Sarah, I don't blame radio, the medium. I love radio so damn much I've chosen a career in it and want to stick with it. But there are certain GREEDY radio monopoly conglomerates that manipulate what gets played so much and make way too much money by cheating the system and the result is mass-marketing that doesn't make sense and forcing it down people's throats even if it's crap. Did you know that a certain radio conglomerate in kahootz with record labels allows them to
pay for advertising spot time to get 2 minute ads in for new "hit records." The radio stations play enough of the song in these ads that it counts as a "spin" and all the trade mags and billboard say this song got x number of spins. It's called payola, folks! You'd think people actually requested them, but this greedy conglomerate doesn't actually take requests much anymore because all the djs are voice-tracked (that's when all their "breaks" are pre-recorded as early as days before) and the studios are unmanned and those phones are ringing with requests to play and not play stuff, but the dj is as his other job because he won't get the salary or health benefits he needs from the ugly corporation. So when billboard says the songs get played, the rule is, you gotta play them more, the record companies make a gazillion dollars and they give tons of cash to the radio conglomerates in the form of "perks"...lots of free tickets for their listeners to win and other stuff. There are SO MANY examples of these unethical practices, many of which can be found
here. I'm telling you, these sweet litle deals are just one of the reasons there is such tight, tight control over what gets played on the radio these days. It encourages the already big problem of ageism in the music industry (I've said before the reason Sheryl Crowe can be such a mainstream "pop" star at 40 and not just an adult rock artist is because she looks and sounds 30 and is buff in a tank top)...it also has to do with the freshness of what's new, so we'll buy, buy buy....implying that older artists can't do anything "new."
As for TV, they know sex and youth sells and they abuse that to the point where it ain't "music" television unless it's a young, hot, panting Britney Spears. Faith Hill was a conservatively dressed country singer but her record execs could tell she was pretty and had a lovely voice, so to make lots of money off her, now you don't see her in a video where she's not either writhing in a bed or in the rain or something sexy in the cliché sense.
Ugh. Sorry if all this is depressing. It sure is to me
-Sonia