Dreary Dre Made $600 Million

The Forbes list of money-making musicians...didn't reveal many actual MUSICIANS.

Yes, there was Viley Virus and Justa Beeper, and the rest of the dumbed-down dipshits that have to appeal to stupid tween-agers who don't know any better. The next highest percentage were BLACKS. Again, you don't have to do much to amuse BLACKS. Show your booty if you're female, talk violent and dirty if you're male.

The symbol for the "artists" on the Forbes list should be that floating island of plastic garbage in the Pacific. That's all the music world is: plastic garbage.

Physically, the plastic garbage of actual vinyl, CDs, and plastic CD cases in landfills is just being replaced by last year's cell phones and iPods and ear phones and all the rest of the plastic shit used to hear mp3 files.

Technically the dreary Dr. Dre made most of his money by selling out his "BEATS" headphones and crap to Apple. Unlike BEYONCE, he didn't make most of his money from download sales or from touring. Does that matter? Take him off the list and you'd just add another jackass, like Nicki Minaj or some boring fag like Sam Smith.

You'll note that there's only one name on that list that has said a word against piracy. Taylor Swift.

The others? They aren't going to say a word, because they have too much money to spend (even if they have homes in three or four different cities). Why antagonize a hacker who might go after their e-mail account or knock their website off line? But Taylor at least refused to allow her stuff on Spotify, and declared that people should PAY for the music. That's principle.

The tragedy here is that in the old days, if the Bay City Rollers were making a fortune, a lot of that money went to the record company to help subsidize the poor artists. A record label could get away with a low-selling Randy Newman or in experimenting with a possible fiasco (Richard Hell, Kate Bush, whatever). Now? Not now. Record companies can't even carry somebody who breaks even. The whole mechanism for touring and promotion is broken. Somehow, by some kind of magic, they designate an Ariana Grande or a Nicki Minaj, tell the world, "EAT THIS," stick them in the huge arenas with twerking back-up dancers, and that's THAT. One day, out of nowhere, some assholes are on the Jonathan Woss show, or David Letterman, or Saturday Night Live, and you BUY IT. Lana Del Rey, for example. HERE. BUY. OUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY.

So I take the highway. I take a lonely obscure road to find out of some indie artist I like has put out a new album. One of them could only afford to have a European label polish up his demo stuff with fake drums. Some other one, making enough money touring with Status Quo, could afford to put his own money into a vanity project issued by a label nobody's heard of. Same with a lady in Ireland who refuses to compromise her standards but has to tour all over the world to support her low-selling but sonically perfect releases on her OWN label.

Meanwhile the Forbes list makes the average moron think, "Oh, well if BEYONCE makes a 100 million, than almost everyone else must make millions, at the very least. So I can pirate everybody with my wormhole website and my Swedish meatball blog. Besides, it makes ME think I'm in show biz! Like I'm Murray the K or John Peel! Aren't I?"