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Not only does gangsta rap die, but so does Toby Kieth.

I only help people get the wares. I don't actually download them. I've never heard more than about ten seconds of rap (on TV) and don't know who Toby Keith is. So I don't know if Toby Keith disappearing is a good thing or a bad thing.

You should understand that I play only old-time hymns and Chopin at the piano. I almost never listen to music otherwise. I just have no desire and won't listen to music on the radio.

So I'm a recluse or a snob. Shoot me.

The good news of this is Clear Channel will die a miserable death. The bad news is there won't be song that define a time and a place for the nation like there has been the last 40 years.

I think these would both be very good news. But don't think the studios and ClearChannel (a consorium/monopoly of radio stations?) will die so easily. But their antics will become quite silly over the next few years. As though the RIAA wasn't over the top already...

Toby Kieth is the country guy with all the EXTREMELY patriotic songs like "Courtesy Of The Red, White, And Blue" who's become very popular in the post 9-11 world. Good guy, he was this way before 9-11 it's not just some pose.

I have a rather perverse CD collection. Very eclectic tastes. I've described my life as the desperate fear I might die without hearing every song I'd like (which, with my tastes, is actually a statistical certainty). I never listen to the radio either, I consider radio to be like communism for music, some centralized chump making bad decisions for me. That being said the timing of hits with cultural events does provide a lot of context for recent history and that's entirely because of the centralized distribution system.

Clear Channel is pretty close to a monopoly. Within talk radio they aren't so bad, but within music radio they're terrible, very vanilla. They use cookie cutter concepts and don't like their channels to take listeners from each other pushing to get all their channels within a genre roughly the same number of listeners. As bad as music radio was before Clear Channel makes many whistful for that time.