Thursday night, MTV aired its annual Video Music Awards. Predictably so, it featured a joking Kevin Hart, performances of various calibers and debatable choices in award recipients. However, while watching different clips of the evening, what I noticed most was how much the network has changed from what it used to be.
It’s a well-known truth that MTV took its main focus off music long ago. For the past few years, the only time I’ve ever really watched the network has been for music videos broadcast late at night or into the early morning and to see interesting episodes of the documentary series “True Life.”
After “The Real World” debuted, reality shows, scripted dramas and programs that seemed like outrageous combinations of the two somehow stole virtually all of the network’s airtime.
The evolution of the channel brings me to how much music as a professional industry has changed since years ago.
The other day, one of my Pandora radio stations began to play an a cappella Boyz II Men track. I was taken aback when I realized music used to sound like that, let alone that it actually could.
Their harmony was flawless.
Compared to what had been playing on the station before, the three-minute track opened my ears to some of the most refreshing vocals I had heard in a while.
Every musical act won’t sell 60 million albums worldwide like this R&B group, but I do wish today’s music required and showed more effort from writers, producers and vocalists than it does.
Artists have become very comfortable with the fact that they can take in so much revenue from endeavors outside of recording music.
According to a recent article in Forbes, Dr. Dre is now the richest man in hip-hop, earning $110 million in the last year, not because of making beats, but because of sales of his high-priced Beats headphones. The story also mentioned how stars like Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj managed to bring in millions with the help of several product endorsements. You may have recently seen their heavily circulated commercials endorsing Mountain Dew and Adidas, respectively.
Forbes looked at income from touring, record sales, publishing, films, merchandise sales, endorsements and other ventures.
The minority of those categories focus explicitly on the music these entertainers create.
It’s obvious that a multiplatform approach is the way to make the most money, but music artists should still feel a need to produce quality material.
I frequently reminisce and feel as though things were much better in the late ‘90s, when I was a kid, compared to how they are now. TV, movies and music especially had a special something about them that allow us today to call them our favorites and refer to them as classics.
Musical artists used to be, well, artists. Each individual or group had its own unique identity that set it apart from others.
Oddly enough, today’s biggest musical acts are the most well-known for the most shallow reasons.
Still, influences from previous time periods can clearly be seen in the current music market. The boy band has reemerged with groups such as The Wanted and One Direction successfully capitalizing on younger consumers. The hip-hop entourage has returned with crews like Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music, Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group and Lil Wayne’s Young Money.
If only the same quality of music from years past was also duplicated.
I will have a little more hope for my generation the day producers and musicians choose to focus on the music and lyrics coming out of our speakers instead of the dollars rolling into their bank accounts.
Anayo Ordu is an advertising sophomore at UF. Her column appears on Tuesdays. You can contact her at opinions@alligator.org.
