Tag Archives: Christina Aguilera

Mariah Carey Remixes

It’s widely understood that dance remixes of pop songs are a promotional gimmick. Remixes were intended to be pushed to nightclubs that would in turn create more promotion for the main mix. In the past (before iTunes), we saw these remixes finally see the light in the form of a remix CD. We saw this with many late 90’s releases; “Christina Aguilera: The remixes”, “Mariah Carey Remix CD” etc, etc. In many cases, the remixes were placed as bonus tracks on the album with no radio edit. There was no need for remix radio edit’s, it’s not like FM radio was going to play them and in many cases certain remixes we’re never printed on CD and simply disappeared but times have changed.

The rise of internet radio has brought in new music label talent into the music scene and in turn more choice for the consumer. If someone feels like listening to a certain song, he or she can simply go to Youtube, Pandora, Spotify or specialty radio stations such as— Fusion Radio and Chronix Radio. The music consumer is king again, and they don’t like to be told what to like. There is no going back, the days where music labels and FM radio dictate what people like to hear are over. The journey here was very painful however.

 In 1999, when music service Napster triggered a music free-for-all it sent the music industry into a downhill spiral. This triggered the dark days of music, many labels started to downsize and cutback on releases left and right. Many medium to small labels suffered and this caused at least one small label head; Tom Silverman,  founder  of Tommy boy records to go on a Sound Exchange rampage against Internet Radio that made music labels look very bad. Despite this, many labels did not even support Sound Exchange and continued to trek forward. They are the real voiceless victims caught in between the royalty debacle.

The survivability of the music labels is very important though.  Sure, the internet has opened many doors for independent artists, but at the end of the day.  Music labels are the glue that holds good songwriters, producers, promoters and artists together. Many artists don’t realize how bad their productions suffer after leaving their label to go the no label route.

So now that digital music sales are rebounding and retailers such as iTunes, Amazon and Beatport have really taken off, why aren’t many top 40 remixes getting posted for sale? We constantly get emails from our listener’s asking us where they can buy a certain remix. Music labels have nothing to lose by doing this, overhead costs of posting a song on iTunes is very low. Generally when a song is not available for sale or released, the public finds a way to obtain it anyway. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier and beneficial for everyone to make all remixes available via digital music stores?