Censorship is common in the music industry for a variety of factors. Censorships is a practice where musical works are edited for either government-enforced legal prohibition or the removal of musical content for individual purposes as it appears in different contexts (Ratcliffe, 2016). It occurs as either restriction, suppression, or restraint of musical works with objectionable content. Censorship occurs in every country regardless of its political standing. Autocracies will censor music because they have low legal security, while democracies have more corporate censorship on music content. All countries are keen on censorship because music can be shared fast across various media outlets; thus, it is easy to spread ideas through shared music.
Suppression is not a standard mode of censorship in western democracies. Most western democracies find censorship, such as prior restraint, to infringe their citizens' freedoms. Both suppression and prior restraint are not as common as restrictions and are only enacted by an institution or the government in special instances (Ratcliffe, 2016). The most common type of censorship that occurs in western democracies is the restriction of musical content. A good example of restriction as a mode of censoring music is seen in the Prodigy's song, which had questionable lyrics and video that was restricted to late-night airplay (Bryant, 2015). Songs deemed to be objectionable in any nature are often repressed by removing material or restricting its availability to the public (Ratcliffe, 2016).
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Web 2.0 music distribution and communication technologies have made it easier to share musical content over the various social media and streaming platforms. However, these modes have also made it harder to impose censorship than in pre-internet days (Understanding Media and Culture, 2016). In this era, all one needs to do is share the music from their devices across one platform to another user. This can happen even with censored musical content, and it might even go viral because of its censored state, as many people will be interested in listening to it. Moreover, content creators can create their music and upload it on numerous social media sites and streaming platforms where it will be hard to censor music as it has already been shared and will likely continue to be shared (Understanding Media and Culture, 2016). It, therefore, becomes harder to censor music in this era.
References
Bryant, T. (2015). NSFW: The Prodigy-Smack My Bitch Up. https://www.loudersound.com/features/nsfw-the-prodigy-smack-my-bitch-up
Ratcliffe, G. M. (2016). Parental Advisory, Explicit Content: Music Censorship and the American Culture Wars (Doctoral dissertation, Oberlin College). https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=oberlin1467141078&disposition=inline
Understanding Media and Culture. (2016). https://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/
