Recent news stories in the media have described in detail the situation between Adam Levine and Fox News on Dish Network regarding Levine’s protest against the news channel to prevent them from playing Maroon 5 songs on the network. The dispute took place via Twitter with Levine initiating things with a foul worded tweet at Fox putting down the integrity of the network. Two anchors responded with derogatory remarks as well, telling the artist to produce better music. Even though Levine has still not given his reason for not wanting Fox to use his music, it seems odd for the anchors to take such a harsh stance against him. This leads to the question, how much freedom should musicians’ have to control where their music is played if they have chosen to sell it publicly?
This isn’t the first time that this type of dispute has arisen in the media. If an artist disagrees with the stance of a particular person, radio station or television network on anything from partisanship to religion, they tend to make their opinion known. This free speech is one of the founding features of rock and roll that I think any artist would defend vehemently, so to say that they shouldn’t be able to tell particular media channels whether or not they are allowed to play certain songs is just plain wrong. However, I do believe that the manner in which some artists have brought the issue up has not been in the best interest of the music industry.
If Levine had brought his opinion to light through an official letter to Fox News, he would have gained credibility in the eyes of the reporters, most likely not get the negative backlash that we’re seeing, and he could have further legitimized himself as a professional. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good public scruple on Twitter, but when it comes to business matters, let the public find out that you were a professional about the issue so if any negativity is spread afterwards, it lies solely on the media. Let the people that you think are annoying or pretentious be the ones to throw the first stone, it validates your point even further.
