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Main >> News Listing >> June 2004 >> Article ID 5075
 Advisory labels stimulate sales | Type: Internet Article |
| | Advisory labels stimulate sales | Jun 06, 2004 | by Diane De La Paz
Summary:
Wal-Mart refuses to carry any disc bearing a “parental advisory” strip, and sells only the edited recordings. It does carry Christina Aguilera’s latest, “Stripped.”
Read on for the whole article. |
If Tipper Gore knew 20 years ago what her “parental advisory: explicit lyrics” labels have done for CD sales, she might not have pushed so hard for reforms.
In the 1980s, Gore, wife of then-Sen. Al Gore, sought to warn other mothers about what she considered filth on music discs. In a now-infamous tirade, she began her crusade after hearing Prince’s “Purple Rain” album, particularly the song “Darling Nikki.” In it, Prince sings the praises of a young woman doing something unmentionable with a magazine in a hotel lobby. And the artist – and scores of other rock, R&B and rap performers – were recording lots of similarly suggestive, even explicit, songs.
So Tipper Gore got busy. She formed the Parents Music Resource Center, which precipitated a new policy administered by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Today, CDs containing “strong language; sexual + violent content” are labeled as such, along with a small black-and-white “parental advisory” strip.
Instead of protecting children from dirty words, those labels have made CDs even more tantalizing, music industry insiders say.
“Hey, I’m glad they’re there. They increase our business,” said Pissed Off Records president Brent Kendall. “Most kids, they want something rebellious. They’re not going to grab a Disney CD.
They’re probably going to grab something with a ‘parental’ label on it … (it’s) just like when you go to a movie. I like an R movie.”
Kendall acknowledged that “it’s a form of censorship.” Bottom line, however, an advisory label is “a good thing for CD sales. I think it has the exact opposite effect” from the PMRC’s intention, which was to warn families away from profanity.
Shoppers seek that label, said Jan Clarke, a staffer at a Sam Goody store in Tacoma, Wash. Hands on her hips to demonstrate, she said buying a “strong language” CD “says they’re tough.”
As for the CD’s that have had their “explicit lyrics” bleeped or blanked out, “We can’t give them away,” Clarke added. “There are more returns of the edited versions, and people saying, ‘I didn’t want that.’ ”
“We have to price the edited ones for less,” added Marty Campbell, owner of Buzzard Discs, a Tacoma used-CD shop. “People don’t want their lives so censored.”
Wal-Mart refuses to carry any disc bearing a “parental advisory” strip, and sells only the edited recordings. It does carry Christina Aguilera’s latest, “Stripped.”
No “parental advisory” label covers the artist’s lithe tummy. Instead, there’s a dark decorative panel on the crotch of her low-slung jeans.
“The RIAA has moved to regulate music (content) not covers,” Campbell acknowledged. He remembered one incident in 1990, however, when Poison’s “Flesh and Blood,” with a cover that showed a painful-looking tattoo, was pulled from stores. The offending factor was “a little bit of blood,” Campbell said. “By today’s standards, it’s almost cartoonish.”
Consumers expect to see graphic images now. And images of tummies such as Aguilera’s probably don’t hurt sales.
Sexual content in popular music grows a little more commonplace every year, and Americans concurrently get a little more jaded about such things, said Eric Nuzum, a Web logger ( www.ericnuzum.com ) and author of “Parental advisory: Music Censorship in America.”
“What were considered terrible examples of the filth of society are now considered perfectly acceptable,” Nuzum said. “Elvis Presley is a perfect example of that,” as are the Beatles recordings initially considered devil’s music.
Such rock ’n’ rollers were “considered the hedonists,” added Nuzum, “who were going to destroy the moral fabric of society.” Either that or they’ll upholster the suites of record-label executives. |
 Source: The Journal Gazette | |
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