Country Music Radio is the McDonald's of the Music Industry

I would like to think that there is some sort of creative process to making the music that we hear on the radio, but what I know of the process, it's much more like a production line. Like anything good, it can quickly become a commodity that can be bought and sold, and reproduced over and over again.

This morning when Aaron was taking me to work we turned on the local country music radio station. We do this often to familiarize ourselves with what is being played right now. We want to know what people are listening to. This could just be the "buyer" in us, but we want to familiarize ourselves with the product that people are buying. Understandable right? After hearing a song that rhymed, pier, disappear, and beer, I starting thinking about how this whole business works.  I'm sure we can use this analogy for many things, but here is what I have to say about modern country music:

Country music radio is the McDonald's of the music industry. Every song on the radio is the same Big Mac hamburger. The banjo lick that you keep hearing in every song is the "secret sauce". People keep listening, because they know exactly what they are going to get. Most people don't even realize that there is a better tasting burger out there, but McDonald's doesn't want you to know about it, because then they'd have to change their recipe.

What I have learned, just over the past few months, is that it's not about talent. Rarely does talent ever translate into profit gains.  (I'm about to state a fact and not a political opinion.) In 1996 President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was the first major change in law in the last 60 years. Feel free to read about the Act, because I don't want to bore you too much, but there was a lot of deregulation, which allowed fewer corporations to dominate the airwaves. Where in the old law no company could own more than 7 stations, and now in the new law that number is unlimited. You can look up the who the big player is now and you will see they own about 1600 stations. Where there was once a 50 song playlist that stations would rotate between, there is now 25. Record labels and radio stations have joined forces to reduce their sku count. It's the same product that, unfortunately, the people keep demanding. They keep producing the same product season after season. Sometimes they change the color of the product, or put it in a different package, but in reality it is the same Big Mac you've been eating for years.