lunes, 29 de diciembre de 2008

Applied Distributism: The Music Industry

This is probably preaching to the choir, but here goes. Distributism is rather difficult to practice on many of the basic levels, simply because EVERYTHING is a chain now a days. Food is the easiest one I can think of (clothing is nigh impossible), but even that can be very difficult. One industry which is rather easy to challenge the instutition is music. Now supposing that any of you actually listen to modern music (say, after 1600, just kidding), in my opinion, independent artists are the way to go. Over all popular music is generally mediocre and rather prepackaged (though there are some jewels, and [especially in my case] many people who I would like to save from their current course [Rihanna for one, she's going to waste and it's driving me insane]). Indenpendent music can be hard to get two, but it is generally rewarding. Furthermore, given the Godsend sometimes referred to as youtube, if you can just get one foot into an obscure genre, suddenly you have a variety of artists/albums/songs to get you started.

My personal example was my discovery of the virtually non-existant genre known as Christian Reggaeton. I absolutely love the sound of reggaeton, but I had given up on finding an artist, actually, even one song, that didn't degrade women, praise alcohol and/or drug abuse (not that I mind the substances, but I do mind the abuse), and violence. However, I somehow providentially stumbled on a Christian Reggaeton song on youtube. That song had links to a whole variety of similar songs, and before you know it I was inducted into that genre. (I should say here that I have no problem whatsoever with secular music; however, I do draw the line when lyrics turn to fragments of antisocial personality disorder.) Anyways, this genre is so small that amazon.com has a whopping 2 cds to offer. Yes, 2. This, of course, promps another interesting discussion. Is Amazon.com considered an enemy of Distributism? At first it does seem to be a large corporation, but perhaps it's just a way of conventiently locating a whole variety of producers into an easy to find format (now I have a feeling that Amazon is somehow different from Walmart and chain stores, but I haven't been able to isolate why.) Would it be more Distributist to buy directly from the little known record companies, or are we overreacting to Amazon's sheer size. The true answer to this question most likely needs someone with a knowledge of Amazon's inner workings to truly decide yes or no. But in the mean time, any opinions/information would be most appreciated.

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