Good comment. Yeah, the point about Rihanna is interesting but does skirt something pretty clear about the larger music business today - that there's been a dash towards the lowest common denominator in mainstream music. You hear it on the radio and see it everywhere in the culture, that what's being backed and pushed is tending towards homogeneity.

At University my mentor worked (and still works) at Sony, and this at the time was his big grievance - that the so-called 'indie' bands (in reality, larger alternative bands) were the ones being completely marginalized in favour of something that would be easier to sell on broad-demographic radio programming.

If you think about the UK radio market now, this makes sense - Global Radio owns everything, and it's the same playlist of forgettable pop music nationwide. I remember being in America a couple of years ago and finding a station that was playing things like Smashing Pumpkins, NIN and some modern math/post-rock stuff... apart from BBC Radio 6 Music (publicly owned) you just don't see that over here.

There's a big glass ceiling for musicians, and while it's not going away, it's still a difficult reality to face for those that are either semi-professional or say, tour a lot - in order to keep playing music they have obligations that stop them also holding down 'proper' jobs, and you see this taking its toll of great bands (off the top of my head, Reuben would be a classic example).