Mainstream musicians have put the last nail in the coffin of big music, making it nothing but the same brand with a different label.

To make it big, one must sell out. Selling out could be defined as using one’s creativity for money rather than art.

The quest for the almighty dollar pushes once-creative people into a cookie-cutter mold, making them socially acceptable and ready for mass consumption.

The public doesn’t choose this stuff. People tune into the traditional channels to find new music. When the pipe labeled new music just regurgitates the old, that’s what they drink, like freshmen at keggers ready to believe the Busch Light they’re drinking is Labatt.

With the radio playing the same songs many times a day and with all the new songs coming from the same safe, approved channels, this just isn’t going to change.

Woe to the rapper who doesn’t fork over $100,000 for a Timbaland-produced, Jay Z-style brag. Rock bands that don’t toe the Pearl Jam and Nirvana wannabe line don’t find their way onto mainstream radio.

No wonder we can’t find any music that recalls the early 1990s mainstream-busting led by Nirvana and Dr. Dre.

That brief candle has been snuffed out and reduced to parodies, all because of the music world’s need for easy, nonthreatening pleasures that are half-heard today and gone tomorrow.

Daniel Pepper, State News music reporter, can be reached at pepperda@msu.edu.