2007 another down year for record sales

To me it's boring inspirationless music, but when I read all that it made me wonder. Who am I to judge them?
I worked at a photo studio in the 80s where one of the photographers was a rabid MOR fan.
I forget the bands, but let's say maybe Bryan Adams, Michael Bolton, Bon Jovi...that kind of thing. But he was passionate about the stuff! Bought records in droves.
It was a real eye opener for me. I had always assumed people who went for that kind of thing didn't really have any real interest in music. Turns out they just aren't interested in what I like.
:)

In relation to the digital sales... I was thinking about this issue this morning. I have an IPOD. Most of us have IPODs. Most of us use Itunes to download music. Do I smell a monopoly in terms of distribution? I worry that everyone will only have one play to get their music. I know its hyperbole right now, but IPODS outsell all other mp3 players by ALOT.

It really doesn't matter what player you use or what most of the market uses. It has no influence on the kind or type of music sold. The iPod plays MP3 files (and other formats too) which you can buy anywhere. Just because Sony or Toshiba or Samsung sells a lot TV sets doesn't mean that they can control what gets shown on them.

Where Apple potentially has a location to control what gets listened to is in the iTunes store. This potential isn't any different than say Sony studios and is in practice less so since as I understand it they are more than happy to take anybody's music and put it up for sale (you can even put up your own home made songs).

I don't think you need to worry about this as an avenue of control unless the iPod no longer plays open formats. Most of the formats that it plays now are open (MP3, AAC, WAV, and AIFF) and only one is not (ALAC) and even that's been worked out by others. As long as it plays open formats and there are other sources of those formats then you can get what you want - go buy from Amazon or rip your own CDs.

I think a bigger source of control is the huge amount of media conglomeration. There are now only 5 (or is it now only 4) large media corporations that control much of the music, video and TV. There are only a small number of radio broadcasters who control most of the stations, ClearChannel has much of this market and formats only a couple of styles of stations and programs them en-masse with source coming from a central location. If you don't like one of "MOR pop", "oldies rock", "new country", or "grumpy xenophobic conservative white guy talk show" formats then you are out of luck.

Ignar Hillstrøm wrote:
But yeah, guess the music will never be as good as in 1978

Well, following that link, you might think 1978 was a pretty bad year.....but let's just take a look at some of the albums released that year, shall we?

Billy Joel - 52nd Street
The Jam - All Mod Cons
Genesis - And Then There Were Three
Joe Walsh - But Seriously Folks
The Cars - The Cars (debut album)
Gerry Rafferty - City To City
Neil Young - Comes A Time
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness On The Edge Of Town
David Gilmour - David Gilmour (1st Solo LP)
Dire Straits - Dire Straits (debut)
Boston - Don't Look Back
Patti Smith - Easter
Prince - For You (debut )
Clash - Give 'Em Enough Rope
Jethro Tull - Heavy Horses
Rush - Hemispheres
AC/DC - If You Want Blood AND Powerage
Queen - Jazz
Bob Marley - Kaya
Kate Bush - The Kick Inside (debut)
Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous
Kinks - Misfits
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings And Food
Black Sabbath - Never Say Die
Ian Dury & The Blockheads - New Boots & Panties
The Only Ones - The Only Ones
Police - Outlandos D'Amour
Blondie - Parallel Lines
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel
Johnny Thunders - So Alone
Rolling Stones - Some Girls
David Bowie - Stage (Live LP)
Judas Priest - Stained Class
Bob Seger & Silver Bullet Band - Stranger In Town
Lou Reed - Street Hassle
Bob Dylan - Street Legal
Elvis Costello - This Year's Model
Al Stewart - Time Passages
Yes - Tormato
Toto - Toto (Debut)
Whitesnake - Trouble
Squeeze - Squeeze (Debut)
Van Halen - Van Halen (Debut)
Little Feat - Waiting For Columbus
Van Morrison - Wavelength
Who - Who Are You
Tom Petty - You're Gonna Get It!

OK, the pop charts may have been dominated by The Gibb Bros and Grease and Boney M and YMCA (pass the vom bucket, please) but there was a hell of a lot of good music released that year. There may have been this year for all I know - but if there is, I haven't heard anything earth-shattering yet.

:D :D :D

Vic

I have an IPOD. Most of us have IPODs.
Completely aside from the point you were making...

It seems to me most people say "IPOD" when they mean portable music player, same way most people said "Walkman" when they meant portable cassette/radio.(I have 3 MP3 players, none are IPODs.)

It's a marketing coup for Apple - having their brand associated so strongly with an entire class of products, but there's lots of non-IPOD music players out there on the street.
And (in my opinion) a lot of those are more flexible than the IPOD.

Sorry for the pedantic mini-rant.

Vic: check out a collection of 2007 releases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albums_released_in_2007#top

It ranges from the (IMHO excellent) 'in rainbows' to Neil Young 30th album. Your list certainly shows a lot of big acts but you have to admit that most of it wasn't exactly revolutionary either. Same as today: lots of poppy nonsense, a fair deal of big acts and a handfull of really excellent stuff.

I'll check that list out later, but in fairness I should add that a lot of the "big acts" - Stones, Rod Stewart etc - were being pilloried by the press at the time for not coming up with anything new. Disco ruled, thanks to Saturday Night Fever - and acts like the Stones (Miss You - with the C&W Far Away Eyes on the b-side) Rod Stewart (Do Ya Think I'm Sexy) and Queen (Another One Bites The Dust) were riding the disco wave instead of rockin' out. Those were all HUGE hit singles in the UK - but there was enough disco about without some of my fave bands/artists going that way as well. At least, that's what I thought at the time, and I never bought any of those singles - and I still don't like any of them particularly.

But that's just my opinion.....if you were going to pick a bad year for music, maybe 75 or 76 would have been a better example - at least in 78 there was punk/new wave which was still relatively fresh and exciting.

There's always SOME good music about - the trick is knowing where to look! But to be honest, from my perspective, with about 44 years of listening to music to draw back on, I'm quite happy flitting backwards and forwards between Planet Rock - classic rock - and Gold (Formerly Capital Gold) for oldies. I don't really NEED any new music - I've got quite a lot already that I never get tired of! And if I do want any new music, hell I'll just get a guitar and some pen and paper and MAKE some of my own, I never get tired of that either!

:D :D :D

Vic

:D :D :D

Vic

I don't know if I ever mentioned it here but the notion of 'old' and 'new' music was something I figured out relatively late, when I entered highschool. Till then I never bought any music myself and the only music I was familiar with was what my parents played at home, radio or music television was pretty much a no-go. So I grew up listening to Bach, Tsjaikovksy, The Beatles, Led Zeppeling, Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode and REM, to name a few. During the first music lesson that year we were all asked to mention our favourite acts and I mentioned those above. The teacher nodded and said, apparantly pleased, that I listened to old music. I had no idea what he was talking about: the notion that classical music was 'dead' and the Pink Floyd was retired was completely alien to me. The past few months I've, for reasons unknown, started to listen less and less to music. 'The Eraser' by Radiohead's Thom Yorke and the solo albums of Syd Barrett are practically the only music I've listened to. They both sound fresh to me, even though the first is produced about 40 years after the second. I'm discovering increasingly less music: there's so much I simply don't know where to start looking. My solution is the same as yours:
And if I do want any new music, hell I'll just get a guitar and some pen and paper and MAKE some of my own, I never get tired of that either!

I'm discovering increasingly less music: there's so much I simply don't know where to start looking.

This is the crux of the "problem" right here. The discovery of new and interesting music. There's still quite a lot of interesting music being created but finding it is harder than it used to be.

As I mentioned above there are fewer owners of radio stations with some of the larger ones owning many hundreds of them and programming them in a small number of formats from a central source. It used to be that local stations would also play local acts and some of them would "make it". When stations were locally owned or at least locally programmed you would get more variety (they often had looser programming styles) and the possibility of being able to hear new and different music. Now, even if there are multiple radio stations in a market they fall into one of a small number of formats with predictable play lists.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is fully. I listen to some programs on the local college radio stations which is a source of some new music. The internet stations are potentially a good source but unfortunately most of them are really tightly formatted (e.g. prog rock of the 70's, delta blues, urban west coast hip-hop) so you're only going to hear what fits into the box that you pick. This problem isn't just music but entertainment, media, and information in general are fragmenting and the old sharing and discovery mechanisms are gone or in the process of breaking down.

A "pestilential aphrodisiac?" Sounds like a badly mixed metaphor.

The biggest thing musicians, or even people need to get over is that music and people are not all that different from each other. It's a huge arrogance to say music from era a is better than era b. When you consider that both modern music and music from the classic rock era used the same chord progression, same scales that everyone else does. Even the topics the songs touch on are ones that have been done to death. Anti-war, pro-love, anti-love, rebellion, getting a woman, unable to get a woman, etc.........all topics that have been done to death. The only difference is, the newer generation is exploring these topics in ways that make sense to them, to us. You may disagree with it but need to realize that it's not as different as you think from how you live, or make music and drop the attitude that things are getting worse.

That's not to say I don't listen to older stuff. I love the Beach Boys, Dick Dale. I've been getting into some Jazz and Swing from the 1930's. Also some more modern Jazz fusion.

Sorry if my post comes off aggressive. But I've heard the same arguments that old music good, modern music bad a million times. I recognize people are allowed to have that opinion, but it is rarely stated as an opinion. This forum and other like minded forums are a way to encourage people to explore. Like KP said, a lot of recycling happens. The same artists get posted a lot. Usually doing the same things, slow melodic bluesy solos. I don't want to step on toes but maybe we should start posting music and artists that normally don't get posted here. Maybe the media doesn't encourage us to find new music, but it doesn't mean we can't help each other out.

P.S. If anyone wants to post some jazz fusion bands they think are worth checking out, that would be awesome.

A "pestilential aphrodisiac?" Sounds like a badly mixed metaphor.

Isn't it such a great "over the top" quote? It's just so middle America 50's. Kind of like a Reefer Madness view of rock and roll. What makes this even funnier is that in the 40's parents were saying the same thing about Frank Sinatra and his music and their parent's had said about jazz in the 20's. Plus ça change plus, c'est la même chose.

One from the other side of things (I keep track of great quote like this that I find) is one from Richard Hell (Voidoids), "Rock & roll is trying to convince girls to pay money to be near you."

Wonder if anyone's polled the delinquents of Earth lately to see if rock and roll's still their preferred music? I rather doubt it.

most wouldn't know Rock and Roll if it broke a guitar over their head...

out

most wouldn't know Rock and Roll if it broke a guitar over their head...
Just like most metal fans wouldn't know 50's rock, early rock fans wouldn't know big band / crooner music, big band fans wouldn't know jazz, etc. Was rock better than big band? Was big band better than jazz? Once each of those styles fell from being the popular (pop) music choice the others didn't disappear. They did become less common but they're not gone.

Interestingly enough there was a posting about the future of the music industry in a tech blog that I read regularly. It was talking about the new Nine Inch Nails release and how it may be a model for the future. Interesting reading and the article that it links to about needing only 1000 "true fans" for an artist to "make it" is worth reading.

http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2008/03/nine_inch_nails_and_the_multitrack_music_model.html