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When the music's over, what then?
Published:
Monday, October 27, 2003
Cathy Kropp -- Staff Column
I am quickly growing tired of the mainstream music industry and the large corporations that control them and the stores that sell music.
Recently, one of my favorite music stores named Broadway Records, closed its doors for good.
Every time that I went home over break, I would drive over to Broadway Records to order hard-to-find vinyl issues and flip through their average or better quality bootlegs of artists that are not considered mainstream.
I am a "grunge" girl at heart, faithfully following bands such as Mudhoney, Supergrass, 7-Year-Bitch, and the more well known alternative groups such as Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.
Now massive corporations are not only pushing away the sound that I love to make room for Britney Spears and other bubble-gum pop groups, but they are taking away the very places that I can still find my kind of music.
I will admit that my love of alternative music was aided by the mainstream "Seattle Sound" onslaught of the early and mid-'90s. But as soon as the record companies realized that they had overexposed and exhausted the "grunge" sound, they moved onto their next prey. But what about the fans that still remain?
We are pushed aside to make room for the consumers of boy band and punk wannabe music. They are the ones who fill the pockets of the record companies now.
Whatever music is considered mainstream is what the major retailers carry. The rest of us who aren't interested in the mainstream swarm into the smaller and more independent retailers to find what we want. With these smaller stores closing, the retailers are effectively controlling what we can listen to.
I can honestly tell you that I go to Best Buy and other major retailers to buy blank CDs. But when I am looking for music I instead choose Electric Fetus or CD Warehouse because they carry music that is outside the "norm." If the public continues to ignore these smaller retailers, how long before they close their doors for good, just as Broadway Records did?
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