Music Censorship- A Necessary Practice

Music Censorship is a practice that is implemented to prevent free access to any musical work. The censorship may arise from a wide range of reasons, which may be political, religious, military, moral or individual. Censorship on any musical work may include government enforced legal prohibition to continue with the musical work or removal of content from the musical work. Often censorship calls for a change in the content of the musical work depending on the context. Some common examples of censorship are removal of content, change in album cover, banning of the airing of the music etc. The enforcement of censorship began early in 1940’s-1970’s when an US popular music challenged the moral and conservative values through its content.

Music Censorship various forms

In some cases, music censorship prevented the censor of particular words. There are various forms of censorship possible through radio editing. Blanking is a technique where the content is kept mute to all parts of the world for certain duration. Beeping is another technique when the censored content is replaced with a ‘beep’ sound. Re- sampling is done to override the offensive terms used in the musical work. Re-singing is often done to replace the offensive words with appropriate terms. Back masking is sometimes done to reverse the entire audio. Repeating the same words again in the place of the abusive words was also used. Skipping, another technique allowed the deletion of the offensive words without causing any time delay. Echoing is implemented sometimes, which echoes back the word just before the offensive term to override it. Disc scratching causes the censored terms to be aired in the form of a scratch sound. Robo Voicing allows the offensive terms to be replaced robotic sound effects.  When the frequency of abusive words in a musical work is less, then distortion technique is used.

Music Censorship may be imposed counting in a number of aspects, which may be copyright infringement, where the record levels are forced to reissue materials without any infringement on the original copyrights. Religious censorship occurs when some religious words are used in wrong context. Political censorship is implemented when political values are disrespected based in the way they are used in the music. Censorship of artwork calls for change in the cover of any music album if it depicts something implicit. Self censorship is the form of censorship which is usually implemented nowadays where it becomes the duty of individual to follow the rule written in the label.

Music Censorship

Implicit depiction or airing of contents often provoke outrage among those sector of people whose values are affected by the contents. We often come across the term music censorship through mass media. Moreover, censorship throws more attention to the song than it would have if it had not been banned. People resort to other techniques of piracy to get access to the contents. They tend to gain access to the by resorting to other techniques. Nowadays, censorship has been imposed on a number of music sites and music stores.

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