Parental Advisories for music

I feel that for the most part record companies should and do have a certain responsibility to provide the listeners with a description of what they are about to listen to but I am not sure that putting a parental advisory label on the music is the best way to do so. How often are the parents usually with their children when they are purchasing music anyway? I bet most of the time they are not. These kids are most likely purchasing music while they are at the mall with their friends or at a record store. One of the most common ways to buy music today is through something like iTunes on the internet. I highly doubt that parents are going to be sitting over their children’s shoulder monitoring every single thing they are doing or purchasing on the computer.      

            As a mother myself I do worry about the type of music my son is going to listen to in the future. I realize by the time he is old enough to want to listen to music of his own choosing that I may not be as up to date as I once was. I will want to know about the artists he likes and what kind of messages and morals they are sending out before purchasing their music for my son or letting him purchase it. It is a mother’s and father’s job to protect and shelter their children as much as possible and it is also the music, television, game, movie and all other entertainment industries job to help protect and warn as well.

 That being said I do not think that putting parental advisories on the music is the most effective way to let the parents know the content of the music their children are listening to is. Most of the parental advisories are little labels in the bottom corner of the CDs in small print. Most parents don’t even pay attention to the cover of the CDs. How do we expect them to really pay attention to these warnings? CDs are almost obsolete nowadays anyway. Like I mentioned before the most common way to purchase music is through something like iTunes. I realize that iTunes has an explicit lyrics warning label next to the song but most of the time the kids are purchasing the music without their parents around. People can argue that kids can’t buy music without their parent’s permission but things like iTunes gift cards give kids full access to whatever kind of music they want to purchase at anytime.

I feel that the record companies can come up with more effective ways to warn parent’s about the content of their children’s favorite music than a little label or warning.  Maybe they can do something like have a required age limit in order to purchases the music with these types of warnings. When purchasing in person at a music store they should have to show a picture I.D. that shows their age. When purchasing music through the internet they should require you to do something like type in your driver’s license number to make sure that you are of age. I feel like they have the right idea by putting parental advisories on music but they need more effective ways to get the point across.