Will there ever be a musical movement?

nyarlothothep

Like grunge, metal or the 60s from the underground rather than whats approved by the recording industry? I dunno, but I find myself totally indifferent to music nowadays. Its just filtered by the industry, for example you'd read "this year will be the year of female electropop because this is what the industry thinks is good" mostly to that effect. Yes I know the argument that there is plenty of good music out there that isn't in the mainstream, personally I like a state of affairs where there isn't one particular sound dominating.

wax

I believe it has already begun.
Recently bands have been self-releasing their music through their websites and are making 100% of the profits instead of the record companies. I believe people will start going back to gigs alot more to get the live feel again and because there are so many outlets for people to hear about new music it means we aren't all being fed the same reviews over and over.
Ask most people who consider themselves in the "scene" anything about the singles chart and they probably couldn't care less about it. Also, ask your pop music head about Duckworth Lewis for example and you'll just get a "huh"?
There's 2 types of music. Pop and the rest. It used to be either rock or dance but people are more open these days to new stuff as long as its not the newest vocoder-pop group.

fuelinjection

Was thinking about this last year a lot. I had lost a lot of interest in modern music/pop until I went to a music festival in the summer.

We all used to have the same few TV channels and just MTV to watch, and the amount of music we owned was very similar to each other and that is how the movement for say grunge grew.
Peoples access to music now is nearly infinite with the internet. There is a heck of a lot more bands and diversity in music nowadays. I don't think it will ever get back to the way it was when you would save your money, buy say a Metallica album on a Saturday afternoon and listen to it for months and months until you knew every note and word on it.

But there is a lot of good music around from new bands, you just have to read the music review sections of newspapers and listen to a good radio show - they usually have a new music show once a week that will give you loads of ideas.
Plus the choice now to just buy 1 song from the internet means you won't waste your money on a bad album just becasue you only want one song you like.

FewFew

Do we ever hear of musical movements without the help of the music industry?
Most of the main exponents of the various movements seem to have ultimately broken into the mainstream by getting picked up by someone in "the industry." I know of some movements that have survived without the help of major labels, but for every movement I know of I'm sure there are twenty I don't know about and I imagine it's the same for most people. We could perhaps spend hours exchanging "movements" and we'd keep surprising each other with new ones.

One thing I would imagine has changed is the rate at which the industry "finds" acts that are part of these movements. Whereas in the past I'd say there was a movement before the industry came along and then sourced bands from within the movement, now I think it takes one band to become a success and then record labels will nearly go so far as to manufacture a band to create the movement.

maccored

these things are constantly happening OP. You mightnt know it, but they are - theres always the undercurrent working away on its own, unnoticed by everyone but those actually doing it.

nyarlothothep

Hmmm, I guess what I'd like is for music to be as good as it used to be before the 00s. Yes thats asking for trouble. Certain artists released great songs during that decade imo but they're not widely recognized. TMV for example are awesome in my opinion and wrote some amazing songs, same for ATDI, but they never really broke into the mainstream. A lotof the mainstream bands haven't released songs which made me go wow, thats good, the opposite reaction in fact. Buts thats my opinion of course. What I'd like to see again are all these underground acts becoming huge, like in the 90s, or the 60s/70s rather than just one or two bands randomly becoming big because they happen to fit in with the trends being promoted by the industry.

FewFew

To be huge often involves a lot of jumping through hoops and sacrificing aspects of your music... I think quite a few of the good bands that are off the radar are making a living from playing music when they want to play it and by writing the songs they want to write. I can't really think of any BIG bands that write good music and get away with it to be honest.

Plus you're dealing with a whole different set of media rules over here... what's popular on this side of the Atlantic is not normally what tickles the charts stateside. Pretty sure you can bubble under the surface in America and still make enough money to set yourself up for life.

maccored

i believe music has essentially been the same over the past few decades. In tha late 60s there was social change, which meant musical change, and then a decade later that all changed again - less money, unemployment which then led to the rising of the youth (certainly in the UK). Sonic youth, nirvana etc started it all up again in the 90s etc etc but the fact is that music always has always had a crap pop chart front end and a creative, alternative back end.

The only main difference between now and the early 70s is how the music labels learned how to completely manipulate everyone.

sock puppet

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Like grunge, metal or the 60s from the underground rather than whats approved by the recording industry? I dunno, but I find myself totally indifferent to music nowadays. Its just filtered by the industry, for example you'd read "this year will be the year of female electropop because this is what the industry thinks is good" mostly to that effect. Yes I know the argument that there is plenty of good music out there that isn't in the mainstream, personally I like a state of affairs where there isn't one particular sound dominating.

I'm fan of a lot of electropop and to say it's only popular because the record companies say so isn't true imo. There are great acts like Goldfrapp, the Knife and Ladytron who've been around a lot longer than a few years. Even some of the newer acts like La Roux are very talented too. I don't think its success has been manufactured at all.

Music4life

Another point is that its kind of a cycle . In the way that we had great produced pop music during the 50's and 60's . 70's and 80's pop was more over produced bad written disco and glam rock songs. 90's had the Grunge, Metal movement etc . So hopefully theres still time for good raw produced music to be brought to the pop industry. if you get me

nyarlothothep

Music4life wrote: »

Another point is that its kind of a cycle . In the way that we had great produced pop music during the 50's and 60's . 70's and 80's pop was more over produced bad written disco and glam rock songs. 90's had the Grunge, Metal movement etc . So hopefully theres still time for good raw produced music to be brought to the pop industry. if you get me

I dunno I like 70s rock, T REX was alright. Yep the 80s were dire overall. Early to mid 90s were good, then it all went pear shaped around 1998. Things began to improve generally circa 2002 and this lasted to 2004 with QOTSA, Goldfrapp, Ash, The Darkness, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and even the Foo Fighters and Kylie Minogue releasing some good tunes, times like these was as strong as any 90s tune. Then everything went downhill when all those British indie bands became the in thing. Ever since then its never been the same.

Dudess

The 'net is enabling people to do their own thang, so that's a comfort.