Sensyden: Advice for the Music Industry

First off I'd like to disclose that I am not a music super fan.  I'm not even a fan of music in general.  It's not that I actively ignore it, I just don't spend much time listening to or discovering new music.  With that said I'd like to make a pitch to the music industry which is sure to offend many a die hard music fan and excite no one.

I think it's time the music industry remade bands and artists.  Think of this as a new hybrid profession of musical actor or professional role player (the name needs work I'll admit).  What I'm proposing is that the music industry recruit some of those American Idol washouts to completely recreate musical careers of previously successful musicians.

This would work by basically carbon copying a musical acts career.  If a bands first televised appearance in the USA was on the Ed Sullivan Show, the remade bands needs to play their first televised appearance on the current television analog.  If music critics panned their concerts and said things like "couldn't carry a tune across the Atlantic", the music company needs to create fake websites that would run the same scathing criticism.  If the band hit a rough patch when one of the creative geniuses fell for a crazy woman who changed the dynamic of the group.  That too needs to happen.

Wouldn't it be cool if "The Beatles", "Michael Jackson", "Billy Joel", and "Britney Spears" were all battling for supremacy on the pop charts in the same year?  Wouldn't it be crazy if Britney Spears won?  New jobs would open up for writers covering the "Take 2" beat.  Some would play it straight writing about the band or artist in the same vein they were written about in years past, while others would write about how the new Ringo Starr was threatening to quit the Beatles when his contract came up in the fall.

They could even make recruitment into some kind of reality show that would help relaunch the "brand" and get new fans emotionally invested in the success of these "Take 2" bands.

While some might argue that Elvis impersonation and cover bands prove the unprofitably of this remake path I would counter that impersonation does not even scratch the surface of the layered remake I'm proposing here.

If workable this would be a complete windfall for the music industry which has been stymied by iTunes and an inability to adapt to an evolving market.  They already own the rights to the music, all they have to do is cast fresh faced talent and pay them a modest salary.  Once the career of "The Beatles Take 2" (naming isn't my thing) ends the actors can parlay that fame into something a bit more profitable for themselves.

Is this fool proof?  Absolutely not.  Could this be the last wild gambit of an industry on the verge of collapse, looking for a life raft while the ocean liner is brought into into port? Perhaps.