Before The Music Dies

Watching Rod Piazza's interview reminded me of a documentary I watched a few years ago titled "Before the Music Dies." If you haven't seen it, it discusses how the music industry has turned itself into a McDonald's-style factory, with innovation and talent essentially stifled in exchange for manufactured crap.

I witnessed the early days of this problem in the 80s, where the most common question our band would hear from agents, record producers, and even club owners was: "Can you sound like (fill in the band name here)?" Later as we progressed toward the 90s, we used to hear: "Can you look like (fill in the band name here)?" "Before the Music Dies" delves into that phenomena, and in the process, hears stories from artists like Bonnie Raitt, Les Paul, Erykah Badu, Branford Marsalis, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, and Dave Matthews, along with a host of struggling musicians of the challenges facing the music scene today from this factory mentality.

The music industry is quick to blame pirating for their present drop in revenue, but they don't turn an eye inward and examine - like this documentary has - what the true reasons for their problems are.

You can watch it here:

http://www.hulu.com/before-the-music-dies

If you haven't seen this interesting expose, you owe it to yourself as musicians (or budding musicians) to see what you might be up against. You might find yourself thinking you need butt implants (as Erykah Badu discusses) to compete and get ahead.