Top 5 On Friday - Week 164

From Music Memoirs

Top 5 things you'd like to change about the music industry

1. The cost of music would change. CDs should not cost $20. The cost of a download is half that. A piece of plastic and some paper does not cost $10. If the industry wants to sell a product it needs to be affordable.

2. The industry will start looking for talent in ways other than American Idol. Seriously. And the whole world needs to be slapped for watching the various incarnations of this show. We do not need any more prefabricated artists putting out music written by idiots that all sounds the same!

3. Albums would not go out of print in a heartbeat. I marvel at the difficulty of buying the albums of any artist that isn't brand spanking new. If you're a band from the 60's and weren't in that batch of major bands (Stones, Beatles, Moodies) then most of your stuff is out of print, but hey...here have a few Greatest Hits compilations.

4. Classic artists will not be forced to put out hits packages. If they want to record a new album, let them! It might be the only good music out there for crying out loud. And to tie into this one: Back catalogs can only be remastered so many times in the space of 5 years. You can't have improved the sound quality that much. ~glares at Elvis Costello~

5. Artists will not be given recording contracts based on looks alone. Its a sad sorry shame that if The Mamas and The Papas were to have been given their first recording contract in the last 20 years, they would have had to kick Mama Cass from the band. The world is not full of airbrushed people. Talent is not airbrushed. Perhaps the recording industry should try to remember that, and go in search of the people that have talent rather than people that are pretty to look at. Who knows, they might catch a bonus and find one or two with both.