BMG Records goes out on a limb with detailed parental warnings

June 3 — Some of the music industry’s parental-advisory labels about explicit content are about to get a bit more explicit themselves.

Bertelsmann AG’s BMG record company, whose acts range from hip-hop duo OutKast to popular rock-jammers the Dave Matthews Band, Monday is set to announce plans to adopt a new system of detailed parental warnings. Acting voluntarily, BMG plans to place new advisory stickers on certain albums, specifying whether they have violent content, sexual content, strong language or some combination of the three, officials say. BMG plans to include the more-detailed warnings in advertising, including television, radio, print and online ads for the albums concerned.

With its new warnings and willingness to put them in ads, BMG, the nation’s second-largest record company, is breaking with the rest of the industry. The parental-advisory stickers that record companies adopted well over a decade ago simply state, “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content.”

BMG says its new policies will take effect with rapper Lady May’s “May Day” record, set to be released July 31. The warning sticker will say, “Strong Language/Sexual Content.” New releases from hip-hop acts Midwikid and the Clipse also are set to receive the new warnings, although BMG says it hasn’t decided exactly which ones to assign.

In recent years, the music industry has rebuffed calls by lawmakers and regulators to expand the parental advisories and place the warnings in advertising. But now, other record labels will be under considerable pressure to follow BMG. Officials at BMG say they hope the changes will soon become the industry standard. “We want to show that we take our responsibilities to the public seriously,” says Pete Jones, president and chief executive of BMG’s distribution arm. “If the industry were to follow suit, that would be great, but we decided not to wait around for that.”

The moves indicate BMG’s willingness to make a separate peace in Washington, where the record industry has been lambasted in recent years for advertising music laced with profanity, violence and sex to children and for failing to give parents enough information to screen the albums their children want to buy. Several lawmakers are weighing whether to hold hearings about advisory labels and industry attempts at self-regulation. Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D., Conn.) are among those talking about creating an age-based ratings system, like the one moviemakers use.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is finishing up a major report that is expected to acknowledge record companies’ progress in improving youth-marketing practices but to note that they still lag behind Hollywood and video-game makers, according to people familiar with the report’s contents.

BMG’s new policies have started to win it some friends. Justin Lilley, a Washington lobbyist for Bertelsmann, recently led a delegation of company officials to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers including Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R., La.), the House Commerce and Energy Committee chairman, on the changes. Rep. Tauzin was impressed, according to his aides. “This is a major breakthrough in the long battle to provide parents and consumers with additional content information,” says Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the congressman.

Still, it isn’t clear whether other labels will jump on BMG’s bandwagon. The Recording Industry Association of America, the industry’s trade group, has opposed making the labels more explicit. Hilary Rosen, the group’s CEO, said in an interview that record companies are free to modify the advisory stickers but declined to comment on whether she thinks BMG’s warnings should be adopted industrywide. “The parental advisory program is voluntary and as such companies are free to supplement the required information with additional details if they choose to,” she said. As of now, the group hasn’t modified its position opposing explicit warning stickers and restrictions on advertising to youth.

BMG officials say they are sensitive to concerns that warning stickers, or ratings, could crimp artistic expression by making it easy for retailers and consumers to shun music they deem offensive. “There is definitely a need to balance the preservation of free artistic expression with the need and desire to address consumers’ concerns that the labels didn’t tell them enough information,” says LaVerne Evans, BMG’s senior vice president and general counsel. “We feel that these new labels do that.”

Of course, parental warnings often have a way of helping sales, by turning an album into forbidden fruit and making teens want to hear it. And many albums and CDs that have been edited to remove explicit content, and are labeled accordingly, haven’t sold well.

This is hardly the first time Bertelsmann, one of the world’s media titans, has used size to strike out on its own. In 2000, Bertelsmann broke ranks with the music industry by agreeing to work with Napster on a legal, fee-based version of the controversial music-sharing service. Last month, the German company announced plans to buy Napster’s assets from its creditors for $8 million.

Record companies began slapping advisory stickers on albums in 1985 under an agreement between the RIAA and advocacy groups such as the National Parent Teacher Association and the Parents Music Resource Center, a group founded by Tipper Gore, the wife of former Vice President Al Gore. Mrs. Gore left the organization in 1992.

The current labels are supposed to call attention to releases that contain “explicit lyrics, including explicit depictions of violence and sex … so parents can make intelligent listening choices for their children,” according to the RIAA Web site. The program is voluntary. Record companies decide which releases should get the label and leave it up to individual retailers whether to enforce restrictions on sales to young customers. Some stores refuse to sell such music to anyone under the age of 18. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest retailer, simply refuses to stock albums with a warning label.

Way to go Bertelsmann! Now we can sell more stickered albums. And of course Billy Tauzin and Joe Lieberman are easily bribe -- uh, pleased.

The other day I posted a New York Times story about the bowdlerization of literature for the New York State Regents Exams. Somehow the same people who do that can comfortably blather about "free expression" when it comes to record-industry no-talents. Yet another example of, in George Will's immortal phrase, "the ideological pretzel of liberalism."

I'm sure the kids will NOT flock to albums with warning stickers like ducks on a June bug, and will NOT buy them, and will NOT steal them, and will NOT get their older brother to buy them, and other such tricks, right?

RIGHT?

So where's the stickers for:

WARNING: EXCESSIVE BANALITY

WARNING: QUESTIONABLE MUSICIANSHIP

WARNING: CRAZED REPETITION! CRAZED REPETITION! CRAZED REPETITION!

Now that BMG has got the censorship thing down pat, they can concentrate on sending customers only the CD's they ordered. While I was signed up to BMG, they got less than half my orders correct and sent me boucoups of CD's I had no desire to own.

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