I'm 56, and I refuse to become an 'I like what I like' person. RUclips is where I'm discovering new music. In just the last year I've found: The Warning, Freeze The Fall, The Sixsters, Seas On The Moon, Infected Rain, Ad Infinitum, Dianthus, Kittie, Holy Wars, Plush, Huri Hau, Devora, Conquer Divide, Asterism, and I could go on and on...
Years ago I used Pandora to find artists based on some random song that I liked. It was a bit of a process to feed it songs in order to have it cough up new artists but it did work to some degree and I found a few new bands that I liked from it. Lately it's been Spotify and what they consider "Fans also like". At least with Spotify I can blow through dozens of suggestions in minutes to see if anything tickles my fancy. But I think I've had the most luck by picking a popular song and seeing who has done covers of that song. If they did a good job covering it, then I'd check out other songs from them. I found Exigent, Freeze the Fall, and Buzzkill all from their respective covers of The Warning's song Evolve.
My theory on why bands are disappearing is the absence of talent and talent recognition. When you look at popular segments of music, such as pop, hip hop, K-pop and such, your acts have historically been single artists, singing along to a track. The industry sells it, because it's cheaper to maintain. Bands need gear, salaries for the various musicians, lodging, when on tour, etc. It's a lot cheaper to send your artist on tour with just a stage crew. The removal of profit from the music industry, through streaming, has made it much more important to cut corners and expense. Additionally, when you produce without a band, you can just contract your music scores from different sources, to get variety. You don't need a band that's adept at playing in different styles. As a stand-alone artist, you don't need to practice with a band - the singer can go sing to a track in the shower, if they want. More troubling is the growing trend of AI composed and played music. There are numerous tools that can create a sound track without having a live performer in the studio. This points to a lessening of talent in the industry. There are people with talent, but they're being marginalized or are not prioritized because of the profitability and viability of stand-alone acts. This has also led to rock's decline over the years. You can put Katy Perry or Taylor Swift on a stage without a band and they'll pull huge crowds. You can't do that with groups like Guns 'N' Roses, Aerosmith, etc. It just doesn't work. It takes an exceptional band and a lot of super hard work, self-promotion, fan community development and risk for a band to be successful. Sadly, that's the world we live in.
Oh, Rick Beato...He's looking in the charts and trying to find bands. There are literally thousands of young, new bands out there. You just have to look for them. They're also not on the radio. I could sit here for 3 days feeding amazing musicians and bands to anyone.
I think Rick likes to come across with something that sounds sensational and/or controversial. Not nearly as bad he seems to think it is. I agree, I have found lots of new bands very recently - they are just delivering content differently than it has traditionally been done.
Beato is a man from the business, and he takes a business perspective. But business is broken. You can listen to music from anywhere, everywhere. Music doesn’t disappear. The statistics don’t show music that music lovers listen to, they show what everybody is listening to when they are on streaming platforms, or occasionally buy music. And that’s how you get the statistics. But they are only the tip of an iceberg that you can’t measure in real time, not like you could when there were just record sales.
I think technology has reduced the need to have a band to produce music. More solo artists? Well, bands have always had breakups and lineup changes because people don't always get along and aren't always reliable. Going/staying solo eliminates the need to stick together in order to be productive while maintaining sometimes difficult relationships. I do think that it takes an amazingly creative individual to produce quality songs and music over an extended period of time. Getting two or more creative people together in a working relationship improves the chances of success. But now instead of those creative minds being in the same band it is more likely to be an artist/producer/songwriter combo. That has always been part of the music industry, but now it is dominant. Rock Music has always been band-driven, and the industry trends toward solo artists. This has pushed Rock to the fringe and made it more difficult for new bands to gain popularity.
I'm 56, and I refuse to become an 'I like what I like' person. RUclips is where I'm discovering new music. In just the last year I've found: The Warning, Freeze The Fall, The Sixsters, Seas On The Moon, Infected Rain, Ad Infinitum, Dianthus, Kittie, Holy Wars, Plush, Huri Hau, Devora, Conquer Divide, Asterism, and I could go on and on...
Years ago I used Pandora to find artists based on some random song that I liked. It was a bit of a process to feed it songs in order to have it cough up new artists but it did work to some degree and I found a few new bands that I liked from it. Lately it's been Spotify and what they consider "Fans also like". At least with Spotify I can blow through dozens of suggestions in minutes to see if anything tickles my fancy. But I think I've had the most luck by picking a popular song and seeing who has done covers of that song. If they did a good job covering it, then I'd check out other songs from them. I found Exigent, Freeze the Fall, and Buzzkill all from their respective covers of The Warning's song Evolve.
Pandora cut me off when they surmised that I didn't actually live in the 90210 zip code.
Points for my "you gotta do some work to be a fan" theory.
My theory on why bands are disappearing is the absence of talent and talent recognition. When you look at popular segments of music, such as pop, hip hop, K-pop and such, your acts have historically been single artists, singing along to a track. The industry sells it, because it's cheaper to maintain. Bands need gear, salaries for the various musicians, lodging, when on tour, etc. It's a lot cheaper to send your artist on tour with just a stage crew. The removal of profit from the music industry, through streaming, has made it much more important to cut corners and expense. Additionally, when you produce without a band, you can just contract your music scores from different sources, to get variety. You don't need a band that's adept at playing in different styles. As a stand-alone artist, you don't need to practice with a band - the singer can go sing to a track in the shower, if they want. More troubling is the growing trend of AI composed and played music. There are numerous tools that can create a sound track without having a live performer in the studio. This points to a lessening of talent in the industry. There are people with talent, but they're being marginalized or are not prioritized because of the profitability and viability of stand-alone acts. This has also led to rock's decline over the years. You can put Katy Perry or Taylor Swift on a stage without a band and they'll pull huge crowds. You can't do that with groups like Guns 'N' Roses, Aerosmith, etc. It just doesn't work. It takes an exceptional band and a lot of super hard work, self-promotion, fan community development and risk for a band to be successful. Sadly, that's the world we live in.
All good points by you!
Oh, Rick Beato...He's looking in the charts and trying to find bands. There are literally thousands of young, new bands out there. You just have to look for them. They're also not on the radio. I could sit here for 3 days feeding amazing musicians and bands to anyone.
I think Rick likes to come across with something that sounds sensational and/or controversial. Not nearly as bad he seems to think it is. I agree, I have found lots of new bands very recently - they are just delivering content differently than it has traditionally been done.
Beato is a man from the business, and he takes a business perspective. But business is broken. You can listen to music from anywhere, everywhere. Music doesn’t disappear. The statistics don’t show music that music lovers listen to, they show what everybody is listening to when they are on streaming platforms, or occasionally buy music. And that’s how you get the statistics. But they are only the tip of an iceberg that you can’t measure in real time, not like you could when there were just record sales.
I think technology has reduced the need to have a band to produce music. More solo artists? Well, bands have always had breakups and lineup changes because people don't always get along and aren't always reliable. Going/staying solo eliminates the need to stick together in order to be productive while maintaining sometimes difficult relationships.
I do think that it takes an amazingly creative individual to produce quality songs and music over an extended period of time. Getting two or more creative people together in a working relationship improves the chances of success. But now instead of those creative minds being in the same band it is more likely to be an artist/producer/songwriter combo. That has always been part of the music industry, but now it is dominant.
Rock Music has always been band-driven, and the industry trends toward solo artists. This has pushed Rock to the fringe and made it more difficult for new bands to gain popularity.