7 ms·
"If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford." That's
by bootload 11y ago
"If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford."
That's what record companies would like you to think. Counter-example, Milk Records, Melbourne. It's might be a record company but it looks so much like a startup.
- http://messandnoise.com/features/4666617 http://messandnoise.com/features/4666617
- http://diymag.com/2015/03/23/courtney-barnett-its-like-turning-my-brain-inside-out-and-showing-it-to-everyone http://diymag.com/2015/03/23/courtney-barnett-its-like-turni...
- cageface 11y agoI've been traveling all over the world and all I hear everywhere I go is crap American top 40 pop music. Like I said there's a ton of interesting stuff going on outside their purview but they control the conversation right now.
- brandnewlow 11y agoThat's unfortunately what most people want to hear.
- pmontra 11y agoMost people want to hear what most people hear, to be able to talk about it and don't be cut off from their group of friends. Same thing about TV, movies, cloths, phones, books, games etc.
- will_pseudonym 11y agoI'm a non-sports person, but I had a dawning realization earlier this week. We crave shared, tribal experiences, and that's why we seek out those shared events. On the same topic, sports is a religion. If you disagree, or don't yet understand, please compare and contrast the two for me.
- philh 11y agoWhat do you mean by 'religion', and why does it matter whether sports is a religion under this meaning? Here are some differences: sports fans don't think that their team is capable of supernatural feats. I don't think I've ever seen a fan of one team try to convince a fan of another to change allegiance, or proselytizing on a street corner. Sports fans know that the teams of the other fans exist, while religious people usually deny that other gods exist. Similarly, religious people don't have to worry about whether Yahweh could beat up Vishnu, but sports fans get to actually see what happens when their teams compete.
- will_pseudonym 11y agoI mean that it is a shared obsession that can intensify our better and worse natures, but the worse outweighs the better.
- reitanqild 11y agoFWIW a couple of the absolute worst periods has been under decidedly atheist regimes (Communist Russia etc + French revolution). Then again I think atheism is a religion too.
- andrepd 11y agoIs communist Russia objectively worse than the crusades or the Catholic inquisition or ISIS? Let's just be honest here and say that human being are capable of pretty cruel things, regardless of being spurned by religion or not. And why is atheism a religion. Isn't its definition a lack of religion?
- reitanqild 11y ago> Is communist Russia objectively worse than the crusades or the Catholic inquisition or ISIS? In numbers, yes. > Isn't its definition a lack of religion? I thought it was defined by the lack of belief in deities / supernatural powers. I might be wrong.
- stn 11y agoIt might also has something to do with the fact that not all good music is simply radio-friendly. That is, it's hard to appreciated it in a similar way it's hard to appreciate a good movie unless you're watching it somewhere in a quite place without distractions.
- rayiner 11y agoWhat's "unfortunate" about it?
- eulo_ 11y agoI've been traveling all over the world, and all I hear is techno
- will_pseudonym 11y agoDo you think this is only happening in music? ;)
- m_mueller 11y agoMost larger Asian countries have quite their own music market. But everywhere else I think it's true what you write.
- cageface 11y agoHere in Southeast Asia it's Maroon 5 and Katy Perry everywhere you go.
- arnvald 11y agoIs it? Maybe in shopping malls and bars, then I agree. I live in Singapore and a lot of Singaporeans who I meet listen mostly to either Chinese or Indian music. It might be different though in Thailand or Malaysia. Remember though, that SEA is just part of Asia. China and India are huge music markets. Additionally, Japan and Korea have very strong, local music scene as well.
- CWuestefeld 11y agoLast I was in Shanghai, about 3 years ago, there were Maroon 5 posters all over the subway.
- m_mueller 11y agoIt seems to me that, strangely enough, Chinese pop culture actually aligns much more to the USA than the Japanese one. Japanese tend to prefer everything domestic first, especially so in games and music, movies a bit less so but it's still a much larger purely domestic film market compared to EU (if you don't count US financed films made in EU countries).
- m_mueller 11y agoI would actually call out Japan first, they still have the 2nd largest market by revenue with quite a distance [1]. It's more than half of what the US music market makes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_music_industry_market_share_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_music_industry_market_s...
- user_0001 11y agoIn central / South America that is not the case. Reggaeton, salsa, cumbia, meringue is played everywhere (shops / bars / buses / radio) constantly.
- zardo 11y agoYou can always turn the tap on one of the music as running water services, and start listening to whatever the collaborative filter thinks you like best.
- CWuestefeld 11y agoThe current UI trend in these services seems designed to thwart this. It seems they're going to a model of having the user to select music to list to when I [exercise|drive|relax|study|...]. That's wholly unhelpful, I don't understand why they'd think that my preferences for what to listen to when exercising would coincided with anybody else's, other than maybe an activity being facilitated within a range of BPM counts.
- matwood 11y agoSo your premise is that if it is music that you do not want to hear, it must be the labels pushing it? In no way could that music be on the radio because it is actually popular?
- cageface 11y agoIt's popular in the same way McDonald's or Coca Cola are popular. It's a product of no substance riding massive marketing budgets.
- oldmanjay 11y agoYou understand that your taste, despite subjectively feeling more "real" than the tastes of others, actually isn't, right?
- api 11y agoso if i rite like this my riting stile is no diffrent r better than urz, rite?!? lol
- petersellers 11y agoThat's a pretty poor analogy. Writing grammar correctly is an objective measure, whereas food and musical taste is purely subjective.
- api 11y agoMcDonalds contains objectively less nutrition than better foods, as well as objectively more addictive and potentially harmful additives (sugar, etc.). Today's stamped-out low-effort all-sounds-the-same pop contains objectively less novelty or information than, say, Bowie or the Beatles.
- cookiecaper 11y agoMcD's and Coke are popular because people really want what they sell. It's not just a psychological thing, like everyone is a mindless zombie brainwashed by Ronald McDonald. They don't like it because they've been told to like it (if anything, it's the opposite these days), they like it because it's convenient and it has a ton of sugar and other addictive additives in it. People like both convenience and sugar; that's not a secret. It's the same thing musically (though admittedly there is a bit more, not a huge amount more, of cultural influence here); there is a formula for music that most people find really satisfying. The record companies have software that analyzes songs and scores against the common patterns that produce hits. Of course, the business of music is about more than just the music, it's about the whole package.