Clear Problem?

The current issue of Rolling Stone has an interesting article about the utter dominance of Clear Channel in the greater media market.
*snip*
"In less than a decade, Clear Channel has become a music company on steroids - and
a company that increasingly under fire. Clear Channel uses its size to crush the
competition while force-feeding audiences the same play lists no matter where they
live. Bands, managers, and music-industry executives argue that Clear Channel has
ruined the concert business.
*snip*
"Some artist and managers also complain that Clear Channel stations use their control
of the airwaves to pressure acts into playing radio-promo concerts. A manager of a
top forty group says that his clients songs were pulled from a large
market station after the band refused to play a free promotion concert in 2000."
Article appears in Rolling Stone issue 956 authored by Damien Cave.

The article continues on to say that Clear Channel have interested in creating their own record label. Now this is a recipe for disaster because they will never make a record that flops. The will have the ability to force feed what ever garbage acts they decide to sign to their label through out the country on their thousands of stations, and millions of listeners until it is successful. The mere thought of something like this is enough to make me ill.

The only alternative to this currently is XM Radio, or Sirius - both of which are subscriber stations, which thankfully don't have to abide by all the FCC regulations and can let album versions of songs play. This is a niche market right now, and until it starts gaining more subscribers the radio industry shows no sign of recovery any time soon.