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“The modern digital age has enabled bad music to be mass-produced very quickly and the wannabe famous “artistes “ in the basement are flooding the airwaves.” – all very true. Sometimes I feel like half of the world’s population is in a band. The market is saturated. Supply is exceeding demand many times over. But it’s free, so people download it anyway, which gives the illusion of demand. I expect that there will be a tipping point in the near future, and virtually overnight everyone will realise that unless you are in the lucky 0.1%, you will not be able to make significant money from your music (just like how virtually overnight everyone realised that food is getting expensive, petrol is getting expensive, and we need to save the planet RIGHT NOW). Lots of great stuff in the comments too.
2 replies on “Why Has Modern Music Lost So Much Impact?”
True enough. But the flipside of this phenomenon is that people have much greater opportunity for self-expression (which might help with broader issue of disenfranchisement in society, which I reckon leads to the binge drinking etc.), the internet allows like-minded souls to find each other more easily (thus a bigger “market” for your output, especially if it’s a bit unusual) and in commercial terms there’s a whole live venue economy depending on people buying drinks at gigs when they go to see their favourite no-hopers. Also, from the music obsessive’s point of view, it takes more work to wade through this increased volume of material but when you find something truly special it’s even more worthwhile.
I think the key issue is that the traditional music hierarchies are breaking down. Fans exist in much smaller, mutually exclusive community groups these days. Whereas previously A&R and record labels acted as gatekeepers, now the fans use MySpace and live performances to form their own opinions. Overall levels of artistic quality might not always be as high, but that’s balanced out by the greater access that people have to the performers and thus more of a connection that they can make with the music. There’s a school of thought that says we’re returning to the way we’ve always related to music – community oriented, word of mouth, ephemeral – and that the “star” phenomenon of the twentieth century will in the long-term be seen purely as a cultural blip. Not sure I can agree entirely, but it’s a fascinating thought.
And I have to take issue with the writer’s (albeit US-centric) assertion that live venues for upcoming artists are dwindling. It’s astonishing how many there are in London these days. Since the start of 2007 I’ve been to 22 gigs in London and only two of them were return visits to places I’d been previously. That’s only the tip of the iceberg: there are plenty of big-name venues (e.g. Brixton Academy, Shepherds Bush Empire) as well as smaller but high-profile locations (e.g. Nambucca, Old Blue Last) that I haven’t been to at all.
I’ve often pondered on this, too. Since there is no longer any money to be made in recorded music, the live performance will be much more important. Most people don’t want to travel long distances to go to gigs, so they might look towards their local scene more. It would certainly be nice to see music returning to a social, community-based activity.
Even in my leafy town in Berkshire, there are a decent number of pubs with boards outside advertising live music. The only problem that I have is that there seems to be no centralised place where I can find listings for them. Oh, and most of the bands are probably shit.
So yes, the writer’s statement about live venues dwindling is clearly not relevant to the UK, and maybe it’s not even relevant to the US. I don’t know.