Censorship - Miss Miller

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communications or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities etc. The music industry's is protected by censorship at certain intervals in time known as the watershed. Some broadcasters make choices in what they broadcast with some showing explicit material while others choose to broadcast the moderate/normal.

In the context of music videos artists work is restricted by Music Channels and Radio to a set of rules they decide or have to conform to in order to meet regulations by Ofcom or Office of Communication and was created after the Office of Communication Act 2002 which regulates the United Kingdom.

Throughout this post I will be discussing the ideas of the music community on the subject of Censorship. It will come from a range of different perspectives from the Artists themselves to their Record Labels and Fans on what their overall collective thoughts are. Artists material that has been censored includes such as Eminem and Robin Thicke one example being the Blurred Lines song which includes explicit language and nudity of the female body multiple times throughout. The music video has two versions a clean and an uncensored version to adapt itself to different audiences.

1) Artists, The creators of the music they produce for the general public. Artists choose a general style to follow regarding to the genre of what their music follows. The main genres that are affected by Censorship are Rap, R&B, and some artists within Pop. These genre fall into this category due to either: Explicit References (i.e Sex), Swearing, or the Promotion of Ideas that do not conform to main society. Some artists such as Eminem have strong thoughts on censorship. He feels that the Artists/Himself should be able to express themselves freely with no restraints on what they produce, and that it is the parents choice to either censor what their children listen to or what they can listen to with a set of rules. He sees that all music is a form of entertainment that is for the benefit of the audience and is not design to brainwash or change the mind set of such individuals that may listen to it. He sees that references to killings etc. will not offspring copycat like events or changed the person at hand. He sees being a music artist as a job and that he didn't ask to be a role model for his millions of fans worldwide. But it does make certain people ask the question that without his fans he wouldn't be as successful as he is, so in a way he had to become a role model as so many people adore him.  



2) Record Label, stand on the fence in this situation they do and do not agree with censorship as they want to give their artists as much creative freedom as possible as at the end of the day it is them that creates the company's revenue. Some record labels are For Censorship as it protects the size of the target audience that listens to their products. But on the other hand some are Against as it provides a bigger audience size as two versions of the same song can be produced as the two audience have different tastes and ideas of the particular music they listen too.

3)Parents For, they have to protect what it is their children listen to, this depends on how strict the parent is and how much effort they put in to filter what their child hears. Parents For feel that there are too many music lyrics/visuals that promote sex, violence, drugs, alcohol and 18+ activity's. They also feel that artists should be able to express themselves without swearing or using innuendos with they references that audience may or may not understand. Into today society with our levels of technology children are able to assess a vast amount of internet websites/radio channels, so it is extremely hard to enforce censorship on them. Many young children have assess to these that allow uncensored music to be heard such as YouTube which can be assessed with a few searches on the internet. Parents can choose to filter via software that only allows safe websites for there age range but it can be flawed as assess can still be gained by third party websites. Censorship means that parents don't have to worry about what their child listens to as it will all be clean with no explicit material.

4)Parents Against, on the other hand other parents are more lenient on the subject of censorship. These parents feel that children will eventually become exposed to the material and they should be able to build there own morals. The same an Eminem they don't feel that music will affect the mind set of audiences that listen instead it will just make them conform opinions and questions that will be answered throughout their life and make them the person they are meant to be and will be more prepared for the real world that is not filtered by protection of their parents when they reach of a certain age. They see that being over-protective can do more harm than good for the futures of their children.


5)Fans, of the artists music will feel that it should be raw or as the artist intended it to be and are strongly against censorship. If censored the fans may lose interest in that particular artist as that may be the artists strong point and will not be the same if their work is restricted. It could make the quality of the lyric/song worse ending the artists career as their fan-base is reduced, losing their record label. Fans wouldn't be fans if they didn't like what they were producing, they also feel that songs being explicit make them more real

6)Music Channel, such as MTV feel that audiences should be able to make choices on what they view, they feel the artists work should be shown how it was intended when produced. With all this in mind channels are restricted to what they can broadcast by the Watershed to restrict the content watched by younger audiences by law. What MTV broadcast may affect their views which in turn means they many lose profit via advertising, but at the same time they have to please the whole of the audience.

7) Radio Channels, Capital and Capital Xtra, want to play a wide variety of genres to please their audiences but they have to censor due to the wide range of ages listening to the programme. When censorship is enforced it is clear to audiences at the majority of the time what the lyrics are going to be it only simply hinders the artists creativity and may affect their audiences.

The main opinion of many is that music should be censored further to prevent the underage gaining access to materials by asking websites to create sign up content for audiences to gain assess alike Youtube has at the moment and preventing all radio stations to broadcast uncensored material during the watershed. Artists and their fanbase does not agree with this as they feel the music should be heard as intended without no removal of words/phases.

To conclude my overall opinion on the issue of Censorship is that the current way music is filtered today is at an adequate level and no further actions need to be taken to raise what can be put into artists work. The watershed provides a timescale for when different audiences watch/listen to censored or uncensored music, and parent can attempt to guard their children but in my opinion it isn't hard for a child to gain assess to these materials and it cannot really be prevented, if they seek to view explicit music it is their choice and parents shouldn't being going out of there way to stop them as I don't see the music being harmful in anyway at all.