There’s conflicting reports as to whether or not MP3 is destroying the music industry. My take is: if MP3 destroys the music industry, the industry deserves it.

Im ny opinion, the single saddest example of how lame the music industry is, and how lame the American Conumer is, is O-Town. O-Town is, of course, the latest (?) boy band to be churned out by the boy band factory that is Lou Perlman. Perlman’s (two) credits include Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. Bad enough that no talent clods are selling millions of albums to mastubatory prepubescent teen girls, but at least the public was saved the trauma of having to watch how heartless and souless the process of manufacturing a music group is. But with O-Town we actually watched the process unfold on a freaking television game show. ABC’s Making the Band was a Survivor-esque reality show that whittled down a crowd of boys to the five members of O-Town. O-Town’s lone claim to fame is that Corporate America placed them on a pedestal and stated “they’re Celebrities because we said so”. The final irony is that there’s a second season of Making the Band, but ABC didn’t pick it up – MTV is airing it. ABC decided enough was enough on airing low rated prerecorded reality shows. They aired every episode of The Mole, which I actually quite liked, despide the fact that it was habitually low rated. They decided to cancel Mole 2 three epsiodes into its run, so no one will ever know who won that one.

To the music industry, I’ll make you a deal: keep coming up with shit like O-Town and I’ll keep stealing music. Deal?