What is SO incredibly wrong with the music industry?

Question

There are many talented musicians who play music likes blues, jazz, and other (you know, music that musicians play), while rap and hip hop primarily use sampled trax which are manipulated by computers, synths and sequencers with a front man/woman... I do not dispute their talent, but the other musicians in this world receive near-ZERO backing by the music industry. Why?

BMI and ASCAP? You are the destroyers. You go to individual bars and nightclubs to shake down/charge fees to bar owners who hire cover bands to acquire performance royalties for songwriters and performers?!!... Do you realize that many won't pay/hire bands anymore? Do you realize the Beatles, the Who, the Stones, Led Zep started out by playing - hmmm... COVERS? Many of them played the blues - and the Blues performers benefitted DIRECTLY from the exposure. Now - you are forcing owners to hire original bands or else $$... yeah. No wonder the music industry is in the toilet. No wonder musicians are a dying breed

Answer 1

I hear ya, bro. Unfortunately, we're living in the age of American Idol. (which, hopefully will come to an end soon)

Having chops on an instrument doesn't really count for much anymore. It's Much more about having a look & very basic skills to get over today. That was part of the game back in the day as well, but it's 10-fold now.


Maybe, if we're lucky, things will sway in the right direction & the masses won't blindly accept mediocrity.

Answer 2

Hey, it is an epidemic indeed. The airwaves are riddled by so called "artists" who are supposed to be praised as such"great talent"

Imagine a new music cable channel that introduced brand new artists to the mainstream, which was the original intention of the failed MTV. Kids could learn about Ella and Louis, Miles and other jazz greats. These young dorks don't even know who Jimi Hendrix was, and what artist was ripped off for the latest rap hit. People need to look underground to find the real musicians.

I found a great NYC based band called "The Substance" who has a retro style. They sound like James Brown/Led Zeppelin/Funkadelic etc. www.thesubstance.net

These guys said that its not the problem with the BMI ASCAP cover song situation, but rather the owners of the bar just want headcount. If you absolutely suck, and you bring a ton of people, they smile and want you back. If you absolutely rock, and you bring 5 fans, they don't want to talk to you after the show. People = drinks = money. Its a shame what NYC has become. So there are terrrible aspects of music all around us.

Do you really think great acts such as Zeppelin or The Police would get airplay? Would we even know who the hell Sting was today? the Stones? Barry White didn't rap or sample ( he is my ALL time favorite ) so would he be opening for Papa Grows Funk (another great unknown) ? Would someone like Neil Young be too ugly to market today?

Its a joke and a revolution will soon come.

Answer 3

yea you know, sadly, the era of the orchestra is long over and the era of the guitar is waning... we are moving into a world of computers and I think that's precisely the problem with the music industry... I am a jazz/blues guitar/piano/xylophone/fiddle player myself and I have actually made some of my own rap songs on my computer and it's so easy to do compared to scoring old jazz standards for strings or attempting to compose a fugue or a canon or something like that...

it has gotten to the point that Kanye West can come up with 30 cheesy keyboard loops in 30 minutes and use a bunch of previously written bridges and choruses that the guys at BMI or whatever wrote for him and have another grammy winning album on his hands...

Why bother learning the Super locrian and melodic minor scales and pentatonic major scales and triads and jazz chords and suspensions and transposing them to all the keys and doing all of that everyday when you could just pay some random girls off the street to strut around on your album cover half naked while you rhyme words that have to do with parts of the female anatomy and bullet wounds and make more money doing it?

Answer 4

The problem with the record industry today is that all of the singers are manufactured.....it all has to do with image and not talent.....as long as someone is sexy and shaking their butt, they'll have a hit.....disposable music like yesterday's newspapers.....no longevity.....

Nowadays new stars WIN recording contracts on American Idol....it's so pathetic....let's see if they're still making music in 2036....

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still touring and making records 44 years after their first single with the Beatles.....will Carrie Underwood or Britney Spears? DOUBT IT!

Answer 5

I'm a rapper and I work with a skillful jazz musician. I have to tell him to not over play because people wont like it. Rap music is simple and simple music is catchy. People want to be able to listen to music and just bob their heads. If it's not simple, some people can't catch on to it.

Answer 6

the real destroyer here is mtv.....back when the greatest music was created, it was all about the music....janis joplin and aretha franklin would never have made it next to the "britneys" we see today.......now days music is less about how it sounds and more about how that artist looks......record labels don't promote "singles" anymore they promote music videos...if you can't sell the image, they won't try to sell the music, and so as a result true singer/songwriters may not make it b/c they don't "look the part"....i guess that song was right..."video killed the radio star"

Answer 7

The simple answer is money. As long as fools buy the junk, they will keep making it. It is easier to promote people who have a clever (or at least original) gimmick than it is to find and promote really talented musicians.

Answer 8

Today there are more entertainment chioces to spend one's money on. Because of those choices, fewer are buying products put out by the music industry. It's a matter of supply and demand. It isn't a matter of what the industry is putting out, although it would help to put out music people would actually want to buy.

Answer 9

Everything is about the wrong things in music now like sex and drugs. I was born in 1993 so i am 13 years old now so you'd think that i like all the new music but no. its all junk. and i do watch american idol to see the good singers not the good talkers like rappers.

Answer 10

I believe that its mindless music marketed toward the youth by the government, and controlled by the government in order to numb the brains of the young into only caring about sex, money, possessions, etc. I could be wrong though.