To Rate or Not to... Protect

In response to the question of whether or not record companies should post parental advisory warning labels on the music they distribute, I think that record labels should post warning labels and even intensify the extent to which they protect the listener. Music seems to be the only mass media marketed that does not take extensive lengths to protect the listener/viewer from objectionable content. The movie industry has the MPAA rating system. Television also has a rating system. The music industry, however, only has “parental advisory” stickers. These stickers are, in my opinion, largely ineffective. A better system of rating music and protecting the listener is needed.

To purchase tickets for an R rated movie, one must be at least 17 years of age and possess proof of that age at the time of purchase. This effectively prohibits immature audiences from seeing and hearing things that they ought not to observe. This does not mean that there is nothing objectionable in movies possessing something lower than an R rating, but simply that most objectionable content is unattainable without the assistance of someone older. I have two comments about this in relation to the music industry. The first is that the music industry needs a more effective rating system than simply “parental advisory.” This offers very little guidance except to say that there is something objectionable on this album. The movie industry, however, has no less than 4 rating which are given to movies for varying degrees of objectionable content. The type of objectionable content in the film is then listen below the rating so that they viewer knows what is contained in that movie to give it that rating. The music industry has nothing comparable to this. A several tiered rating system similar to the movie industry with an explanation of the type of content contained in the music would be a helpful guide for both listeners and parents. That way parents could gauge what type of content is contained in their kid’s music.

My second thought relating the movie industry’s rating system to the music industry’s lack of rating system is that even the movie industry’s rating system is somewhat ineffective because measures that need to be taken to enforce the system, such as checking IDs before selling tickets to an R rated movie, are not taken. Not only does this need to be remedied in the movie industry, but effective measures need to be taken to make sure music with objectionable content is not distributed to those that should not be listening to it. I would propose a 3-4 tiered music rating system in which content is rated based on very similar criteria to which movies are rated. This would, hopefully, significantly reduce the amount of music containing foul content that is being distributed today. If this content really does have an affect on the behavior of our youth, which I am of the opinion that it, along with other media, does, then this would curtail a lot of the violence stemming from the music that our youth are listening to. I cannot see anything negative coming from increasing the rating system by which our music is evaluated. An outcry might arise from the record industry if a change of this nature were to be implemented, but that is only because it would hurt them in their wallets.