I may not listen to a lot of Zappa but his section in this excellent video essentially describes what’s wrong with the music industry these days: presumed familiarity with the market. When there was no feedback and no real understanding of demographics, you were able to experiment. Now, with the granularity available from modern data gathering techniques you have a set of executives who know they don’t have to move too far off of a median of “music that sells” to make money.

Then there are the rest of the guys in this video, including Chuck D, who are all riffing on this initial concept. Even Dick Dale has some great advice. Amazing stuff.