A friend of mine recently linked to a parody music video on facebook about riding the TTC. I’ve seen lots of parodies on youtube over the years but for some reason this one made me have a sudden realization about how the internet made Weird Al Yankovic obsolete.

Back in the day, Weird Al got started by working with Dr Demento and singing short easy parodies. It was really something that any relatively talented and funny guy could do if given the opportunity by working with Dr Demento. But Weird Al is the one that did it, and with a bit of savvy he turned that into a successful career as a song parodist.

But today, Weird Al, or some modern day analog to him, would be unlikely to move beyond a youtube or myspace page with a few million views. Popularity? No doubt. Celebrity? No way. That world where a moderately talented guy with access to distribution has been replaced by one where thousands of very talented people vie for notoriety in an incredibly accessible and incredibly competitive environment. The internet has done more than made things more easily available: it has also made us all increasingly more critical. In this new world with millions rather than hundreds or thousands of content generators, we all need to judge things harshly or all our time (and then some) would be monopolized by mediocre content.

It’s this increased competition and accessibility that makes the music industry, and really all media industries, in so much trouble. Piracy has existed ever since media could be reproduced even in rudimetary forms. Piracy is not the reason sales have decreased. The problem is that competition and access have increased.