shootthebandit said:
dont get me wrong there are a few good songs there but most of it is shit
just have a look, here is the top 40 hits in the UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles
i like travie mcCoy, yolando be cool (only because it makes you feel like you are on holiday) and brandon flowers. other than that its just a pile of shit
i dont know what the US chart is like but i imagine its similar with shit like FLo RidA etc.
Understand that one of the reasons why businesses cater to the lowest human denominator is that there are far more people on that level than above it, and by targeting them you have the biggest possible cash growth. Music has always been a business, and has been becoming increasingly corperate with each generation.
Take a band that is really popular and mainstream, do a search for it, and check the material generated by it's fans. You might not agree with the people, but your going to see easily WHY those people people like this, and when you look at the numbers of those fans becomes pretty self explanitory.
That said I have nothing against most pop music, even if I do not rave about it.
ALSO consider that when it comes to more technical, artistic, or otherwise "smart" music, there is massive division. You have literally hundreds of micro-crowds of various sorts, many of whom hate each other with a passion and insult each other based on whose music they feel is smarter or more artistic, or darker, or whatever. This means that catering to any of those small groups of people is not going to net anyone mountains of cash.
Consider also that being more corperate than ever before, the music industry doesn't much care about it's talent to begin with. It very much supports a "flavor of the week" type mentality and figures when a band flags, there is always another one to pick up and replace them. Back during the sixties and seventies (less so in the eighties) bands were supported by their organizations (labels, etc..., assuming they didn't run their own) through ups and downs. With some of the longest running, and most famous acts a lot of fans can point to times where they were "down" and eventually managed to recover. Today if a band is not making peak profits, or worse yet losing money, a music company isn't going to support them for years and re-cultivate the talent.
Disposable pop talent is where the big bucks, right then and there, are at, and that is what the people making the desicians want.
Nobody is going to support a "real" band (however one defines it) through thick and thin anymore because even if they make a lot of money, by the numbers they could have made even more by being ruthless.
This is how things are in general today now. All industries, music, movies, TV, video games, novels, comics, paper and pencil RPGs, etc... it's not about the product or the art anymore, it's all about optimizing the amount of money to be made at any given second.
I'm all for capitolism, but there is such a thing as going too far with it and getting too greedy. Truthfully I am sort of hoping that we will see a massive crash of businesses operating this way and a recovery leading to more of a middle ground between the older ways of doing business, and the current ones (and don't get me wrong, the "good old days" were hardly utopian).
