn't want to release single songs for sale for a reasonable rate. They know that when the buyer's can get a song for a buck or less, their $30 CD sales will tank, because everyone can spend the $1 for the one good song off a CD and not have to spend the $30 on 20 songs that suck so bad they don't deserve to make it out of the studio. This not potential piracy, is why the recording industry will never allow online purchase of single songs for less then 5 or 10 bucks each.
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