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There was a brief period in history when Being In A Band was a big deal. That's bracketed by, perhaps, the British Invasion and Myspace Music. Before that, musi
by Animats 2y ago
There was a brief period in history when Being In A Band was a big deal. That's bracketed by, perhaps, the British Invasion and Myspace Music. Before that, musicians were low-paid background music systems. After that, anybody could do it at garage-band level. In between was the brief era of the Rock Star. The nostalgia here is for that era.
Not a new observation.
- xanderlewis 2y agoYeah. There seems to also be the implicit assumption that (recorded) pop music, whilst only a relatively recent phenomenon, is here to stay. It isn't. It had a golden age after recording and reproduction technology became cheap enough to own and before streaming services came along, gave us too much choice and siloed our tastes. I don't think I'd change much — I mainly listen to 'weird' stuff that probably wouldn't have existed, let alone be discoverable, without such services — but the pop era does seem to be over. No one cares about 'the charts' anymore. In my parents' day it was a primary cultural reference point that seemingly everyone followed; now almost no one I know would be able to tell me what's in the top ten at the moment.
- ysofunny 2y agoit seems to me the problem you're pointing to, and scoping to music it's actually much more persvasibe and happening to pretty much all culture I refer to the siloing of our tastes; or rather to how we can now develop rarer tastes by means of massively increased connectivity so it's not just pop music, but all of what it means to be "mainstream culture" that's weirdly getting siloed and more rarified
- xanderlewis 2y agoTrue. It’s not just in music. There is almost no such thing as mainstream culture anymore — it’s exciting for individuals, but also quite worrying, especially when it comes to politics and description of factual events. No wonder democracy seems to be steadily going down the pan.
- awkward 2y agoTastes may be siloed but they're also a lot more concentrated. Recorded pop music is bigger than ever. In an environment where recommendation services drive a lot of discovery, music is more winner take all than ever.
- tessierashpool 2y agoJosephine Baker was a star. Bach and Mozart were stars. Pythagoras was more famous for music than math, during his lifetime (well over two thousand years ago). The decline of a particular business model is a legit observation but it doesn’t change this fundamental aspect of music.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoPop evolved from music hall and vaudeville, and all of those featured musicians who were very much not "low-paid background music systems."
- otwall 2y agoThey very much were; there is a reason why the vaudevillians were all poor immigrants and why much of the modern entertainment industry was established by entrepreneurs/conmen running away to California to escape Thomas Edison.
- schwartzworld 2y ago> there is a reason why the vaudevillians were all poor immigrants Same reason so many pro athletes now are poor immigrants.