Are bands dead to the mainstream now?

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errant said:
isnt itunes meant to be the death of the album? people cherry picking singles off albums and not getting the whole creative experience?


hasnt this been leveled against the uk music scene many times before? all it takes is one trail blazer to break through again and then every man and his dog will be signing up bands...
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With regard to iTunes, I think that's more likely to be true for "singles" artists - dance acts, boy bands etc. Someone like Jason Derulo sells far more downloads of individual tracks than albums, a band like Muse will be the opposite.
 


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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Well, you could say that the DJ/Producer is the new rock n roll/star now.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0820/feature-disc-jockey-skrillex-music-the-new-rock-stars.html

But some collaborating between bands and DJ/Producers does work as exampled below:

 
Tex said:
Aye but they were all shite. I saw a picture of the Arctic Monkeys with one of them in a duffel coat and another in a Members Only jacket and that was enough for me to detest them on sight.
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I'm not talking about how good/bad their music or fashion sense might be - going back to the o.p's point, there were plenty of guitar based bands breaking through into the mainstream around 10 years ago. It became saturated so the industry moved on. Their time will come again.
 
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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Muse aren't mainstream :lol: I agree they are awesome but bands like that play the it's cool we aren't mainstream so suckers fall for it and listen to them.

As for the op, loads of bands are still coming through, the problem is the markets flooded

The last band I fell in love with was purely by chance I seen them live.
I had tickets to watch the who in London, and they were warmed up by the zootons. The next day I had to have their album, they were just about to release tired of hanging around so that was all the way back in maybe 2006
 
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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Deffo. I was still buying CDs up until a couple of years ago, now I just don't bother and download stuff for free. I've even started using Spotify, although i think it's the spawn of the devil and can't for the life of me work out why the record companies ever signed up for it. Surely, even with piracy going on, people were still buying records? Lots of people liked to remain legal, refused to indulge Gnutella and still paid for music. Spotify has removed the need to pirate things and now there's no need to buy anything. It's crazy.
 
safcforever said:
Muse aren't mainstream :lol: I agree they are awesome but bands like that play the it's cool we aren't mainstream so suckers fall for it and listen to them.

As for the op, loads of bands are still coming through, the problem is the markets flooded

The last band I fell in love with was purely by chance I seen them live.
I had tickets to watch the who in London, and they were warmed up by the zootons. The next day I had to have their album, they were just about to release tired of hanging around so that was all the way back in maybe 2006
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love them so much, you can't even get their name right ;)
 
"I'd better call up the queen, it's only fair she knows".



The hippys were on the right track with their lyrics. Punks refined the music.
 
If there were forums like this around in the early 80's there'd be the same being said, again with SA&W mid 80's and over and over, there's plenty of good stuff out there. I've collected albums since the mid seventies, downloaded thousands of files off Soulseek but i've signed up to Spotify now and go round the houses on there, still struggling to get my head around playlists and stuff at nearly 50 years old but still seems to be plenty of new stuff about....can never remember what the hell i listened to the following day though, keep meaning to write them down.
 
Another problem is that record companies no longer run a mile from artists they might view as one hit wonders. In the past, a hell of a lot of money was invested into artists releasing albums and cherry picking two or three singles from it. However, the industry has now turned full circle and one hit wonders are welcomed just as much as anyone displaying real talent because studio time is cheaper to buy nowadays and due of the advances in technology, much less of it is actually required to knock out a fully produced, mastered and radio friendly track. Its all about bums on seats for record companies nowadays.
 
Tex said:
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.



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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So its not all bad these days then eh?
 
Struts said:
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.
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I'd like to think so.
I think they're one of those bands who really don't care where their music charts - singles wise anyway - they have fans all over the world

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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Oh right. Sorry. There's been loads of them to be honest.
Some of the people I probably saw at V Festival in 2003 or 2004 will have faded into obscurity by now
 
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Sleaford mods and slaves are joke bands aren't they? They can't be serious, both are f***ing horrid
 
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