Theater of My Mind said:
You are still missing the point that there are far fewer alternative rock oriented 18-34 non-Hispanic white males today, because there has been, for well over a decade and a half, a decline in the interest in rock by youth.
If you look at the areas of sociology that study the formation of musical taste, you'll see that the base is laid in the early years of adolescence. So today's non-Hispanic white male in the 18-34 group grew up in the era when members of his peer group were more into Hip-hop than rock and where interest in dance, rhythmic and country were all growing.
In the big metro areas, the influence of combined Black and Hispanic communities that sometimes surpass half the market has been huge; those two ethnicities now make up over a third of the population and is even higher a percentage in 18-34. The effect of the changing ethnic composition of the country has been a decrease in interest in alternative, or an aging in the interest group for other kinds of rock.
There are a bunch of people in record companies who know that they can make more money with Pitbull than with alternative acts because alternative has much lower interest outside the US... where 95% of the world's population lives. Look at how rhythmic and pop songs are charting worldwide, while few alternative songs are big everywhere. Taylor Swift can have #1 songs in Chile and Hong Kong, but alternative songs generally are noticeably absent unless they are really alternative artists doing pop.
As someone who spent years picking songs or being part of music committees or oversight groups, I'd say that the simple reason why few indies make it is that few of them are very good. Artists don't, generally, go with indie labels. They go indie because they can't sign with Sony or WEA or Universal's label lineups.
That sure explains why radio and the NAB are aggressively lobbying against the labels on the Hill, then. Not. Radio and the music industry are now adversaries, and relationships are at an all-time low. Of course, much of this is because it is hard for any record label to make money...
Actually, the "partnerships" are not really that... they are alliances to avoid prohibitive digital royalties, and are made with medium size and small labels. Big Machine, not Sony. In fact, the big international labels have not come to the table on this matter... because they like to bleed internet and digital stations to death.
But with increasing ethnic communities in the US, and increased interest in rhythmic and country, there is less interest by fewer people in rock. And the international potential of rhythmic and pop is vastly greater than for rock.
The problem with alternative is that it is highly fragmented. I have been at alternative music AMTs for medium sized markets, and within the core of a regional station, there are 3 or 4 subsets, none of which much likes the music the other three groups like.- So for radio, it is hard to keep all these groups happy... and today, those little fragmented segments can find better online alternatives. No station can keep the whole alternative spectrum happy, as there is no broad coalition taste group... just subsets. That's why alternative is programmed on such a small group of stations in the US and underexposed in most of the rest of the world.
