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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. There's a ton of interesting music being made outside their domain but most people will never hear any of it.

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"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://diymag.com/2015/03/23/courtney-barnett-its-like-turni...

I'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.

That's unfortunately what most people want to hear.

Most 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.

I'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.

What 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.

I mean that it is a shared obsession that can intensify our better and worse natures, but the worse outweighs the better.

FWIW 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.

Is 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?

> 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.

Even if true, you can't compare the death toll of post industrial WWII and the crusades on numbers alone.

Precisely. A lack of belief.

If you want to argue that, also take a good look at the French Revolution.

> A lack of belief.

In deities and supernatural powers.

In other aspects I find many forum atheists to believe strongly in theories that are way above their heads.

Atheism isn't a religion any more than Gentile is a religion.

The atrocities committed during these periods were not made in the name of atheism, which is the main difference with ISIS or inquisition. Whatever they did, it was not consequence of their atheistic beliefs.

In that case, I think I could make a compelling argument that gangster rap is more of a religion than the Amish faith.

Religion is about in-group / out-group distinction through shared beliefs and costly, exclusionary displays of membership.

It's a social and organizational concept, not theological or philosophical, relating to gods or otherwise. For example, environmentalism is a type of religion.

> 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.

thinking that something is capable of supernatural feats is not required for something to become a religion.

Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.

To be fair, IMO a whole lot of atheists are great people. A few of them though seems to be more religious and more proselyting about it than almost any other religious group. Which is so ironic it would be quite funny if it wasn't so annoying.

Edit: removed dumb Meh

> thinking that something is capable of supernatural feats is not required for something to become a religion.

I basically agree, but I think the concept of "religion" invokes a lot of correlated things, and belief in the supernatural is one of the main ones. I expect most religions to differ from the 'prototypical' religion in a few ways, but I think sports differs in lots of ways.

(edit: or perhaps better, "beliefs about the supernatural". Religions say something specific. Atheists believe something specific. Sports teams make no claims one way or the other.)

> non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.

This seems like another example. I've seen that behavior from atheists and from religious people. I haven't seen it from sports fans.

People who dislike sports, on the other hand...

OK, well argued. Have my upvote :-)

Then what is a religion for you? Is it simply fervor in believing something?

> Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.

--- What does this have to do with the supernatural? Secondly what does this have to do with religion. If religion was 'people who feel strongly about something' then the definition of the word would no longer represent what it does.

That would be a bad definition, yes.

But I will still argue that whenever I see people proselyting atheism because "big bang, stupid" and it is clear they haven't studied to much of neither physics or biology, then we have:

* proselytizing

* stronger belief than many Christians and Muslims

and I will argue that they qualify as religious even if they don't have a deity.

It 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.

What's "unfortunate" about it?

Do you think this is only happening in music? ;)

Most larger Asian countries have quite their own music market. But everywhere else I think it's true what you write.

Here in Southeast Asia it's Maroon 5 and Katy Perry everywhere you go.

Is 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.

Last I was in Shanghai, about 3 years ago, there were Maroon 5 posters all over the subway.

It 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).

I 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_s...

In central / South America that is not the case. Reggaeton, salsa, cumbia, meringue is played everywhere (shops / bars / buses / radio) constantly.

You 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.

The 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.

So 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?

It's popular in the same way McDonald's or Coca Cola are popular. It's a product of no substance riding massive marketing budgets.

You understand that your taste, despite subjectively feeling more "real" than the tastes of others, actually isn't, right?

so if i rite like this my riting stile is no diffrent r better than urz, rite?!? lol

That's a pretty poor analogy. Writing grammar correctly is an objective measure, whereas food and musical taste is purely subjective.

McDonalds 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.

McD'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.

People love cocaine too. It doesn't mean you have their best interests at heart in selling it to them. Modern commercial pop music, like junk fast food, is the product of a profit-driven corporation using psychology and focus group research to push your pleasure buttons without actually providing you with any nourishment.

The worst thing about both kinds of products is that they destroy local diversity and teach people to consume things that are worthless at best and actively harmful at their worst.

The issue wasn't whether Coke and McDonald's care about their consumers' health. It was simply that there is more to these brands than marketing. They're providing a product people really like. It is like cocaine. There is substance to the desire, which doesn't mean that its a morally or ethically justified desire, but means that it's not imaginary and it's not simply the product of emotional or psychological manipulation.

Do people want to do drugs as much as possible? Yes. Do people want to pretend that candy is normal food and eat candy for every meal? Yes. Coke and McDonald's are supplying the latter demand. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility and it doesn't mean they're not manipulative or dishonest. It just means that there is a real, physiological desire backing their products that's not artificially created by cartoon clowns or polar bears.

It's mostly popular because of the huge budgets (plus a state of extremely low musical and cultural education of the population).

All other things (e.g. marketing budgets) being equal, much better music could be in the top 10. In the 60s and 70s, before MTV and tightly controlled playlist radios, it was.

> 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 just not true. While the very few artists that do sell albums nowadays (Taylor Swift, Adele, Kanye West, etc.) are on major labels and do have promotion from major labels, these artists are also already successful enough to have done their own promotion if they wanted to.

On top of that, these successful artists by todays standards are selling what would have been considered disappointing numbers for artists at their levels 20 years ago. In the 90s Hootie and the Blowfish (an act with no staying power) sold 16 million albums in the US. By comparison Adele's 25 which is a huge hit by today's standards has only sold 3 million copies in the US (though 16 million worldwide.) In the 90s many albums sold tens of millions of copies, nobody does that any more.

Bowie was 100% right.

Where are your numbers coming from? Wikipedia says 25 has sold 7.6 million in the US, and it's only been out a few months. 21 sold 11 million. In comparison, Thriller, one of the bestselling records of all time, sold 30 million. (All these numbers are US sales only.)

The data says exactly the opposite of what you're saying.

One would think services like Spotify would help, but they only make the music more accessible, they don't help you find it. I don't have pro and only ads I hear (besides the spotify ones that are trying to annoy you into paying) are ones from Universal Music.

I don't agree—I use Spotify a lot and it's helped tremendously in my finding new music. The "Discover Weekly" and social playlists features always point me to sources of new music.

Spotify and other streaming services are amazing for discovering new music if you're willing to put in the effort but most people just listen to what they have pushed on them. I doubt most people even realize that top 40 music isn't written by the people that perform it.

Those people wouldn't have been willing to put forth the effort in any of the old systems either. Why does that mean Spotify made things worse?

The internet continues to make human-curated content (college/community radio, in my opinion unmatched for discovery) more accessible. But very few people listen, and with changes to fee structure, very few stations can afford to continue online broadcasting. [0]

[0] http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2016/01/05/why-american-indepen...

Really? What about the anti-Spotify's like HypeMachine? Fiercely independent, trendspotting/trendsetting, and sustainable. It's a very valuable service to lots of folks.

IMO Spotify/Rdio/Pandora could only ever hope to go the advertising route over subscription because they couldn't crack the much harder distribution problem (e.g. the HypeM's, SoundCloud's, Drip's, etc).

Spotify stopped working on Ubuntu a while back so I can't check but I'm pretty sure there is a HypeMachine app for Spotify. So you can get recommendations from them within the Spotify client.

EDIT: it stopped working after 15.04. Something with an old version libgcrypt. I didn't care enough to debug it.

Spotify works fine for me, under both Ubuntu and Arch, but they removed support for apps a while ago (on all platforms, IIRC Linux was actually the last holdout).

It is buggy for sure; But many of the Spotify apps I use work fine on Linux even without support though.

I don't know about whether the spotify app doesn't work for you anymore, but I use mopidy-spotify on arch which gives me full spotify access in the terminal.

There are alternative clients (pro-only).

> they don't help you find it

Not true in my case. (I've had Pro for a long time, not sure which if any of these are Pro-only...) I can audition as much unheard-by-me recommended-by-Spotify music as I want through its Weekly playlist, its various curated genre "browse" playlists, its "trending" playlist (where you will often hear things that only become "visibly" popular MONTHS later, the playlist content is actually determined via algorithm to spot trendings super early)

I actually use Spotify to discover new music. I take some artist I know, and then I go to some related one, and then to artist related to that one, etc.

Spotify actually made discovering music way easier to me.

BTW there was one website that I used very often. It was called "We are Hunted"[1] and unfortunately it was acquired by Twitter, and as we all know Twitter Music is dead. That website had a playlist of emerging new tracks and I found a lot of good music there (and I heard some artists just 1-2 years before they became very famous)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_Hunted

My music style is far from trendy, but I can't remember the last time I listened (even more so bought something) from the major label. I'd say is much harder to become millionaire rock star now, but for indie bands, that play as a hobby, situation is very favorable as you can contact you audience directly and you don't need to frame yourself into "format" dictated by the labels.

It's an amazing time to be a hobby musician. You can record and produce your own music very cheaply and publish it to the world at the touch of a button. The problem is what happens next, which in most cases is nothing, unless you've got somebody spending money marketing your music or you're willing to work very very very hard to promote it yourself.

The difference between now and the 60s through early 90s was that labels were willing to put their weight behind more oddball artists like Bowie. He wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving the same fame if he were starting now. We're in a weird time where mainstream music is the most timid and cynically commercial it's ever been but the fringes are exceptionally vital.

Bowie's first albums didn't catch on at all. It wasn't until he decided to change his presentation and style that he became successful. I recommend seeing "David Bowie & The Story of Ziggy Stardust" which talks about it. It wasn't until Hunky Dory in 1971 that he really got traction. He was dropped by his label (Mercury) after his third album. He signed with RCA for his 4th, Hunky Dory (Ziggy was his 5th). After that, he basically hit single digits for his peak chart position in the UK for in to the 90s for his studio albums.

So, you can look at it as Mercury took a chance, didn't succeed and dropped him. RCA tried again and succeeded. But, he changed his approach and style around this time in an attempt to market himself better. Then, EMI would reap the rewards again in the 80s for Let's Dance which hit number 1 in a half-dozen countries and close to it in a few others.

Even after he made it in the UK Bowie still couldn't crack the States. His US Ziggy tour was a mostly unsuccessful attempt to have him fake it until he made it. He had to nearly go disco to become a commercial success in the US. Bowie seems to have been the beneficiary of a degree of early patience from record labels that was fairly extraordinary even at the time.

Not really. They are important to the ever-shrinking mainstream pop industry ... but here in the Great Cultural Fragmentation, that's a smaller and smaller slice of a larger and larger pie.

Music sales /= music (although there's an interesting debate to be had on that)

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