This article has been edited (04/17/06)

It has been a rough month for Scott White, a PolyGram Records regional distribution director who I’ve kept in touch with since he introduced me to Local H five years ago.

On Thursday, he walked through his Chicago office watching those around him pack up their desks.

“These aren’t just co-workers,” he told me. “These are good friends — people who were in my wedding.”

Today, Scotty, as he’s known around the office, will find out if he still has a job.

His fate lies in the dismal hands of the Seagram Co., which recently completed a $10.4-billion acquisition of PolyGram that combined two of the world’s biggest record conglomerates.

Those already out of a job include the 500 employees at A & M Records and 110 at Geffen. Both labels announced Friday that they would be closing their doors.

Marc Luber, a University of Michigan graduate, was among the A & M jobholders who were given pink slips.

In an e-mail Luber sent to the many friends he has made over the years, he attached a Los Angeles Times article about the acquisition.

In it, A & M chief Al Cafaro, who also was fired, made the following comment: “This isn’t about Universal or Seagram. This business is changing fundamentally. Don’t think that there are calm seas on the other side of this threshold. If the quake that devoured A & M and Geffen is a 6.0 on the Richter scale, there is a 7.0 coming in this industry. It’s a Wall Street world now. Get ready.”

The music industry is becoming just another industry, like tobacco or pork. Disappearing is the independence that reigned supreme when Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss kicked in $100 each to start A & M in 1962.

To bring things a little closer to home, let me tell you that Marc Luber is the sole reason The Daily was able to score an interview with Tonic at such short notice last Veishea.

Without him, we may have had to wait a week just to get a return phone call.

Let me also tell you that Scott White is currently scouting an Ames band. If he’s fired, his reports will be thrown into a file cabinet that will be shipped to the lucky survivor of the downsizing.

The chance of the band “getting discovered” will turn from one in a thousand to one in a million.

Seagram’s purchase of PolyGram — or any record label merger, for that matter — means big bands get bigger and small bands get smaller.

“The sure thing” becomes the hot ticket, and bands like Local H are no longer given two chances to score a hit. Meanwhile, Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys are pumped even more easily to radio stations and record stores around the country.

“I don’t think [a record conglomerate’s] bottom line has much to do with music or artists,” Alpert told the Times. “It’s very black and white. [PolyGram] was so bottom-line conscious that it was hard to make a decision like we used to … from the gut, based on feeling, not whether an artist might be able to sell oodles of records.”

The Times reports that in the next month, 250 bands will get dropped from their labels. A recent Rolling Stone article estimates even more.

Chances are, these musicians will never find another record company that will represent the commercial and artistic potential of independent labels like A & M and Geffen once did.

A & M made Cat Stevens and Sting household names. Geffen introduced Nirvana, Guns ‘N Roses and Beck to the masses.

Rock music suffered a tragedy Friday, and we can only pray things won’t get worse.

Company merging is always going to rear its ugly head in this world because, financially, it makes sense.

But there is a time when you need to look at things artistically, and if record company merging means more Celine Dion, this is the time.

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Corey Moss is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.