(ThyBlackMan.com) In today’s multimedia rich environment, personal artistry is more accessible to others around the world than ever before. The music industry in particular has decentralized from its traditional New York/Los Angeles power centers to an industry with extremely low barriers to entry. Any kid with an iPad and a home-made vocal booth and a video camera can be the next big sensation. Soulja Boy and Justin Bieber are prime examples of low-budget do it yourself YouTube operations that went major. New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Miami still play the part of 
major media outputs but in terms of music production, it is a highly decentralized industry.
With such accessibility comes an abundance of supply. The problem now is that there is too much music available to keep up with half of it. The music industry has also become much more segmented as niche markets enjoy greater market accessibility. Thus, the reemergence of the Disc Jockey (DJ) as the key player in the music industry. Every DJ has a particular brand and taste of music associated with their name. Mixtape listeners and others who appreciate Hip-Hop music are always looking for what’s hot and the DJ is the one who gets to convey the message first. It is their job to filter through all of the supply so that I don’t have to.
One of the greatest benefits that I get from my satellite radio subscription is that I get to listen to major DJs like Tony Touch, DJ Kay Slay, or DJ Premiere on a weekly basis. These are people whose taste in Hip-Hop is most similar to mine so they play new music that I like. They play to my market segment.
Radio talkers have also become abundantly available over the past 10 years as most local radio stations are now available by the internet and by podcast. Without question these individuals are also tastemakers who operate in the same mode as the Hip-Hop DJ. Satellite radio also offers a substantial variety of market segmented radio talkers as a means of specialization. Both satellite radio and internet radio websites such as Radiotime.com act as aggregators of multimedia which make content from decentralized locations become centralized and easily accessible to specific market segments. It is now a piece of cake for me to grab my smart phone or my laptop and listen to Joe Madison in D.C. from California. It’s easy for me to listen to Warren Ballentine or Mark Thompson, or Al Sharpton no matter where I am in the world and I do.
The disc jockey once played the same role as King Maker at the opposite end of the multimedia spectrum. There once was a time when the supply of multimedia was extremely limited and disc jockeys made critical choices from a position of scarcity. The radio heyday of the 1940s and 1950s were only the beginning of a massive multimedia expansion which eventually lead to a television take-over, but with the merging of media currently underway and the availability of diverse content ever growing, the disc jockey will be a power player in the multimedia industry for quite some time.
Staff Writer; Darrick Herndon
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