Money For Nothing

Many music listeners despise the "mainstream" music for one reason or another. Some for the simple fact that the artist doesn't fit their taste, others for the simple fact of how commercial and over produced the mainstream music is. It's one thing for a band to make it big and be known around the country on their merit, its another monster completely when they are popular because the producing companies paid for them to get big. It's like selling your soul in my opinion. Money for nothing really touches on these themes. This documentary is haunting. Not in the "Paranormal Activity" kind of haunting, with bad camera angles, poor quality and content, but in the sense that these things happen under the radar. It seems like you might need a group of "ghost hunters" just to pick up on some of the day to day activities in the music industry. This movie really drives home what the band, System of a Down, was trying to accomplish with their cd entitled "Steal This Album". Artists make about $1.00 per album, and while some albums sell millions of copies, at 12 to 20 dollars an album it makes me wonder who sets the prices. Obviously some people get paid to design the album, people get paid to promote it, people (many of them) get paid to produce/be in/design/crew the music videos, but can this really eat up all the money? Or does someone end up lining their wallets more than they should? I would only assume the producers are possibly making more than most of the artists they sign. What this film made me think of most, the question it sparked, is how do we change this? Can this system be beat?