Rock is dead

Davesax1965 wrote: Gene Simmons is a joke. So were KISS. They were a manufactured band releasing "product" and not "music". File under "entertainment for slow readers".  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.

The self-release market is pretty over-saturated and it's really hard to be successful in those endeavors. Mostly (with exceptions), the people who will buy music want stamps of authenticity. A good label, physical formats, nice packaging for those formats, presence on popular download and streaming sites (iTunes, Spotify, etc.), a live show, good reviews, etc. Mostly, the people who buy music are music magazine Top 40 listeners who will take risks in purchases but only if the odds of quality seem good. It's hard to get that as a musician, though.

CPicard wrote: Oh, and, by the way, I think Throbbing Gristle or Einstürzende Neubauten had more influence than the Swans (at least, in Europe).

Einstürzende Neubauten definitely, what with Blixa Bargeld playing with Nick Cave, but I'm pretty sure I'm on a police watch list for admitting in public to listening to Throbbing Gristle.

Electronic pop I'd wager, with certain hiphop and R&B subgenres close.

Well, in order for a genre of music to be "dead", in my opinion, one of two things must be true:

Edited by StaaViinsZ - September 16 2014 at 20:39