He or she is not wrong about observing characteristics like trap beats, electronic instrumentation, and processed/autotuned vocals, though. Which explains its deliberate development into “hyperpop”, which has not stood still, either.
This sounds dubious, though. There are clearly bigger and smaller circles of commonality, but by the time something even gets a Wikipedia article as a “genre” it is already no longer “fresh”, right? No artist wants to sound like everybody else. There will be countless micro-genres.
I did not mean fresh as in singing about tuning a 1932 Ford be not fresh; I meant as in whether your ears are, or are not, used to the “sound”. Which is also going to vary: some decades-old music may sound fresh to one who has never heard anything like it before.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Is it that it’s impossible for new musicians to make good money? Because that’s clearly incorrect. Just to take one example: Six years ago few Americans had heard of BTS. Even their genre was not very familiar. Now they sell out stadiums worldwide in minutes.
BTS didn’t make it big on riding Spotify or traditional Radio. At least in the US. K-Pop still gets virtually zero radio airplay in the US. Their US popularity was driven by an army of kids forcing the traditional US music powers to recognize times had changed. And they did that mainly over social media and patforms. K-Pop bands have pretty much given up on the traditional US music industry. It’s built for a different (read: older and slightly out of touch) audience. The band was selling out stadium shows worldwide before most of us in the US even realized they existed. It’s a case where their huge international popularity forced itself on our consciousness than vice-versa.
Going by the author of the piece in the OP, BTS would be some weird outlier that some how came out of nowhere. But clearly it’s not. Times changed but some of us have not changed as much.
It speaks more to many of us just not getting the modern music scene because it no longer looks like what it did when we were younger.
This is very true: the music scene of 2022 is nothing like the music scene of 1992. NOTHING like it. I’ve been right in the middle of the metal scene for longer than that but if 1992 me was dropped into 2022, I wouldn’t have a clue what the fuck was going on in how to find stuff (metal) to listen to and then, once I found stuff, I wouldn’t hardly understand 60-70% of what I heard.
Okay, that’s exaggerating a bit.
Seriously tho, the scene has changed a lot. I don’t have to go out every weekend to hear new music. I don’t have to trade mix tapes or CDs anymore. I don’t have to special order imports from Germany or Italy or France or Japan anymore (everything is just available, now). I don’t have to wait for the monthly zine. Etc.
People who want to turn on the radio or Spotify and not have every song sound like Coldplay I suppose.
But the music business does tend to try and replicate the last artist that made it big. Which is why every song on the radio sounds more or less the same. Which is why no one listens to the radio anymore.
Ewwwww. Curiosity has poisoned my YouTube cookie with Coldplay. Yes, I watched the whole thing just to know how bad it is. It was not better than Cats, I would not want to watch it again and again.
Hah! But maybe I can poison the algorithm by searching for music I like now. Ehh, either way, I’ll enjoy it.
I remember someone asking in a chatroom in the early 90s right before no doubt garbage etc took the airwaves "why do all the girls sound like they’re auditioning for the pet shop boys? "
Perhaps on social media, that costs nothing and has no barriers to entry? Anyone who wishes to get their music out to the general public has a much easier path to self-publishing. The rest is down to whether enough people think it has any worth.
That does mean that you will be up against far more modern artists that are trying to do the same plus all the greatest music from history that is pretty much free and easily accessible to all. Will you stand out? maybe, maybe not. No individual deserves to make a fortune or even a living from music that can’t find an audience in that market.
The world has changed, the digital genie is out of the bottle and you are never going to reverse it. People treat and consume music very differently and the rewards from it may well be diferent as well.
It does occur to me that there was a whole generation of kids introduced to older music through video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band starting around 2005. I watched Iron Man with my nieces on cable back around 2009, and they were singing along with Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” playing during the end credits. I was really surprised they were familiar with the song and when I asked them about it they said it was in Guitar Hero.
I don’t think there’s ever been a point where you just put out a track and sit on the couch opening sacks of money. You put on live shows, you try to get signed by a label, you put your songs on all the other streaming services and Youtube, etc.
But the jackpot can still happen. A 17 year old name GAYLE put out a song last fall called “abcdefu”. I heard it on Spotify, thought it was fun and liked it. A few weeks later, my wife was in the car, heard it and said it was blowing up on Tiktok. I just looked and it has over 316,000,000 listens on Spotify alone right now less than six months later. And another six million for the various remixes. So, by your metric, that’s $975,000 for that song (she’s since put out others) just from Spotify in the last six months. So I’d say lottery winners still happen.
Yes, musicians don’t need to be paid. It’s a higher calling.
A band put together by the label to meet a look and sound. Great example of organic success.
Give it away for free and hope. That’s a good approach.
All the labels are owned by the same few companies. A live show might make you a hundred bucks a piece and you’re three years into Covid. Merch was a driver, but T-shirts only go so far and you can’t sell CD’s or tapes. You’re stuck selling retro vinyl to a much smaller niche of fans. You don’t want to release any new material without backing it with a tour. Other streaming services are basically back to “Give it away for free and hope”
You know those folks that busk in the alleyway or on the sidewalk. That’s everyone now. Hoping for a donation that’s probably not coming.
When has it ever been any different? Bands would get by gigging and put their own money into making demos in the hope of getting picked up.
Nothing wrong with giving people a taster for free and if they like you enough they may pay for other stuff, other music, gigs, merch.
Your work is only worth what people are willing to pay for it.
The data doesn’t lie: DIY artists make up a fast-growing sector of the music industry. According to a report by MIDIA Research, unsigned artists releasing music without the help of a label made up 6.3 percent of all Spotify streams in 2020 — a dramatic 28 percent increase from 2019.
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In summary, the average working musician earns $35,300 USD gross revenue annually from their music career, counting income from a variety of sources. So while that number sounds low, it isn’t the whole picture.
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There are variables. Genre makes a difference. For example, rock musicians make less money on compositions than other genres. But classical musicians make more. And as the study suggests, the older you are and the more experience you have, the more money you make. Musicians aged 18-29 earn an average of $28,260 in a year, musicians aged 40-49 earn an average of $63,900 in a year. Pretty simple and on-trend with life in general.
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According to the RIAA, streaming made up 83 percent of total music industry revenue in 2020, growing from 13.4 percent in the previous year. The exact amount you make per Spotify stream varies depending on factors such as the country of the listener and whether or not you are signed to a major label that has an agreement with the service.
By most estimates, you earn just over $3.00 for every 1,000 Spotify streams — and that’s before you account for the record label’s share (if you have a label, that is).
That doesn’t seem like a lot, but consider how it used to be just 20 years ago when the record industry still ran on CDs. You pretty much needed a label deal to get your music out there in any meaningful way. In that sense, streaming has leveled the playing field.
It honestly doesn’t sound much different from all the other arts. How many people are making bank on acting or painting or writing or making pottery, etc? Very few compared to the massive number of people who will never make more than side-gig profit from it. But the modern music scene makes it much easier to make some side-gig profit than back in the day when your audience was whoever from your workplace you could guilt into seeing you play at the bar that weekend.
