Culture in America is dead! It is now a commodity—to be manufactured (in the Third World preferably), packaged and sold. America is capitalist and capitalism is its only culture. As the United States pushes forth the grand macro-master plan of a totally consolidated and globalized world, concepts like creativity, innovation, and experimentation must fall by the way-side to make way for more economically viable realities–replaced by commodities that are targeted, controlled, and synthetic. Like Warhol's ironic vision come to fruition–perverted and striped of its irony. Market research has replaced introspection; focus groups have replaced self realization. The result is a watered down, soulless, product from a country that is beginning to reflect the diluted, shallow, uninformed culture it exudes.

The endless push toward consolidation, while arguably a positive evolution — as it relates to the consumer — concerning some industries, has been incredibly detrimental to world culture as an entity. Focusing specifically on the United States, it is prudent to recognize that as the sources of media flow become narrower, the output of those sources will become increasingly censored, bias, and manicured, featuring manufactured stances that serve corporate interests as apposed to the pure and unfiltered educational purposes of the general public. This is not a knock on corporate America. It is simply a condemnation of its toxic entanglement with media and culture, where profitability will always out weight creativity; unless of course — by some miraculous paradigm shift in the public's taste, ultimate creativity translates to maximized profitability, which seems — except for in some rare cases, highly unlikely.

The music industry is a perfect microcosm for examining the extra-economic repercussions of a global economic strategy. Looking at the greater picture of the industry, including its modern progression into consolidation, one can see the problem, the solution and the inevitabilities that prevent a true outcome in the ever-waged war between aesthetic-artistic integrity and packaged, polished, and marketed imitations.

The Problem

On August 5, 2004, the merger of Sony Music Entertainment and BMG Entertainment gave the newly anointed "Big 4" control over 81.87% of the global music market share. Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner, and EMI sat atop the world's musical throne, totally dominating every facet of an industry in a way that seemingly left no real wiggle room for any kind of competition or alternative outlets. The purchasing, production, and promotional power that this new collusive "cartel" obtained gave it a power over the output of music around the world that seemed–by all normal macroeconomic indicators–unflappable.

This issue strikes at the very root of the mechanisms that keep the U.S. economy functioning. When the economy of a nation is so exclusively reliant on consumer spending, consumer spending must be the ultimate goal of the industries of that country. This basic functional concept has interjected the consumerist ideas into every facet of U.S. business, including those that relate to culture.