If there is a free market anywhere in America it’s in music. People listen to what they want to listen to.
From that perspective there are NO overrated musicians.
so, you’re a Tiny Tim fan ?
You're joking right?
The mob virtually ran the music business in the 1950s and 1960s. Jukebox trade, labels, payola, the whole deal and had the muscle for enforcement.
Payola didn't end with the diminishing control from the mob. Tommy Shaw said that Styx' "Lady" was sold to radio stations with a trail of cocaine and the corporate suits who determined the playlists (and still do) were called penguins because of the way they followed "snow".
People are free to buy whatever they want, true. But the facetime in magazines, tv, radio, and even hyped on the web through blogs is often funded by the Hollywood hype machine (paid bloggers have been exposed, Sony and others used them). You are effectively shut out from exposure.
ASCAP wouldn't publish race/R&B recordings, hillbilly/western recordings, or the hybrid of the two known as "rock and roll". ASCAP tried to effectively force such music from the marketplace. But BMI would. And stations were willing to play it plus there were clear channel (lower case 'c's) that could be heard across the country. Maybe your community wouldn't play it but a station in another state or even Mexico might.
Eventually the stores were flooded with demands for such recordings and ASCAP blamed the change in market demand on "payola" (which had existed for decades and still exists in radio and elsewhere).
Overall tracked sales are down. If you aren't a soundscan store or don't push enough units to chart, you "don't exist" in the music industry's tally. Yet there are more names in the game than ever before. Smaller piece of the pie for everyone. Plus all of the untracked USED CD and LP sales.
If people think that POLITICAL perspective is not balanced in the media, then wait until you get to examining the way they push music on the low information listeners.