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A question for the downvoters. How many of your middle class neighbours are recording / touring artists playing original pop, rock, hip hop or country music? Di

A question for the downvoters. How many of your middle class neighbours are recording / touring artists playing original pop, rock, hip hop or country music? Did you have a lot more such neighbours 20 years ago?

losvedir 1y ago
20 years ago I knew a bunch of people in their teens and early twenties. Now I know a bunch of people in their 40s and I couldn't tell you what the teens around me are doing. Are you sure you're not just picking up on the fact that you're 20 years older now?
- osigurdson 1y ago
  My point is 20 years ago I had zero middle class neighbours that fell into this category and that number is the same today. I suspect those numbers represent most people's experiences as well. The article is suggesting that there is a delta between the past and the present. My argument is there is no delta. There were always nearly zero people in this category.
scarecrowbob 1y ago
More than you'd think. My honest opinion, as a person who has gigged a lot for money, who has played a whole lot with folks who are now in their 70s and 80s, and who has retired from programming into a life where I can afford to just make music with folks is this: a lot of folks on this thread have very little understanding of how the music industry has ever operated and almost no understanding of the material and historical situation of musicians working in the 20th C. There is a whole technological progression proceeding backwards from streaming to the Clear Channel consolidation, to the rise of cheap DJ equipment going back at least as far as the the rise of mass sheet music production, and that procession has changed the music industry at every step. While it's not some universally transcendent material praxis, there was indeed a time between the 1940s and the late 1990s when the market was much wider and more distributed in ways that made it possible for a pretty wide and diverse set of folks who aren't A-list national acts to develop functional careers as musicians. If you're not aware of that situation, perhaps you don't have enough of a basis in the history of that industry to be commenting with the kind of certainty you're displaying.

losvedir 1y ago

20 years ago I knew a bunch of people in their teens and early twenties. Now I know a bunch of people in their 40s and I couldn't tell you what the teens around me are doing. Are you sure you're not just picking up on the fact that you're 20 years older now?

osigurdson 1y ago
My point is 20 years ago I had zero middle class neighbours that fell into this category and that number is the same today. I suspect those numbers represent most people's experiences as well. The article is suggesting that there is a delta between the past and the present. My argument is there is no delta. There were always nearly zero people in this category.

scarecrowbob 1y ago

More than you'd think. My honest opinion, as a person who has gigged a lot for money, who has played a whole lot with folks who are now in their 70s and 80s, and who has retired from programming into a life where I can afford to just make music with folks is this: a lot of folks on this thread have very little understanding of how the music industry has ever operated and almost no understanding of the material and historical situation of musicians working in the 20th C. There is a whole technological progression proceeding backwards from streaming to the Clear Channel consolidation, to the rise of cheap DJ equipment going back at least as far as the the rise of mass sheet music production, and that procession has changed the music industry at every step. While it's not some universally transcendent material praxis, there was indeed a time between the 1940s and the late 1990s when the market was much wider and more distributed in ways that made it possible for a pretty wide and diverse set of folks who aren't A-list national acts to develop functional careers as musicians. If you're not aware of that situation, perhaps you don't have enough of a basis in the history of that industry to be commenting with the kind of certainty you're displaying.