General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What is Kanye Wests malfunction? [View all]GReedDiamond
(5,311 posts)The Major Label artists will always have a tremendous advantage over indie artists like me, for reasons that I should think are fairly obvious.
The demographics of the members are a mystery to me, I can only speculate based on my experience that they range from multimillionaires at the record label/a & r/management/artist level, to middle management label people to people like me at the bottom.
As a member in the Producers & Engineers wing, which supposedly has around 6000 members, I'd say the demographics are those you'd associate with professionals working at a high level in a very technical profession, with a handful of those being at the top of their fields, very successful - and everybody else doing everyday jobs for whoever they can, always looking for that one "big break." But these generally would be people who have dedicated themselves to the craft of audio recording, for better or worse, while often working across musical genre lines.
NARAS set up a "social networking" type of site which members may join. This allows me to lobby other voting members for their support should I have something on the nominating ballot, which is an improvement over the situation of just a few years ago.
I would not call all NARAS members "elitist" - I certainly don't consider myself to be that - but, yes, there are quite a few "corporate music" members who toe that line in a big way.
That type of elitism is not unique, though, to just the Music Business. I think you'd find that in many industries with big corporate involvement.
As far as Kanye goes, the guy has 21 Grammys, I'm not sure what it is he is complaining about, as far as recognition of his or Beyonce's "talent" goes. I think he's an attention seeker, and relishes the opportunity to open his mouth and spew nonsense.
Since I never vote in the Rap Fields, I have little concern for Kanye's music, and even less for his opinions about music, particularly when he's demanding "respect" by disrespecting other artists of other genres.
I'm also not a fan in any way of the use, or especially, the abuse of auto-tuning devices, but that's another discussion.