Rock is dead

I think the noughties marked a turning point in rock and particularly retro rock culture.  This was demonstrated by the interest that the LZ reunion concert attracted.  At some point, old/classic officially became cool and hip.  And this is to the detriment of the development of new bands and new music.  If old, established names easily fill halls, even arenas, promoters would not have to bet on new bands.  This is reducing the prominence of new rock music.  There are still extremely popular bands like Muse.  But it took several albums for Muse to work their way up to the kind of popularity that bands used to attain within the first three-four albums.  Iron Maiden got big after Killers, just their sophomore effort, for instance.  I don't grudge old bands the opportunity to entertain crowds, especially if they can still do it well.  But until there's genuine interest in new music shown by a substantially large audience, it is difficult for the new music to achieve any great degree of influence.  People want to catch up with the music that either their grandpas or fathers used to listen to or, um, the music that they used to listen to before they became dads or grand-dads.  

The Cure, Joy Division, and Sonic Youth are more popular than Swans here as well, but compared to KISS that difference is miniscule. KISS had their own music-playing toothbrush for crying out loud. But I can't think of KISS being very influential outside of the 80s, and I can't see anyway in which they actually redefined the genre nor did they seem to affect much music outside of rock music. The subject gets a bit complex when you're discussing when these artists were influential, how these artists were influential, how influential these artists were, in what music spheres these artists were influential, and in what musical climate these artists are influential. We probably should have even started with actually defining "genre-redefining." 

However, he's right. Over the last year, I had 5,700 hits on a Bandcamp profile (I would actually class myself as a musician.) About 1300 downloads. I give everything away to charity. So, the model at the time was, if you can't afford it, no problems. If you can afford it, donate what you can, all profits go to charity.

So, 20% hit ratio, not bad. Guess how much was in the pot after 6 months ? $2. Two lousy rotten dollars for writing an entire album which got international radio play. At this point, I gave up. Finally, I wrote a new album, released it, wooo, $18 in an entire week. 

Even if you GIVE away free downloads, only 1 in 5 people who get a download code actually bother to download the files. They'd rather stream the music. All people do now is use internet radio stations like Spotify to stream audio. I remember reading somewhere that one "pop" musician had 30,000 plays and got enough royalties to buy a t shirt.

Listen up, folks, if you think music has gone down the pan over the last 30 years, wait and see what the next 30 are going to be like. If people don't start actually buying music again, there is absolutely no incentive for anyone to learn to play an instrument for you. Hence rock is dead. Music is dead. It was being killed by commercialism but is now being killed by the listening public.