Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] more music to grade by...

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:52:10 -0600 (CST), Mike Miller
<EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Jonathan King wrote:
> 
> >> Obviously, they don't know a good thing when they have one.  Right now
> >> they have a stifling grip on the music business.
> >
> > You make no sense.  They ARE the (pre-recorded) music business.
> 
> All I'm saying is that these companies used to be more innovative.  They
> used to look for real musical talent to promote and they used to nurture
> those artists.  The companies want Britney-Spears-type packages to sell
> and they don't want to take chances with new ideas.

Ooh, stop it!  You're killing me!  I think the only part of this I
could agree with is that they used to thin that they needed real
musical talent to sell records.  Now, they still need (some of) this
to sell to certain markets, but once they found the package sold
better, that was all they needed to know.

> >> They don't want to take big chances with their money, so they work to
> >> promote things that fit in with what is already popular.  The obvious
> >> effect is to crush innovation and cause stagnation in popular music.
> >
> > Only in pre-recorded popular music on major labels.  To be honest, there
> > is so much music out there these days that I can't understand the "crush
> > innovation" comment much.  They don't promote innovation because it
> > doesn't seem to sell, or sell as well as other stuff.
> 
> That is not how it works.  Popular music is constantly changing.  

The produced sound may change, and there are some broad trends that
change (no hip hop in the 70s), but you'll note that the innovative
stuff is picked up by majors well after it has become popular for the
most part.  I think one of the few exceptions to this I can think of
is Nirvana.  I think the intent was just to sell to Gen-X types and
they did stumble on something more than that.

> People
> like what they hear.  The "powers that be" have always been, as you point
> out, but they are working the system differently today than they used to.
> They used to pick talented, creative people and support them, helping them
> to develop into stars.

No, I don't think so Mike.  The term "one hit wonder" is not a new
one.  The support you got was usually only a function of having
stronger initial sales than the average band they signed.  Once the
cost of creating a new package act got low enough (or the rate of
success high enough) the majors stopped doing this, at least for the
biggest markets.

> Things are different now and there is much more
> phony packaging and focusing on image.  If a group doesn't hit it big with
> their first CD, they are usually dropped.

Dropping an act after their first album is and has always been the
norm.  It is true that they have found better ways to *create* and
package acts than they used to have, and that's what makes them all
the more willing to dispose of what doesn't work.
 
> >> What can we do?  Don't buy popular CDs.  Listen to more free MP3s on
> >> the web.  Support local bands.  I don't know how much we can do, but we
> >> have to do something.
> >
> > But what you like and support what you like.  Expecting or hoping that
> > everybody else will like it strikes me as a fairly hopeless endeavor,
> > but there's lots of good stuff out there.  So tell people out there what
> > seems to be good.
> 
> That's always good advice, but these days we can shun the corporate music
> industry altogether and we'll still be awash in a gazillion CDs.  Every
> local band is making CDs these days, but they aren't getting heard.

Well, I'm not going to start feeling guilty that I can't go out to
clubs and hear new acts.  I see no reason not to listen to something I
like just because it's on a label you consider corporate.  And I see
no reason to support a local band that sucks just because it's local. 
These days, the way I'm most likely to become aware of something new
out there is to hear it myself on a station like KCOU (which amounts
to a completely arbitrary and random sample of whatever they get sent
:-)) or have somebody or thing recommend it to me based on knowing
what I already like.
 
> Do we have any kind of Internet Top 40 for legal MP3 downloads?

So this may be the biggest disagreement we have.  I say: WHO CARES
about what the Top 40 *anything* is unless it happens to coincide with
your taste?  The beauty of the music scene these days is that I have
an okay chance of finding something I do like despite the fact that
it's not in anybody's Top 5000.

jking
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