November 6th, 2009
I grew up in a small town and the only FM radio station that we could pull in consistently played nothing but typical, Top 40 music. It was pretty safe stuff. We could watch slightly more adventurous fare on television, but with only one TV set our time was limited and being that it was in the centre of the house, almost everyone could hear.
Nowadays kids have much more access to music. Kids can fill up their iPods and MP3 players. Internet radio is growing and it is not going away. As well as online broadcasts of regular radio broadcasts, there are also web only stations. These “pure-play” stations recently struck a deal with SoundExchange, which represents the music industry, on an experimental deal that will reduce the royalties Internet stations would have had to pay and should keep them on the air.
The point is kids have a lot of options with music today. I remember as a teen my mom once erased a copy of an MC Hammer tape my brother had because of a song called She’s Soft and Wet. I also remember telling my brother not to play Nirvana’s Nermind because he thought it was so depressing. I certainly did not play at home the Ice Cube, Ice-T and Cypress Hill tapes I copied off friends.
How do you feel? Do you keep track of what your kids are listening to? Are you worried what influence the music they are listening to might have on them?
Robin