Hi Phil,

I don’t know that I believe that one person is in control of the chaos but I do believe that the execs at recording companies today are not highly musically trained. If they are, they are cynically putting out product they know to be inferior music although glossed with high production values sonically. When the accountants, lawyers and statisticians are in control and the botto m line is howmuch product they can make money with, the musical standards become irrelevant.

Actually, I am a poor demographic for music since my tastes are wildly diversified. I am a jazz enthusiast, a classical music lover, an early music lover and some of the 99% of music I like.
I like some rock and roll, show music, sound tracks, country and rhythm and blues. In short I am a musician therefore the business of music is secondary to my main interest of music.

We live in a time of commercialized musical depreciation due to the fact that the gatekeepers of the industry are uncaring about the product they sell. This goes right along with the fact that in
America, we produce very little compared to other countries. The financialization of our economy is reflected in the music that we produce en masse. I have no real feelings one way or another about video games but I know that this isn’t music.

I get the Van Halen reference.

I don’t object to math or a business plan per se. But when that becomes the important aspect of musical acceptance, then we have to evaluate whether this is in service of decent music and what this means for the denigration of our national artistic heritage. We also have to consider what education the public is getting in the acceptance of art and culture.

There is good and bad in everything including music. The arbiters should not be Silicon Valley,
hawking merchants, accountants and lawyers but those who are practitioners of music, musicians.

To say that things will never change underestimates the desire the public has for something valuable. To determine this, they have to be exposed to a variety of music, some of it
not for sale but with intrinsic value.