The music business has found the
answer to its mounting ails, which all the iPod world knows: album sales being
replaced by singles downloads, Tower Records closing, and Borders apparently
not having a clue about what music to stock.
Columbia Records is trying a radical
new experiment. The record giant and a principle perpetrator of musical
nonsense on an overly obliging public has retained a canary, much as songbirds
have been employed to detect, by passing out, the presence of poison gas.
The job of the tuneful bird is to
provide the executives in the A & R department with a reality check as to
what a good song is.
First the staff listens to a new
track. If they think it has potential, they play it for the tweety bird. If it
starts to sing along, they can present the ditty to management for probable
release.
On the other hand, if the canary
just stares in silence or falls off its perch, the track is to be considered
not music.
Rumor has it that the music business
may be remade toward a new melodiousness. So far the hipsters in pop and rap at
Columbia s A
& R department have played over a hundred selects for the canary. Since the
canary is nature s own expert on song, there s just no way to get around the
fact that the singing creature is the ideal arbiter of tuneful music.
