I know it looks like I do a lot of reviews -- mainly of music and books -- but the truth is I could probably be doing double the amount that I do now. If I were to review every CD, book, or DVD that was sent or offered to me, I'd have to be posting twice a day just to keep up.
As an amateur who does this just for fun, I have to wonder that if I receive this many offers of review material -- how many more such solicitations go out to the "professionals" who actually get paid to write reviews? Since some days I receive as many as ten such requests -- either by the item showing up in the mail unsolicited, or via an email offer -- the potential boggles the mind.
This really makes me wonder how the record companies and book publishers do business. What exactly is their idea of quality control? Do they work under the assumption that the more items released or published, the greater the chance that they will luck into something people will want to buy? For all of their talk about artistry and demographics, there is more than a slight hint of an infinite number of monkeys trying to produce the next Hamlet in the method to their marketing tactics.
Of course, once they think they've stumbled onto something that strikes a chord with the public, they immediately saturate the market with it. This sort of "product glut" is a none too obvious effort to make as much money from it, in as short a period of time as possible. When people begin to tire of the product almost as quickly as the market has been flooded, the monkeys are sent back to the typewriters. Somebody really ought to explain to them the principle of diminishing returns – that when you produce more of the same, the less profit you are likely to make.
Of course, it's the public's fault the pundits tell us. Everybody has such a short attention span these days, that they won't stay interested in anything for more then a nanosecond. Have they ever stopped to think that the problem might be that it's only by offering people real choices that they pay attention to anything? If everything sounds the same, what is there to listen to after awhile?
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