Little answers and big questions

I've never listen to the morning DJs on music stations. There was always so much yackety-yack and not enough music to make it worthwhile for me. Now, however, I understand the wisdom of having that format. At least at this moment in time, the music that sells the most and is therefore what they would play on those shows is so f--king stupid that they're afraid if they play it that people will turn their radios off. I've been listening to the XM commercial-free top hits station (even that station does the morning DJ thing) and it's hard to avoid laughing or yelling at the radio.

This brings to mind the larger question of what can be done to fix the music business, which is completely broken at the moment for pretty much everyone except Apple and people like Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, who have large successful catalogs and are dead.

I was already thinking about this when I saw this article in the New York Times, where they discuss how completely dysfunctional the copyright laws are in the modern age. Copyright is only one small piece of the mess (mess in the analytical sense, meaning a system of problems).

So here's the big question- Toss out everything about the way the music business works. All that stays the same is that artists write and perform songs. Then design it the way you want it to be, and can take into account the existing technology and whatever you think is coming in the near future. I haven't gone very far down the road on this, but how is it going to get fixed if we don't know what the ideal would be?

How is music sold and distributed? How does anyone make money, and how do the people who really deserve the money get it? How can good music get heard and bad music get sidelined? What happens to radio?

I think it's going to be one of those things where each thing you explore leads you to another unanswered question. Impossible, but kind of fun.