Everyone’s a futurologist these days, trying to predict what’s coming next but few people are great, or even good at pulling it all together and ignoring all the nonsense philosophical noise. Bored of… were encouraged by Hypebot’s Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0 list but we can’t help feeling there’s an eleventh…
11: Bands who worry about all the above.
Aspiring to make a living, rather than a legend, is making for bands more interested in their matte black Mac Books and Blackberries riddled with mid-weeks, merch sales and business models. Bands used to go on the road to disappear and act like rock stars, now they’re doing interviews with every fractured fleck of the media. Part of the problem is modern technology making everyone more available but the problem goes much-much deeper into the very nature of what’s inspiring in the modern age.
i) Labels only signing bands who seem short-term viable to ensure their label/job is relevant and makes some turn-over within the same quarter. The result is labels not developing anything, acts no longer being fresh with media by the time their rushed album is released and the labels not building much in the way of classic back catalog.
ii) Because nearly no-one is getting signed, new bands are seemingly keener than ever to not just become media savvy and business entrepreneurs but in spite and because of this, they’re desperate to fit into the current scene/market, to ensure they don’t need no nine-to-5 (if only they did the math) and can afford to at least make their debut album and hope people notice when it’s released. Or at least get a sense that they can make their hits and cultural cachet go up on the man’s dime.
The most worrying thing about all this is that it’s making for people debating whether MySpace and Google are this decades Sex Pistols and Micheal Jackson, which probably makes Hype Machine the Undertones and Last.Fm the new Prince, doesn’t it? Makes you wonder whether this generations year zero was the birth of Napster or Apple, rather than Nirvana or Daft Punk.
Bored of Dictators 