Let's get the obvious out of the way first. This is a great film. But more than that, it is an important film.

Before The Music Dies says a lot of the things many music fans have been thinking for years now. It also asks the single most fundamental question many of us have pondered over: Has the music industry abandoned both music fans--and more importantly, the musicians themselves--in the almighty name of commerce over actual art?

To find the answer, Andrew Shapter and his team travelled from coast to coast, speaking with fans, critics, and several musicians--ranging from household names like Eric Clapton and Elvis Costello--to a number of people you have never heard of (but in a number of cases, you should have). Academy award winner Forest Whitaker narrates.

In doing so, several of the villians you've come to know and hate are uncovered as expected. These include the usual suspects such as the huge, faceless radio conglomerates like Clear Channel and the tight, restrictive playlists such corporations ushered in. The way music videos forever changed the way we experience music by coloring in the images we previously were able to conjure ourselves--emphasing the flavor of the moment, and pretty faces that are discounted as fast as you can say Britney Spears--are also given ample examination.

And let us not forget the record companies who have replaced old school "record guys" cut in the mold of people like Columbia's great John Hammond and Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun, with corporate bean counters whose ties run far closer to Wall Street than they do to Abbey Road or Muscle Shoals.

I mean, it used to be about the music, man. Right?

Truth is, much of this ground has been covered before, and in great detail, most notably in books like Fred Goodman's great The Mansion On The Hill. Like that book's subtitle, this is a film dealing with the collision of music and commerce. But where that great book puts things in terms of both a historical perspective and what was at the time it was written, a warning--Before The Music Dies brings things full circle into the present day world of MP3 downloads and the like.

Rightfully so.

Before The Music Dies applauds the instant access to music that such former traditional delivery systems as the LP album and the cassette--and the soon to be extinct CD--have long since been put out to pasture by way of restricting what the mass audience is actually able to hear.

My only complaint here is that it fails to likewise address the way that such instant access reduces music to more of a single song driven commodity, than it has ever been before. Wonderful thing that this technology is, the bottom line is that the guys running companies like Microsoft and Apple have even less of a connection to the music itself than their predecessors at places like Warner and Sony did.