Going through old programs in my my never-ending quest to de-clutter, I found this remark by Sting in a Playbill interview published when he starred in John Dexter’s 1989 revival of The Threepenny Opera on Broadway.
Explaining his disenchantment with the pop music scene, Sting is quoted as saying that the industry “seems to be running on a basis that doesn’t come from any reality. The music is being narrowed down to what the market is told to accept by the big corporations. It should come from musicians being courageous about what they put out.”
What he said then, applies doubly for the worlds of publishing and media, which were then in the process of being clamped into what has proved a disastrous vice of corporate control.
Pop music at least has retained an audience; there are still big profits to be made–granted, quality and criteria may be an entirely different kettle of fish.
But in publishing and the media, the disconnect between what the market is told to accept and what the market actually would like to spend money on is a major reason for the ongoing collapse.