World Without "Studios"

A few years ago, when the RIAA started their scorched-earth campaign, I stopped buying music. Now, I still go to clubs, and such, but I find buying recordings to be problematic. Mostly, I find it problematic because I don't want to do anything that puts money in the pockets of the slimebags at RIAA.

So, for a number of years, I simply sat on my music collection. It was an ok-sized collection. Over the course of years prior to the RIAA's nonsense, I'd acquired about 700 discs. That's 700 after all of the dorm/roommate-related borrowings, trade-ins at new&used stores, etc. So, probably churned through well over 1000 CDs by the time I stopped buying (in 2000).

I've always had friends that were big into music, too. So, always had "library" access to supplement my own collection. Marrying Donna, I got permanent access to her small collection (and larger collection of muzzy MP3 rips). But, I'm an "easily bored" kinda guy. So, it was inevitable that I was going to lose interest in a relatively static collection of music.

Eventually, in all my time working on the road, I found sites like Pandora, Last.FM, etc. Ultimately, I stuck with Last.FM. I could listen to a wide variety of music. I always liked the service and wanted to help it keep afloat, so, I ponied up for a "pro" membership (cuts down on things like commercials, too, and used to get you on their "faster" servers).

Now, Last.FM (and, presumably, similar sites, as well) is kind of interesting. Absent prior knowledge, you never really know whether a performer or group is "big" or not. All you know them by is their sound. It's kind of interesting when you discover you really like someone on Last.FM, go to a show, and are like, "that's all there is to you??" as you stand there in a mostly-empty space. I mean, I guess there's just sort of assumptions that if they're on some kind of service, they're at least semi-established rather than just someone's basement/part-time project. It's just not immediately evident whether someone's big or a relative nobody. Kind of cool, that way, I think.

But, still, it makes me think. The studio-based "star" systems are primarily a psychological game/phenomena. Given enough backing and publicity (read, "throwing money at"), any piece of relatively attractive and overproducable "artist" can be turned into a self-sustaining phenomena. And, it's not a measure of how good they are, but how marketable and how well-marketed they are.

Without the marketed "stars" and the tabloid ("trainwreck TV") system to support it, would we have stars? Would anyone give a rat's ass about (e.g.) Lady Gaga? Would we have web pages dissecting what's subtext and what's pretext? Would we really be interested (would it even matter enough to register as a ghost on the cultural RADAR)? Or, is there some kind of human need for the drama (do we need to be able to watch the cycle of nothing/nobody→budding star→super star→has-been/trainwreck/fatality)?