The Whitney Houston Effect

Whitney Houston's dead. That's what I saw on the news channel yesterday morning and I thought to myself, okay... She's dead, brace yourself for nothing but Whitney on TV, the internet and pretty much everywhere else to cash in on the singers death.  But before the rant, I'd like to point out that while I'm not exactly the biggest fan of Whitney, I do feel a little bit sorry for her due to the manner of her death.

There was a time she had it all, more than pretty much everyone else on the planet ever had.  Amazing talent, the respect of fans and non fans not to mention her peers, A career about as successful as anyone can ever hope to achieve.  But this Pop Star succumbed to a Rock Star Curse before the end.  This curse is called the 'class A drug'.  If I was a heartless bastard I could say "Well she did that to herself so I have no pity" but this isn't the case.  It's not the case because once you start that lifestyle, it's near impossible to  stop.  Your way of thinking changes, In your head you can't get through the day without it, because remember, NO ONE ever starts trying these substances with the intention of getting hooked.  So before I write about my beef with something connected with all of this I'd like to say 'Rest In Peace' Whitney, I think I can speak for everyone by saying you're going to be missed.  We have lost a performer who is already a dying breed.

Now on to business, and my beef is about business, not Whitney Houston but it involves her.  As I already touched on with the start of this blog, every company, TV channels, and any other business who can possibly make money from Whitney's death WILL work hard to make as much money as possible for the fore-seeable future.  Albums will get sold, every second song on music channels and radio will be a Whitney song.  People, we are all going to be bombarded with Whitney until I vomit.  I don't care how talented somebody is, there is only so much I can take from one individual artist on a constant basis.   What's completely bad for me is that the masses are going to love every minute of it.  But that's neither here nor there, that's going to be expected and I more than understand all of the above.  All Whitney fans are going to buy up albums so naturally everyone in the music industry will step up to cash in.  That's what company's of every shape and form do.  They are there to make money, full stop.

A company that came under fire for doing the exact same thing however was SONY.  According to the news report I saw they put up all Whitney albums by about £3. I was not only unsurprised by this, I was expecting it.  Everybody else is cashing in, why shouldn't her own label?  However a great deal of people were surprised by this and put a tremendous amount of pressure on SONY to lower the prices again, and they succeeded.   While I wasn't surprised by the uproar I was surprised by the fact that SONY backed off and lowered the price.  SONY is a multinational company whose (like every other company) sole purpose is to "make money".  SONY (as well as every other record label) are going through some troubles at the minute.  I'm frequently seeing profits are constantly dropping, so if SONY see a chance to buckle that trend they are going to take it.  This however doesn't stop the masses from leading a revolt.  The music industry is going through hell at the minute through piracy and if a solution doesn't present itself soon, then there isn't going to be a music industry left to provide us with these acts.

I can't see this being a very popular viewpoint, but before you go down my throat please consider that it looks like these company's days are numbered if we're not careful, so try not be too hard on them.

And please try to remember the artist at the centre of all this as she was at the top of this article, not as the one on the bottom.