Are bands dead to the mainstream now?

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ChrisAshley

ChrisAshley

Striker
boybands don't count. Seems like Arctic Monkeys were the last band to make a breakthrough and get very popular and that was about 10 year ago.

I know mainstream has always been 99% shite but these days no bands are making a breakthrough.
 


ChrisAshley said:
boybands don't count. Seems like Arctic Monkeys were the last band to make a breakthrough and get very popular and that was about 10 year ago.

I know mainstream has always been 99% shite but these days no bands are making a breakthrough.
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You are getting old now though Chris. Surely there are bands that todays 17 year olds like who will come through eventually?
 
manufactured or radio friendly shit has been the order of the day for at least a decade now, music is reaching saturation point of identikit musicians vying for sales, Cowell and his ilk are to blame, meanwhile on the flipside you have genuinely talented musicians and bands splitting up and going their own ways because they cant break the stranglehold that the major players have with a production line of samey, radio friendly, insipidly shit pop acts or unthreatening 'rock' acts.

Music is fucked and has been for years
 
genericus said:
manufactured or radio friendly shit has been the order of the day for at least a decade now, music is reaching saturation point of identikit musicians vying for sales, Cowell and his ilk are to blame, meanwhile on the flipside you have genuinely talented musicians and bands splitting up and going their own ways because they cant break the stranglehold that the major players have with a production line of samey, radio friendly, insipidly shit pop acts or unthreatening 'rock' acts.

Music is fucked and has been for years
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Well said. We will never ever see a real band ever, one that has trawled the pub and club circuit and worked their way up to record company attention. As you say, music is fucked.
 
genericus said:
manufactured or radio friendly shit has been the order of the day for at least a decade now, music is reaching saturation point of identikit musicians vying for sales, Cowell and his ilk are to blame, meanwhile on the flipside you have genuinely talented musicians and bands splitting up and going their own ways because they cant break the stranglehold that the major players have with a production line of samey, radio friendly, insipidly shit pop acts or unthreatening 'rock' acts.

Music is fucked and has been for years
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I reckon the advent of mp3's/streaming sites has a lot to do with it as well, in the days of tapes and vinyl you had to invest a lot of time, effort and money into your music collection. How many young'uns will listen to a full album enough to actually fall in love with the band? Putting weeks worth of tunes on an ipod or signing up to spotify with more than your lifetime worth of songs on is a piece of piss compared to knocking up a c90 with 20 odd tracks on. Space, time and money was limited so you f***ing made sure you loved every second of what went on your hi-fi. Modern digital technology has sucked the soul out of music, easy come easy go....
 
redandwhiterob said:
Do bands have time to develop nowadays? It seems the pressure must be on from the get go to get results. If The Jam appeared on the scene today chances are they would have been binned off by the record companies after the first album
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If you listen to MUSE's albums from Showbiz through to Drones you can hear the developing or changing style. They try new things every album
 
Keawyeds said:
If you listen to MUSE's albums from Showbiz through to Drones you can hear the developing or changing style. They try new things every album
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I think you missed my point mate. Successful bands are given time to develop. I am talking about bands getting binned off after one album after it doesn't sell well.
 
It's pretty much impossible to be as big as the likes of U2, Zeppelin and The Who (random examples) now.

The culture has changed completely plus the baby boomers are funding all the old bastards.
 
I'm Spartacus said:
I reckon the advent of mp3's/streaming sites has a lot to do with it as well, in the days of tapes and vinyl you had to invest a lot of time, effort and money into your music collection. How many young'uns will listen to a full album enough to actually fall in love with the band? Putting weeks worth of tunes on an ipod or signing up to spotify with more than your lifetime worth of songs on is a piece of piss compared to knocking up a c90 with 20 odd tracks on. Space, time and money was limited so you f***ing made sure you loved every second of what went on your hi-fi. Modern digital technology has sucked the soul out of music, easy come easy go....
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Great post and pretty much sums it up. Back in the day you`d save your pocket money for weeks and a bit of spare dinner money to save up for an album by your favourite band. The excitement of getting it home and popping it on the record player and reading the sleeve notes. Playing it over and over again until you knew every last bit of the album.
Now you can get 100,000`s of songs totally free and skip through them before they`re even finished.

Time moves on and things change but I certainly feel that music has become devalued compared to when I was younger.

redandwhiterob said:
I think you missed my point mate. Successful bands are given time to develop. I am talking about bands getting binned off after one album after it doesn't sell well.
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Rob, plenty of bands get binned off even when their album does sell well. There`s no loyalty or artist development now and certainly no patience for a band to develop slowly across 3 or 4 albums before hitting the big time. They want instant success or your out.
 
redandwhiterob said:
Do bands have time to develop nowadays? It seems the pressure must be on from the get go to get results. If The Jam appeared on the scene today chances are they would have been binned off by the record companies after the first album
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To be 14 in 1976 was a wonderous thing if you had an open mind. However, you can't replace the excitement of being young with 'proper music' (whatever it is).
 
Its canny annoying being a fan of indie rock or rock at all at the moment, like at the tender age of 19 I didnt have a chance to listen to all the classic rock/indie rock bands as they emerged onto the scene, instead I have to trawl the net at places like spotify and youtube hoping that some new, half decent, bands have got themselves noticed yet because god know the radio stations wont do it for me.
 
I'm Spartacus said:
I reckon the advent of mp3's/streaming sites has a lot to do with it as well, in the days of tapes and vinyl you had to invest a lot of time, effort and money into your music collection. How many young'uns will listen to a full album enough to actually fall in love with the band? Putting weeks worth of tunes on an ipod or signing up to spotify with more than your lifetime worth of songs on is a piece of piss compared to knocking up a c90 with 20 odd tracks on. Space, time and money was limited so you f***ing made sure you loved every second of what went on your hi-fi. Modern digital technology has sucked the soul out of music, easy come easy go....
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Good post and more or less the same points I was trying to make to Frijj on the 'songs you skip on your playlist' thread from a couple of days ago.

And on a related note, besides blaming Frijj for all this, I blame young lasses. When aa were a lad there were very few solo lasses making records. People like Petula Clark or Dana would get a single or two off the back of Eurovision, and there were novelty shit like Melanie's Brand New Key, but the charts as I remember were mostly blokes in bands. Young lasses swooned over The Osmonds or David Cassidy, the Bay City Rolers and later Duran Duran. Now is the age of the pop tart. Music made by and for twelve year old lasses. The charts are packed with stuff from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Rhianna, Britney Spears, Nikki Minaj et al, nothing for proper blokes to get into besides deciding if they're a wad or not.

mickb2112 said:
Great post and pretty much sums it up. Back in the day you`d save your pocket money for weeks and a bit of spare dinner money to save up for an album by your favourite band. The excitement of getting it home and popping it on the record player and reading the sleeve notes. Playing it over and over again until you knew every last bit of the album.
Now you can get 100,000`s of songs totally free and skip through them before they`re even finished.

Time moves on and things change but I certainly feel that music has become devalued compared to when I was younger.


Rob, plenty of bands get binned off even when their album does sell well. There`s no loyalty or artist development now and certainly no patience for a band to develop slowly across 3 or 4 albums before hitting the big time. They want instant success or your out.
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Exactly. I know it's trendy to knock U2 on this board and Bono is a colossal knob, but when they started out as a sort of emerging underground alternative act they were somewhat hip and if you listen to their first couple of albums they are very raw and garage band-ish, but someone saw enough potential to stick with them as they developed. Hat would never happen now.
 
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Keawyeds said:
I don't think MUSE are or have ever been mainstream.
But then I'm biased as I think they're awesome
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Class that most people haven't heard of Muse yet they're a stadium band :lol:. Class too as you know the kind of people that are going to show up genuinely care.
 
The squares reign supreme, so what you get is Sam smith, ed sheeran etc
 
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