There was a book I read earlier in the year called Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized the Music Industry and the author went into great detail about this subject. No not barring any errors on the authors part it pretty much goes like this. Major record label execs give large portions of money to a third party people called 'Indie Promoters' who then channel the money to the radio station to place whatever sh*tty song on the radio. Essentially they are buying their popularity and seeing as how over 50% of most radio stations are by Clear Channel, it allows to them to control what a large portion of the people listen to. Basically, Justin Bieber is as popular as he is because people invested a large sum of money to buy his place in the spotlight. It's not because everyone loves his music or that millions of people have gone out to buy My World 2.0, but because it was purchased for him. Why do you think the major labels went all psycho when people started downloading popular artists' music? How are they going to make a return on their investment if everyone goes out and downloads the song they spent thousands or millions of dollars on promoting?
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