So, if so, why go out with a bang than a whimper? It makes no sense at all to me.
You guys are just letting it happen by appealing to an older demographic and not the 15-35 year olds.
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KITS 105.3 Stunting... Return of Live 105?
- Thread starter AceBiscuits
- Start date
You guys are just letting it happen by appealing to an older demographic and not the 15-35 year olds.
No.
Why would I need to? This is a discussion board, not an academic publication subject to peer review.
I'm sure you could probably cherry-pick a particular year as an example, but if you look at the whole alternative era through that time period I'm sure you will see the diversity of labels putting out the music back then looked nothing like the stranglehold of big music companies that control everything today. There was definitely more diversity in radio ownership too. The alternative format really took off prior to the horrible telecommunications act of 1996 that led to the rise of the radio conglomerates that run things today.
I don't believe that's true, for the most part. Most musicians are creative people who make music as their art. Modern production techniques may be part of the process, and tik tok is a way to promote and monetize what they have created. If they really do homogenize their music to gain commercial success it's because the labels themselves have created an environment where a very small number of power brokers now has the ability to make or break their careers.
Now, if you are talking about country music, which I know you work with, then that's a different story. The Nashville machine with its heirarchy of producers and songwriters-for-hire churns out formulaic, radio-ready hits, and everyone who gets into that field knows what they're there for. But alternative -- with the exception of a very few bands (ahem, Bush) -- was never like that.
And, if you look at Billboard, add to "Pop, country, and hip hop" both "reggaetón" and "regional Mexican". If you look at the rankers on views, you see both of those genres amply present on the lists.
Start with the fact that 18-34 has swung almost entirely to the rhythmic side and you see that reflected in the most popular music formats in those age groups.
That’s not how the radio industry has ever functioned. If formats don’t work, they go away with minimal notice until after the fact. Very rarely did an AM top 40 station go out with “a bang” unless you’re referring to WABC or CFTR. And those two floundered for awhile before they flipped away from Top 40.
The 25–54 demo is the “money demo” for a reason. They have more disposable income than people in their late teens. That’s just a fact of life.
Yeah, that was the five or six years where half of all stations lost money, in a great part due to Docket 80-90 and the profusion of upgrades, move-ins and new assignments all over the country.
And the failure to write, compose, sing and perform based on market factors is much of what has lessened the impact of Alt and AAA in recent years.
Another factor, and the reason why Alt stations have so much trouble with current music, is that the already-small genre has divided into multiple and incompatible subsets that often don't like the same songs and artists.
And the radio industry did not make that determination. As national brands and services became more and more research driven, they identified where most of their profits came from.
Because you're acting like all music nowadays is muffled singing. Proving my point that you don't know anything about modern music, especially alternative which doesn't have that?????
So what do the age groups who don't want just classic alternative or the young people who are into alternative fm radio do? Drop dead? Tons of us exist you know...
Not enough to sustain commercial radio stations. And if you look at world-wide sales (and BigA significant points out that the big 3 music companies are international), Alt is not a widely popular genre outside the US and not big enough in the US to warrant label focus.
So, for you, there are streams and satellite and on-demand services.
Translation: "Alternative is what I say it is!" Alternative (ahem!) translation: "They play X, therefore they're not alternative!" Simon Geller couldn't have been prouder.
Are you assuming I'm saying that a lot of the music being played isn't alternative anymore? I'm so confused... since I thought I clarified I love a lot of the new alternative music and do not WANT that to go away????
My entire ranting is the idea that a lot of people are out of touch on alternative and new music as a whole that classic alternative isn't the future.
This division really dates back to the mid-90s and the decline of grunge (i.e., the Seattle Sound). Outside of Foo Fighters and the Black Keys, practically every newer artist or band in the format has been deeply polarizing, with Limp Bizkit, Nickelback and Creed seemingly getting the most wrath. The decline of stations like WNNX and Q101 were largely attributed to this polarization, with nu metal driving away female listeners. And Nickelback is often derided as a joke or a meme by people who in theory should be listening to their gold tracks today at the same frequency they’d be listening to Stone Temple Pilots gold tracks.
It almost feels immaterial to discuss any new artist because there’s bound to be a subset of the audience that hates the new artist for whatever the reason. It could be Ed Sheeran having songs written by committee or Billy Eilish being labeled an “industry plant” or “they released their songs on Bandcamp”. Or “why is my alt station playing Post Malone? It’s ownership’s fault!” Or “this Greta Van Fleet is a crappy Zeppelin knockoff with no originality!”
But that's the appeal, it's crossover. In the 90s, Aerosmith was played on rock and Top 40 stations. Alanis Morrissette's first album had songs played on rock stations. And the same can be said for cross-over between Rap, Rock, Country, Dance songs, and so on. Eminem got airplay all over radio. Same for Cyprus Hill. As Big A was pointing out, it all comes down to mass appeal. It's about what gains the most listeners.
As for your point of listeners caring about music and not ads. I agree with you. There are choices. I first went with ripping most of my CDs to mp3s and saving them on my phone. Now I subscribe to satellite radio. As said by others, we aren't the customer. We are the product being sold to the customer. The goal is to appeal to most amount of us possible to get the most amount of ears for advertisers.
But doing that move clearly hurts alternative more which is confusing since there's so much to go for that you don't have to crossover a song that isn't alternative on alternative. It's different when it's an indie pop/alt-pop artist like Twenty One Pilots, Billie Eilish, Lorde, etc, they were all played on alternative first. Mood wasn't.
I've never understood that. It's not as if they were the second coming of Mozart, but at the same time, they seemed to be reasonably competent at what they did.
We can argue that radio doesn't appeal to any younger generations. Think about CHR, I think Olivia Rodrigo is the only young artist played recently. I hear 25 year old NSYNC and Britney Spears songs on Z100 with Panic! At The Disco from 2006 with new Miley Cyrus and The Weeknd. Those aren't all new current hits.
The music industry began to consolidate when RCA Records was sold to Bertlesmann and Columbia sold to Sony in the late 80s. That was before radio consolidation. MCA & Mercury were bought by Vivendi in the early 90s. This was all during alternative's golden age. Warner/Reprise bought Elektra/Asylum, then they bought Atlantic. So on the surface, it might have looked like a lot of small labels, but they were all owned by mega conglomerates by the time the alternative radio format was born. Radio was still relatively small.
But only a few owners were involved in alternative radio. Infinity owned KROQ. But as I said, it didn't matter how many owners there were. If someone owned a station you didn't listen to, it didn't matter. That's what I mean. People lived in their own private media fishbowl.
You can believe whatever you want to believe, but in the end, music is a business, and its driven by the same forces as any other business.
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