Rock music is dead, now what?

[Just1L]

It all really depends on how you want to live. Do you want to live your life how you want to live it, doing what you want? Or will you sacrifice yourself for what other people say you should do? Nothing else matters.

[TapperMike]

Do you want to become a bedroom producer occasionally sharing your music with friends and family or do you seek something beyond?  Bandcamp and SoundCloud are perfect examples of musicians pandering to other musicians for listernership. I know of no non-muscio who had spent any time surfing for content.  

 

Sure I'm content to play my jazz guitar tunes to myself in winter and busk in summer with only an occasional glance upward from park gatherers listening to their phones as they eat lunch or watch kids play.  I'll never have a paying gig, I'll never have a following.  No youtuber will ever react to my songs  Like they do with pop culture through the ages.  Elders react to Ariana Grande,  Adults react to PSY, Kids react to Disco.   The funny thing is I generally watch react shows to find out what's happening in pop culture.  It's all in one ear and out the other aside from the reactions. 

[TapperMike]

I don't want to dig that far to find it.   Before current K-pop which is basically edm boy/girl bands.  Before that era K-pop easily rivaled the best that western pop did since the 90's  Granted Baekhyun's solo work outside of EXO is a return to conventional instrument / vocal performance though that wouldn't get any airplay even in Korea if not for the fact That he used his weight as a member of EXO and star power of being an in demand K-Drama actor to make it a reality

 

 

I know it's stripped down and sappy sweet.  I can no longer watch K-Drama's for the pop music. 

 

The early years of Youtube were great for finding new artists.  The ones that I liked the most never really hit the big time.

Where is Terra Terra Naomi Today?  This was 11 years ago

 

 

Where are the Terra Naomi's of today?  The only place I see them are on Songstuff.  They aren't charting on YT I'm not going to get Spotify and load my favorites of singer/songwriters in hopes that maybe they'll spotlight a rising star.  I have no interest in iTunes.  Every time I've heard radio over the last ten years my first instinct is to shut it off  They barely play music between all the commentary and advertisements and what they do play I'm not excited to hear.   I as a listener shouldn't have to go out on a life long mission to find music in hopes that it will satiate a sense of longing.   I've turned off the radio, I've turned off the TV.  Make something that interests me enough to comeback and maybe I will.  Until then I'd rather be flexible with a writing stance.  

[Carl Green]

As John Peel once so eloquently stated, there are only really two types of music- good and bad. That simple analogy works for every genre and in whatever medium it was created. The "good or bad" decision is down to you and no-one else.

[MonoStone]

10 hours ago, Jenn said:

from the perspective of a different generation

 

Nail on the head Jenn! Absolutely...

 

Since when was 'pop' or even new 'cool' music aimed at or understood by old men lol... I mean in the 80s my dad thought rock n roll was dead and could not understand the "Tuneless CRAP" we thought was brilliant. 

 

I keep an open mind to it all, and remind myself that when I start saying 'rock is dead' or 'pop is crap' then it's time to get the slippers and pipe...and I'm not willing to just yet

 

 

[john]

OMDs such as Soundcloud, or Reverbnation, focus on musicians as the audience. If they wanted to cater to general listeners then they must integrate mainstream music. The trouble is none of them do. Sites that have remotely gone in that direction have ended up as just general music sites, with indie music becoming non-existent on those sites or so buried it might as well be. It is an int wresting topic, one which there are some interesting answers to.... but it isn’t the original topic, “Is Rock music dead”.

 

There are a lot more cross over genres these days. Indeed, much like Socialism in politics (not diving into that swamp), Rock seemed to divide and sub-divide in endless genres until the trend seemed to be towards creating a genre for every band, every album, every song. Rock music was going so far up itself it was ridiculous. A bit like the snake that eats itself in an endless exercise in self-destruction.

 

Rock, along with every other genre, was killed by the pop scene bias of the music industry. Everything from labels to media outlets. Rock survived much longer than many of the others, and it it still clings on today...

 

but that misses the point.

 

Once upon a time, so the story goes, Rock WAS Pop. At some point so was Jazz. In fact, Since Rock was pop, it maintained an off-Pop presence under “Alternative”,or “Indie”,as well as dying previous forms like Punk or the myriad of Metal genres.

 

What is popular ALWAYS reinvents. It isn’t stagnant. New influences come along and get mixed into pre-existing genres and something new is born. They evolve.

 

Pop has always done that most vigorously. It draws influence from a load of different genres... including Rock. For pure Rock heads, they may not have recognised the influence of Rock recently... but it was there. As was Jazz. Now it is Latin. Big time.

 

Meanwhile the various alt-Pop genres of Jazz, Rock etc continue to be reinvented as well.... but perhaps the biggest change in young people is the change in their listening habits. They are far, far less genre specific listeners. For most, other genres are something to be dipped into, forays from Pop music.

 

I saw in previous posts EDM mentioned? And yet EDM is as much a sub-genre as Rock. It is an alternate music hub of yesteryear. Slowly corrupting and repeating itself. Same goes for Hip-hop. They are more recent, more vibrant, but none of them  reaches the masses like they did at their height until they cross over with Pop.

 

Yes there are electronica purists, just as there are death metal purists, but my point is that all sub-genres are dying, slowly. Once upon a time kids defined themselves by the sub-genres they listened to.. but that notion, that way of life is fading. Goths, Punks, Metalists, Hip-hop... it doesn’t matter. Fewer and fewer kids are devotees of anything in it’s pure form. Larger numbers belong to those who more recently were involved in Pop.... and that is something that is almost entirely about money, and the pursuit of money.

 

It is easy to point the finger at record labels and say they are to blame, or at media companies... but the truth is  that not only the kids are consumed by the pursuit of money for nothing, and fame for nothing (no skills needed), with NO SHAME.

 

Yes there are still musicians. yes there are still people working away. But fewer, and fewer.

 

It is all instant results. What do I get now for minimum effort, minus cost. That seems to dominate life. People don’t want the toils and torment of Blues, except as a wee holiday to see how people used to think and feel... or for certain moments in life. They don’t want the constant promise of rebellion that Rock in it’s various genres promised, or the intellectualism of Jazz. These are, to most, just moods, and they pass.

 

To the “normal” listener, sub-genres exist only as places of curiosity, to dip into.... not really for serious exploration. Because that requires effort. It requires sacrifice. And much like ripped jeans, the view is “why buy good jeans and wear them until they rip and beyond, when I can just go and buy ripped jeans?”.

 

Consumerism. That is what dictates everything else. People are slaves to the idea. They don’t fight it, because that is how they see themselves. Quite happily. They don’t want to rebel or fight it. When they do, it is a token gesture. A holiday. A sojourn.

 

And that just doesn’t fit with Rock anymore. Most people seem to want diluted flavours. The appearance of something, with no real substance. They don’t seem to need that degree of interest and devotion in order to be satisfied and content.

 

I tend to think that was always the case, anyway. The apparent devotion people seemed to have, was simply their attachment to that which was fashionable, only. It was only ever paper thin.

 

The truth is, what was past will never be again. Perhaps, some new version of it, but that is it. Rock is ever evolving, and for old diehards, the fact is that when fashion revisits their genre, they might just not recognise it. I get that feeling with recent commercialised Punk and Goth trends.  Everything now is manufactured. Not that it wasn’t before, but at least there used to be a veneer of self-participation in fashion. Home made clothing and accessories are as out of fashion as the music genres themselves. Everything is pre-made, off-the-shelf, commercialism on tap. Music is no different.

 

So, is Rock music dead? No, but it may as well be. We are discussing switching it’s life support machines off. Sad but true.

 

What mattered to old rockers, just isn’t as important to kids. It isn’t as important to the old rockers either. Maybe still significant... but less important in the grand scheme. Rock music will hang on, on life support, until it can find a way to be commercial, to work with commercial entities, with older and older back room musicians playing it... much like the blues. 

 

One day, it might just resurface, or at least a version of it ... but will we recognise it? That is the question.

 

Just my tuppence worth!

[john]

Oh and Jenn, I completely agree. 

 

People seem to to look for literal restatements of what went before and are eternally disappointed not to find it. Hell, if Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix were still playing, they would not be just playin* the same old same old. No one is.

 

There is some fantastic new music out there. Some wonderful innovation and creativity, some with a hard edge. If you aren’t seeing it, it’s because either you aren’t looking, or you are looking in the wrong places.

[Richard Tracey]

A point on what John mentioned - I remember even back in the 80's, each band evolved their sound between albums. New Romantic was the evolution of Punk, once they discovered synths and learned how to play an instrument.

 

Now we have a lot more bedroom musicians and producers. Years ago if you wanted to make an album, you booked out time in a studio at a heavy expense, so the album had to be bloody good or well produced before release. A bedroom producer can make a song in a day or two and release it. It will be fine for most listener's ears and because it is on streaming, you don't notice if the quality in the production is not there.

 

Cost has ultimately killed the music industry - when it became too bloated and one album was costing upwards of a million pounds to make, then you know that something is wrong and it is getting out of hand.

 

There was a backlash in the 90's to this type of exuberance and albums became more indie and cut back on the productions values (a bit like Punk). Digital music then allowed them to put some of that over production back in at a much reduced cost, hence why EDM and Hip-Hop became so big. They were easy/easier to make and produce and the market was saturated by those artists.

 

I think there is now a turning point where a lot of music listeners are wanting something to challenge their ears. They want to hear those little sounds you get from a well produced song/album. There are a lot of listeners out there who search for artists that are not the norm. For me at some point, there will be something for them, something to push those artists and have them easily identified and maybe then we will start to see a change.

 

We need people to fight / stand up / talk out about the music industry. They need to say what they want. As the younger listeners who want everything for nothing start to evolve with the music, they may just want something more than a streamed version. They may want the CD or the vinyl. Unless a new digital format comes out that is better than FLAC, but smaller in size, that is the only option open to listening to music in the way it is intended.

 

 

[Rudi]

3 hours ago, MonoStone said:

 

 

 

Since when was 'pop' or even new 'cool' music aimed at or understood by old men lol... I mean in the 80s my dad thought rock n roll was dead and could not understand the "Tuneless CRAP" we thought was brilliant. 

 

I keep an open mind to it all, and remind myself that when I start saying 'rock is dead' or 'pop is crap' then it's time to get the slippers and pipe...and I'm not willing to just yet

 

 

 

yes I know what you mean & have those self doubts also. But...

We cant honestly decide to feel differently than we feel.

 

My dad liked Mantovani. He was highly critical (and suspicious) of music I listened to.

 

As an self confessed old man I can truthfully say that pop music has always been crap. It was crap before, during and since my youth. Sometimes there is a gem that slips the net. That has always happened too.

 

I know that pop music is not aimed at me, but we all suffer the collateral damage from noisy neighbours, passing car audio and store music (and hospitals as recently reported).

 

Where I disagree is here. I do understand 'new' music. The words not so much, but the music is easy to understand. When I hear stuff I dont understand I try to hear more of it. Always have done.

 

Modern music is simple. I believe that everybody discovers much the same stuff within whatever period they live. It doesnt matter much what period their generation of music occurs in. We make the same musical discoveries as earlier generations, but as individuals.

 

Except for my dad. He couldn't recognise fine music if it was p1ssing on his shoes.

[TapperMike]

4 hours ago, Richard Tracey said:

Now we have a lot more bedroom musicians and producers. Years ago if you wanted to make an album, you booked out time in a studio at a heavy expense, so the album had to be bloody good or well produced before release. A bedroom producer can make a song in a day or two and release it. It will be fine for most listener's ears and because it is on streaming, you don't notice if the quality in the production is not there.

 

 

While I disagree with the former I agree with the later.  We actually have less bedroom musicians but we have an increasing amount of bedroom producers.  In the 70's 80's and even through the 90's amateur musicians were everywhere.  They didn't garner the attention for their work as youtube and other mediums weren't available.  Nonetheless in every place I'd worked there would always be a plethora of musicians.  Even before the advent of the four track cassette recorder people would record themselves on conventional cassette decks and over dub mixing additional tracks just to get something down.  It was far from ideal but when you only have what you can afford you make it work.  When I started working at America's Pizza Cafe which is a complete copy of CPK The general manager was a great singer and could accompany himself satisfactory on the guitar or piano. His assistant manager was a bassist though of completely different stylings.  The staff had two to three musician / waiters and even more in the kitchen.  We would gather during the down times (between 2 and 4) share songs and occasionally play together improvising.  A few bands were formed over my tenure and I actually produced one.  Not that they lasted long into the next decade.  Everywhere I worked as a non musician and remember I held down two jobs at a time. There was no shortage of a talent pool.   Cut away to today. While we do have greater exposure of musicians as they never truely go away.  There are definitely less in the populus at large. 

 

With regards to bedroom producers.  Call it EDM or trance or dubstep  Yes they are everywhere,  Yes the available tools have gotten better.  No high value production hasn't increased dramatically.  High value production takes skilled engineers and some semblance of music understanding as well as experienced musical ability.  If you don't have those going into it then it will take considerably longer to produce tracks and they may or may not be that great as compared to hit makers that the industry is putting out.

 

 

[starise]

I don't think any of it is really dead. The premise for the question is different than mine. I have a different premise and wouldn't have made the statement. 

 

It really is easy to find all of what seems to be problems with the music industry or even the "art" of music lately, especially for me.  I have aspired to be a good bedroom composer and I have reached my expectations.

[MonoStone]

7 hours ago, Rudi said:

I can truthfully say that pop music has always been crap. It was crap before, during and since my youth

 

I thought you liked to play Madness and other stuff that was definitely pop when I was a kid? I might be wrong, maybe  thinking of the wrong member... although you playing it doesn't necessarily mean you rate it anyway  

 

'Pop' to me is just whatever is consistently popular with a wide (though mainly young) audience and generally inoffensive chart topping music aimed at 'the kids' in whatever period. I mean the Beatles were pop in the 60s, T Rex were pop in the 70s with gigs packed with screaming little girls ... Madness, The Police etc in the 80s... They all fit into various genres (or at least on the edge of some genres) and to me all of those mentioned made fantastic music that won't be forgotten... but in their day they became 'pop' either intentionally or due to popularity (and maybe a bit of 'selling out' if you're a John Peel type). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MonoStone]

4 hours ago, TapperMike said:

In the 70's 80's and even through the 90's amateur musicians were everywhere.  They didn't garner the attention for their work as youtube and other mediums weren't available. 

 

Musicians making great (or very good) music, who worked hard at it, always got the attention they deserved. I was heavily involved in it in the late 80s/early 90s ... yeah there were bands everywhere... just as there are today... but the crap ones got NOWHERE, they couldn't pull a crowd of their own or even keep someone else's crowd entertained and that's IF they could even get a gig (most were deluded and never got beyond a rehearsal room). And the crap ones today won't find a crowd on youtube either! ... 

 

I think it's a huge misconception that youtube and social media makes a difference in terms of making it possible for any old crap to gain popularity. It's the same as it always was, in a sense, it's just a different platform....different stage.... venue... whatever. It's a world platform for anyone who's good enough and works hard enough, but it's definitely not a free ticket to fame for crap musicians/artists/bands

 

4 hours ago, TapperMike said:

We actually have less bedroom musicians but we have an increasing amount of bedroom producers

 

This suggests that people making dance music aren't musicians. Unless you're talking about bedroom producers producing music for other artists (there may be more of those but they're largely invisible... so I presume you mean artists who produce their own music... which might be largely EDM artists.

 

As I said before, it's just wrong to think of such people as 'not musicians'. Many will play keys, or write on guitar, I know a few EDM 'producers' and they all understand music theory better than me and play guitar better than me (though that's not hard ) and even those who don't 'play' an instrument are still artists making music and I can tell you that the really good ones live and breathe it day and night in the studio, they don't just slap some loops together and ship it,  and they know their genre and every related genre inside out, they understand it, 'playing' new tools as their 'instruments'. It's easy for those who don't honestly understand what makes a great EDM track, to knock it as just some loops stuck together. I couldn't write a hit dance track, and I have seen no one here who has made one.

 

In the olden days (     ) making a record took a combination of artist, writer, producer, engineer...probably a few session musicians... etc. There should be some respect for those who do ALL those things themselves even if their instruments are accessed as plugins (and by the way I've still not found the 'instant EDM hit plugin'... and again it's wrong to presume that these people aren't musicians even in the traditional sense. 

 

[TapperMike]

Rob I think you are an antagonizing blow-hard who is quick to feel victimized when anyone doesn't share the same exact perspective as yourself.

 

As well I think that simply because one is good it does not necessitate that they are obligated to fulfill others expectations of what they deem successful.  And by the same token those who rise in popularity aren't because they are better than someone else.

 

With that I bid farewell to Songstuff.

[Just1L]

@TapperMike As someone else who loves to play tap-style guitar, I had always hoped to hear one of your songs as well, or even a cover.

[MonoStone]

Chill out everyone... you wouldn't catch me ranting on here!

 

 

[Just1L]

58 minutes ago, MonoStone said:

Chill out everyone... you wouldn't catch me ranting on here!

 

 

 

Mmmmmm. Now I have a hankering for some lentils. Man I loved that show.

[Just1L]

1 hour ago, HoboSage said:

https://qz.com/1013293/rock-and-roll-is-dead-sales-of-fender-and-gibson-electric-guitars-prove-it/

 

 

I smell a sale coming my way.

[CapM]

On 11/17/2017 at 1:34 AM, TapperMike said:

Rob I think you are an antagonizing blow-hard who is quick to feel victimized when anyone doesn't share the same exact perspective as yourself.

..............

 

With that I bid farewell to Songstuff.

 

I chuckled at the irony here.

[CapM]

On 11/10/2017 at 1:47 PM, TapperMike said:

 

Show me the guitar based band in last years top 100

http://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2016/hot-100-songs

 

 

This is only one way to measure popularity.  It could even be argued that record sales shouldn't be the main determinant, because we all can consume music which we used to have to pay for in years past.

 

Another way to gauge popularity would be gross receipts from touring (concerts).  Thus far in 2017:

1. $151.5million – Guns N’ Roses
2. $118.1million – U2
3. $98.2million – Justin Bieber
4. $88million – Metallica
5. $68.2million – Depeche Mode
6. $60.5million – Red Hot Chili Peppers
7. $59million – Adele
8. $57.2million – Ed Sheeran
9. $54.5million – Eric Church
10. $52.7million – Bruno Mars

Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/music/highest-grossing-tours-2017-far-2113046#26Dz5uKLzqYU7qhx.99