Music is an immense part of each and every person's life. No matter what it is, everyone needs and enjoys the sounds of music. From quirky alternative bands to the songs our parents introduced us to, we can gain something from everything we hear, but what if everything that you know and love about music changed forever? That is what is happening before our very eyes. The way artists are having to break onto the music scene is not how it used to be. The music executives of the top three, or "The Big Three," record labels are only in it for a profit and most of them no longer care about the quality of the product. Over and over again they produce cookie-cutter songs sung by the who's who of today and it automatically becomes a number one hit. Nothing is original anymore. Most songs that are played are the same variations of the same song you have heard five hundred times on most radio stations. With current technology, music executives have more user data available to them than has ever been before. They are able to see demographics, fan interactions, and so much more at a click of a button. The music industry that we have grown to love and adore is being ruined by Top 40 radio, music executives, and online streaming.

One Direction is single handedly ruining the music industry. Okay, maybe not just One Direction, but everything that encompasses them is killing the music industry. The music industry is a complex machine with many working parts. From marketing to their social media presence, everything that they, and every band like them is doing is slowly killing the music industry that we know and love. The boy band, One Direction, was created in 2010 because they were contestants on a popular United Kingdom television show called The X Factor. During their time on The X Factor, they shot to stardom based on their dashing good looks; and their fame only rose from there, in spite of a third place finish. From that moment on  their popularity has grown immensely. They grew from a teeny bopper boy band into international sex symbols while making millions in the process. So much so, that they have inadvertently created "fandoms" or safe spaces where fans can write fan factions or create "ships" to make themselves feel closer to the band in an online community. While all of this seems like no big deal, this is actually detrimental for the music industry itself. One Direction is profiting off of this two fold, but the rest of the industry is suffering. Boy bands have created a culture of "sex sells". If you look at One Direction, every single one of those boys is drop dead gorgeous, but are they really all that talented? No. They are a part of the cookie cutter Top 40 machine. They do not write their own music, they are told how to sing it, and they do not play any of their own instruments. This idea of "sex sells" is making it a lot harder for the non-Top 40 infused artists to break into the industry. The huge tween market that it dominates is where a lot of the money is. Mark Duffett, a senior lecturer at the University of Chester with a decorate degree focused on music fandoms, sees the problems in this particular demographic "between screams, twelve-year-olds wearing too much makeup offer hundreds of dollars for backstage passes [ ...  and] mothers approach the group's security crew, offering to trade sexual favors for the opportunity to get their kids closer to the [band]" (192). The fact that people will go this far to meet an artist is crazy. Music is meant to be enjoyed, not made to create some type of gods among men. These boy bands are just a small part of the problem surrounding the Top 40 radio. Gone are the days when a musical hopeful could produce their hottest mix tape and take it to the local radio station in hopes of hearing their songs playing through the speakers. These have all been replaced by the same ten artists that you hear over and over on the radio. If you look at the Billboard Hot 100 charts from 2015 only 27 new artists appeared from the 2014 list. That means that 73 of the artists were still producing hit after hit from the previous list to appear on the new chart(New) . As a writer for Music.Mic, Mark Pollock, said, "Even in the Spotify era, the "10 best-selling songs command 82% more of the market than they did a decade ago." That's right: The famous are getting more famous. Soon we might not have much else in our musical culture beyond Taylor Swift"(Pollock). It is incredibly sad that so many great but up-and-coming, artists are having to be withheld from the spotlight simply because they do not have that "sex sells" aura about them. The Top 40 charts produce the same cookie-cutter music over and over again. 

The big music executives are starting to realize that they no longer have to actively seek out new talent because now new talent is coming to them -- just not in the way it used to happen.  In the old days you could drop off your CD and hope that a music executive would listen to it and hopefully give you a big break, but today, the times have changed. Social media has played a huge role in who the music executives will look at and actually consider. Using this method, they  already have data to back up what their  audiences want to hear. Before they worry about if a band or artist will be successful, they can look at their social media to see how many  already-established fans they would be bringing with them. This has all been made possible by social media. Before, a new deal with a band or artist was a guessing game, a complete chance. They could possibly take a loss on the new band and it would fall back on them completely. Take Justin Bieber for example: He was practically a nobody from Canada. He played on street corners and mostly  performed for fun. Around age 13, he began posting his singing videos to YouTube and starting gaining views and momentum. Seemingly overnight he became one of the biggest pop stars of our generation. Music executives saw the positive response that his videos consistently received and began to notice how many fans he could bring along with him. The fact that the executives took a chance on him is huge. Music is just more expensive to make and produce these days. Today, it is much more complicated than just handing a demo to a radio DJ. The DJs do not have the resources to waste money on bands that will not last or may never become truly popular. Therefore, DJs today have to make sure that they minimize the risk of losing money or listeners due to unpopular music. The large music labels already expect the talent to have a loyal fan base that is able to continue growing. They have been picking up artists that were on television or "an even better way of reducing risk is to bet on acts and albums that have already hit the jackpot" (New). Music executives have also started releasing greatest hits albums as a way to sell more CDs. If the songs have already sold well once, executives assume that the songs will sell well again. This is similar to the reasoning behind band reunion tours, as well Assuming that the band was still well-liked when they broke up, their reunion should give them the boost that their bank account most likely needed. This is also where the "sex sells" factor comes into  the picture again. The band may not be as attractive as they used to be, thus the tickets may not sell as well as they once did. Even if the reunion does not happen, sometimes one of the band members will disband from the group and try a solo career. This has worked for many artists over the years. Michael Jackson was in the Jackson 5 and now he is called the King of Pop; Justin Timberlake was in NSYNC; Nick Jonas was in the Jonas Brothers; and Zayn was once a part of One Direction. The list goes on and on. This is a way for the artists to rebrand themselves and possibly gain fans that originally would not have been in their demographic before. Take Nick Jonas for instance, who has recently reinvented himself in the music world. The Jonas Brothers was a band that mainly focused on the fan base of young, teenage girls. The three brothers were on Disney Channel and worked very closely with this target group in particular. When they broke up in 2013 Nick Jonas took a few years off and in 2015 he released two songs that would both end up on the Billboard Hot 100. After those two songs were released, he gained a whole new range of fans. Instead of having  hordes of preteen and teenage girls squealing with excitement, he now added guys and an older age range to the mix of people who listen to his music. Jonas also embraced the LGBTQ+ community which helped to further his career. This rebranding allowed him to be "interesting to new markets in addition to allowing former, now grown-up, fans, a guilt-free re-connection" (Lobert). 

Streaming, although it is a recent invention, has quickly become one of the biggest problems that the music industry is facing. The Economist says that "Overall recorded-music sales have dropped by 33% in Britain and by 50% in America since 2001" (New). This is largely due to the accessibly of the content online. Sites like Pandora and Spotify are great for the listeners because  they get unlimited music at their fingertips, but it comes at a price to the musicians. These artists make cents on the dollar for this type of listening. It takes thousands of people to press play on Spotify to make the artists gain as little as one dollar. This makes it increasingly more difficult for the artist to go on tour, gain recognition, or to simply make a living off of their passion. Brian McTear, a musician and record producer, spoke at a TED Talk in Philadelphia about the downloading and piracy issues in the music industry, and how it affects him personally. He is an owner of a small record company, which makes him a prime candidate for feeling the effects of streaming. In his Ted Talk he told a story about a project that his team came up with. They invited a few bands to come to their studio and record a song and distribute it within two days. It was an invitation for the band to learn and they hoped that the consumers would appreciate the story behind the music and return to purchasing it, but the startup failed. This was in part, due to the fact that they actually had to purchase the music (YouTube). Streaming is strictly for the consumer. It is a good way for smaller bands to gain a fan base, but it is a terrible way for artists to make money. Adele and Taylor Swift have refused to put their music on Spotify due to this very reason. And even though they did not have that push from the Spotify streams, they had the number one and number six best-selling albums of 2015, respectively. Two Economics professors showed this by mathematically calculating that "[a] one percent increase in the internet penetration rate led to more than a one percent decrease in record sales. Thus, digital technology, more specifically, digital piracy, has had a negative effect on record sales. Even after 2003, when legal downloads gained mainstream acceptance or 2005. For that matter, when these sales were accounted for in record sales, there was still a negative correlation between internet penetration and music sales"(Bender, 165). Not everyone feels this way about the use of streaming services, though. Kyle Anderson, a writer for Entertainment Weekly, wrote an article about the positive effects of streaming. He argues that music executives believed that if free music were offered, that no one would ever buy an album again. He has found that when a few well known artists released their new albums a week before their official drop that they all had a first week sales bump compared to their previous albums(Anderson) . This might be true, but this does not stop the few that would only listen to the album by the means of Spotify and Pandora. How are they to know that they could have had an even larger bump if they had not released the music ahead of time. Streaming is making it harder and harder for the smaller artists to be able to make money off of their album sales. They are having to rely on touring and merchandise sales to make up the difference that the album sales took away, but the money made off the streaming is most likely not enough to cover the cost of the tour. This is an infinite loop of money problems all due to streaming. 

This is an ever evolving problem that will need an ever evolving solution. For right now, we need to focus on helping the "little" artists. Taylor Swift, One Direction, and Katy Perry get enough of our time and energy. It is time we give some new talent a try. I am not saying that we need to completely forget about the Top 40 industry, but we definitely need to stray away from it. Most radio stations will be playing this type of music. It is rare to find one that will play up and comings. The only station that I am aware of  that plays this type of fresh music is on Sirius XM, and it was replaced with a Top 40 radio station. The streaming service's problems can only be helped by increasing royalties to the artists. It is ridiculous that an artist can only get $167 per one million streams of their song (Tod). Music executives are always going to be in it for the money. They are human and I understand that, but what I do not understand is that they are willing to completely change and put a stop to the evolutionary flow that the music industry goes through. Streaming will not go away, at least for the time being. It is too convenient to get rid of, but the streaming companies could start charging for their services more than they already do. This could help increase the royalties that are paid to the artist, and it would help the not as well-known artist get off their feet. The increased royalties would help cover touring and recording costs for the up and comings in the music industry.

The music industry is an ever evolving industry.  What the industry must do is turn these challenges into opportunities. Consumers are changing what they want and how they experience music. Change is difficult and brings uncertainty,  but the good news for the music industry is that consumers have not abandoned music. In fact, they have embraced music and made it a greater part of their daily experience. The product is not the same; the way the product is experienced is not the same" (Bhattacharjee). The Top 40, boy bands, and streaming have shown just how difficult it actually is for new artists to emerge onto the scene and help our music tastes evolve. 

