The shallow world of Popular Culture.

[Lyx]

snip

First off: awesome post.

Second: I wouldn't phrase the situation as "this one thing is THE problem, the other stuff isn't a problem". I would however agree that what you describe certainly is the biggest problem (though, if the "sound-demolition" stuff gets worse, i may consider it just as bad - namely when unlistenable albums (just white noise screaming at you) become the norm rather than "the tip of the iceberg".

As for autotune. I have a different take on this. I absolutely positively do hate it. But not because of arguments like "they cant sing!". Personally, i couldn't care less about if someone can sing well - what i care about is how the produced endresult sounds like. And autotune to me just sounds like soulless hollow robots - worse, it makes all those robots in the charts sound the same (i think this plays an important role in some peoples perception of this stuff sounding all the same).

I don't know for sure, but i suspect that a lot of people who complain about autotune just dislike it for those reasons: identityless robots that all sound the same - and its all over the charts. It to me wouldn't be as annoying if the robots sounded clearly different, thus giving them identity and character. It also wouldn't be as annoying if it weren't that popular, but rather just a handful of popstars doing it (there is a connection to your argument about pop as a monoculture). But both isn't the case.

 

[Dags90]

Listen to Disturbed. Their music is never angsty. Their songs are normally about insanity, the fucked-up-ness of the world, death and badassery.

Yes, there are good metal bands, but there are also good pop acts (even if they're not particularly popular). And for every one there may be, there are a few...well...this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud4HuAzHEUc]

To think that hard rock and/or metal is not a product to record companies that is molded to sell to a specific demographic is just silly. Part of the reason Trent Reznor made his own label was to protect himself from executive control (as well as disagreements with pricing).

 

[kakaomasse]

the majority is (almost) never right. ok, they killed some nobles in the 18th century.
but there is a difference between pop(ular) music and the top 40.

 

[Continuity]

Yes, people like pop music.
It's popular for a reason.

indeed, but I think the point here is that reason is not that its good but rather merely that it is popular... sound circular to you? Then I ask you this, what is fashion?

 

[BonsaiK]

1. What you've got to look at here is this: in music, who decides what's "cool"? When it comes to music, believe it or not, it's the people who are listening to it and buying it who determine that. This sort of thing doesn't come from above. If something like Ke$ha came out in 1920, nobody would have bought it regardless of marketing or whatever, not because it's musically simple but because the musical culture wasn't ready for it. Something like Tik Tok is in fact a hell of a lot more adventurous than any popular music from that period, and would have been perceived as "too experimental" for the time. What you also have to remember, and what critics of pop music consistently forget, is that for every Ke$ha, there were 1,000 wannabe Ke$has who didn't make it. Now if it was really simply a case of people not knowing better as long as the marketing was okay, the companies involved would throw the correct amount of dollars at all of it and ALL of those 1,000 Ke$has would have made a career out of it too. Obviously, only one did, so then you've got to ask yourself, what set that particular Ke$ha apart from all the others? Well...

2. ...people actually liked the songs more. Seriously, it doesn't matter how heavily you market something, if people like it they will buy it and if they don't, they won't. Sure, clever marketing will sell a few copies at the beginning but as soon as word spreads the sales will die fast if the product isn't something people want. So in other words, every single song that stays on the charts for a reasonable amount of time is something that people actually genuinely like. And that's why...

In terms of marketing i believe that if every radio/music channel represented music in a fair way then other forms of music would sell much better.

When Nick Drake was used in an Ad, his music became way more popular.

I think people are not aware of what they like within music, because its hidden away from them unless they find it themselfs.

And thats whats kinda annoying that some stuff is constantly everywhere not giving space to other things. But hey thats how it is i guess.

But if all musice was played over time instead just pop/rock then society would grow to like other music too.

This pop/rock monopoly isnt particularly fair.

A lot of artists refuse for their music to be used in advertising, either because they don't like the products, they worry that their fans will perceive it as "dancing with the devil" (which is retarded, because if they're part of the business, they already are) or tarnishing the brand in some way.

I see what you're saying but I don't think that argument stacks up these days. Maybe 20 years ago, but certainly not now. These days it's so incredibly easy to come across new music thanks to YouTube and so forth. In the old days you had to take your chances on import records, go to obscure dives and risk a bottle in the face or whatever, now you just type it in and the shit comes up. Or start an "give me new music to listen to" thread in this very forum and people will be showing weird shit down your throat faster than you can say "Shpongle are actually really boring to listen to, and that's the real reason nobody likes them".

gosh

Your Uffie example is basically irrelevant because you're looking at different scenes in different countries.

As for gambling, yes of course labels gamble, because they don't really know what people are going to like - nobody really does. Sometimes things strike a chord and sometimes they don't, and as yet ethnomusicologists have struggled to answer the big musical questions about what makes one chunk of pop music "work" and another fail. What they do is look for something which looks like it's fairly good odds and then they "bet" on that. I'd prefer that approach rather than some guy in there going "I know what's best because I have incredibly hip music taste" and then all of a sudden people are getting sacked and restructured and some absolute utter bullshit nobody wants is getting promoted because it's that guy's pet love and "it's REAL music, maaaan" and then the label sinks like a stone. That person is never going to find anything because they take even less chances than the random faceless exec who just says "fuck it, I don't know what it is, let's just put it out there".

 

[Blemontea]

I'm currently in rage mode right now so I'm simply going to say is that if you slapped some sunglasses on a Mozart picture and photoshopped that onto a tshirt and played that on the radio with some news announcer saying it's on the top 40 then the children would be all over it like the witeless followers of fashion they are at there young age and for some reason people would still complain about it.

 

[BonsaiK]

I'm currently in rage mode right now so I'm simply going to say is that if you slapped some sunglasses on a Mozart picture and photoshopped that onto a tshirt and played that on the radio with some news announcer saying it's on the top 40 then the children would be all over it like the witeless followers of fashion they are at there young age and for some reason people would still complain about it.

Bollocks. The main market for Andre Rieu is old people.

 

[MisterGobbles]

I think really that people overstate how bad pop music is today, because it really isn't that terrible...most of it is catchy and serves it's purpose as radio fodder. Yeah, most of it sounds the same, but most people aren't as into music as some of us are and this music serves them just fine. The rest of us have our indie pop and metal and what-have-you.

On the other hand, some of it is just plain awful and you wonder just how stupid people would have to be to like it. But this really applies to music of all forms.

 

[Scoffy89]

I like to battle pop music with pop music. If someone's blaring pop music out of their cars, I turn my CD player waaaay up, and sing along...

I wanna be the very best! That no one ever was! DUN DUN DU-DUN!
TO CATCH THEM IS MY REAL TEST! TO TRAIN THEM IS MY CAUSE!

I definately doing that at some point.

More relative to the topic, I agree with many people that are saying that musical taste changes throughout the years as well as the fact that currently the music on the radio has peoples interest but I wonder why when back in the 60s, 70s, etc. you had artists like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, etc. who had genuine talent and created exceptional music but now people like Lady Gaga and Kesha dominate the music market with songs like that I lost my phone drivel.

I agree that it's all about marketing and what sells and what drunken fools can dance to. Make a catchy song no matter how bad, get someone who looks attractive to "sing" it and there you go. Millions in the pocket.

 

[marcus75]

Younger and younger kids have access to larger and larger amounts of disposable income. Kids are dumb, so the more influence they have in any area the dumber it's going to be. As their childhood tastes are increasingly catered to, the push to develop more sophisticated tastes as they grow older decreases.