The music industry is full of variety for a reason: so we can listen to whatever we want. Genres are being spliced into
sub-genres everday, and the Average Joe has to choose between dubstep, chillstep, house, electronic and many more sub-sub-genres when he wants to listen to techno. Where there is a demographic to appeal to, there will be artists appealing to them. The whole freedom of capitalism is so that Average Joe can use his money for his own devices, such listening to the music that he likes. Unfortunately though, there will always be people who shouldn’t be listening to relevant music, for the good of the rest of us.
As long as music has existed, there has always been opposition to whatever message music was preaching at the time. No one genre can be called more controversial than the other since each genre faces its own controversies. Heavy metal met as much critical adversity as rap did, but only because the masses had an easy label to identify dangerous music with: demonic.
The Christian Fundamentalists branded the music industry as satanic and demonic because their idea of God disagrees with our idea of tunes. Every single wave of new music has met with the same demonic label. Acid rock was demonic because it promoted free sex and hypnotic rhythms used for satanic mind-control. Folk music was demonic because it made rebellious allusions and there was too much unadulterated fun for God to stomach. Dubstep is demonic because it sounds too much like godless machines. The list goes on. I didn’t even make those reasons up; sadly, they were all on Christian Rock forums. I shit you not.
The fact of the matter is that actually demonic music is hard to listen to. The truly satanic, ultra violent, gory, over the top stuff is usually too much for me, but there are those who enjoy it, and I understand that. Their fans embrace the culture to piss off the rest of society. The hate of the protective Christian parents spawned its own hate-filled genres and sub-genres. By trying to control the music industry, the music industry became the breeding ground for counterculture.
One pro-artist benefit to come out of the whole music-hating fiasco is that many of the not-so-demonic artists flourish as a result of their newfound notoriety. Michael Jackson, Tech N9ne, and Black Sabbath come to mind. Musicians know that where there is opposition, there is also the rebellious offspring of the opposition. Thus the music industry thrives on, not in spite of the hostility they receive, but because kids will always think their parents are wrong.
