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There was this great documentary about the music industry and how it is all homoginized and one company (Clear Channel) controlling the airwaves and deciding what does and does not get played.
Well, one of the musicians they interview said it best, "people who listen to Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears are not fans of music, they're fans of pop culture."
BINGO! That hit the nail right on the head. I mean, crap like that is not music and not meant to be. It is just sonic pop culture that comes from some marketing firm and not from a musician. The makers of the film even show how easy it is to make a cookie cutter pop star by following the recipe.
Said part is, I think less people are actually into music now than ever before. When I was in highschool, "way back" in '96-2000, the cool kids were the ones who listened to music no one ever heard of. The kid who found the best band first was "in the know" and everyone it seemed frowned on the crap that was on the radio (this is when that nu-metal crap was huge and the Backstreet Boys nominated the airwaves) I remember one kid, a friend of mine, putting a CD on the player in freshmen art class (our art teacher was cool as hell and let us play CDs during class, as long as it wasn't full of curses and about killing people) he said "dude, this band has been around for awhile, but I just heard them today. This song is the $****!"
Man...just confirmation that today's music is just crap!!!
There was this great documentary about the music industry and how it is all homoginized and one company (Clear Channel) controlling the airwaves and deciding what does and does not get played.
Well, one of the musicians they interview said it best, "people who listen to Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears are not fans of music, they're fans of pop culture."
BINGO! That hit the nail right on the head. I mean, crap like that is not music and not meant to be. It is just sonic pop culture that comes from some marketing firm and not from a musician. The makers of the film even show how easy it is to make a cookie cutter pop star by following the recipe.
Said part is, I think less people are actually into music now than ever before. When I was in highschool, "way back" in '96-2000, the cool kids were the ones who listened to music no one ever heard of. The kid who found the best band first was "in the know" and everyone it seemed frowned on the crap that was on the radio (this is when that nu-metal crap was huge and the Backstreet Boys nominated the airwaves) I remember one kid, a friend of mine, putting a CD on the player in freshmen art class (our art teacher was cool as hell and let us play CDs during class, as long as it wasn't full of curses and about killing people) he said "dude, this band has been around for awhile, but I just heard them today. This song is the $****!"
The song in question was "Dominion" by The Sisters of Mercy.
Still one of my favorites. This, I remind you, was back in the mid '90s, before the internet and easy access to all kinds of music.
Today? Kids only listen to what everyone else is listening to, and anyone with anything new that no one has ever heard of is not met with interest and curiosity, but rather with raised eyebrows and dirty looks. Kids just say "never heard of them" and go back to listening to their pop-culture-set-to-a-back-up-band in the guise of "music" and never seek to expand their horizons.
"Underground" and "independent", two words which, in today's world of push-up bra divas and talentless psuedo-musicians, are the last strongholds of real music, are two words that no longer mean "cool", but rather they mean "weird" and "abnormal". Kids no longer want to listen to anything that every single solitary person in their age group will be 100% familiar with. This generation of kids coming up no longer seeks out music, but are content to listen to pop culture, unlike the generations before and leading up to the one immediately before their's (mine) who understood that the radio sucked and real music was discovered, not spood fed by the mass media.
Worst yet, this generation at least has the internet. We didn't! All one has to do is go to live365.com and hear all kinds of music, from classics like the Psychedelic Furs, Bad Brains and Buddy Holly to new artists like The Birthday Massacre, After Forever and The Dresden Dolls. But NOOOOO, instead, they only use the internet, which my generation would have killed to of had, to download crap like Beyonce, Jessica Simpson and Kenya East or whatever the heck his name is (purposely called the wrong name to show how little respect I have for him)
With the internet, there is less of an excuse for not listening to real music and yet today, fewer young people listen to real music than every before.
The fact that fewer young people than ever before prefer pop culture to music is a sad affair indeed. Just look at these girls in the preview of the movie: they don't even know who the heck Bob Dylan is and are listening to Jessica Simpson because "she has great hair!"
And to think, that's the future of America! Maybe I should move to Switzerland...
Interesting video. Coming from a young person (I'm in my early 20's), your description of the 90's sounds a lot more like my world then the one you described. Even more so, you can discover and download music for free, so now you have the kiddos download well over 5,000 songs (I have close to 10,000) of music. You also have music blogs like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Gorilla vs. Bear, and The Grizzly Life which all have a considerably large fallowing. The youngsters, now a days, just get there music from different places then in the 90's. No one I know listens to top 40, hardly anyone still listens to the radio, and Jessica Simpson and Britney Spires are a pretty big joke for anyone out of junior high. If you want to get a good idea of what the kids are listening too, the lineups for the big festivals (like ACL, Bnonarroo, Lollapalooza, Coachella, etc.) instead of the top 40. You will NEVER see Jessica Simpson headline a music festival.
The problem is the music industry is in a transition. The RIAA losing and relentless fight against the internet has reduced the mainstream slow crawl. They're scared to take risk because the big companies have already lost so much money over the past ten years due to the internet, which that, in itself is making things worse. Indie is growing by leaps and bounds every year, and in Europe, it's already taken over the mainstream. So somethings got to give, and it's unlikely to be the underground giving into the mainstream.
Here are some better examples of the "other side" of today's music industry.
The problem is the music industry is in a transition. The RIAA losing and relentless fight against the internet has reduced the mainstream slow crawl. They're scared to take risk because the big companies have already lost so much money over the past ten years due to the internet, which that, in itself is making things worse. Indie is growing by leaps and bounds every year, and in Europe, it's already taken over the mainstream. So somethings got to give, and it's unlikely to be the underground giving into the mainstream.
Very good point. In the mid to late 70's, the music industry started getting too big for it's own good. This trend continued until it culminated in the late 90's/early 2000's with all the record labels being merged until we were left with 4 huge conglomerates.
I compare these mega companies to very large elephants. When an elephant is running at full speed, it takes a long time for the elephant to turn around. Meanwhile, indie labels are like the cheetahs of the music industry. A cheetah is much smaller than an elephant, but it's also a lot faster and more agile. Also, just like it would take a lot to bring down an elephant, it'll take a long time for the large conglomerates to fall. I always tell my musician friends that the large labels aren't going to bite the dust due to one thing in particular but more likely will due from "1,000 paper cuts."
The future of innovation in the music industry will be from indie labels and musicians who figure out how to sidestep the middle man and connect directly with an audience.
The music "industry" has evolved way past the industry part. In the late 60's, early 70's, when my brother was performing, he refused to "play the game" and sign with a label. . . too much graft. Today, those with talent, in his position, can be and are successful, with the help of grass roots music organizations. The best talent in this country is now largely independent! Oh sure, a few will eventually get on the industry bandwagon, hopefully the creme de la creme, but the best songwriter I know (Pat Maloney) will continue to get buy and pay the bills with live performance and C.D. sales, the best singer songwriter I know (Larry Jolly) has no real need to make money from music, so he can do it for the satisfaction he gets from being so spectacularly talented! These, and others like them, are the ones to watch and listen to.
There is really not much for me to add. I've seen this trailer thousands of times. I would really like to watch the entire documentary. There are many others like this as well like What happened to the Soul.
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Maybe I should move to Switzerland...
