The Decline of the Music Industry

I don’t remember (and I remember it well), people giving much attention in the 80’s to nuclear war. Not at all like the 70’s and 60’s. The Soviet Union influence and decline was already in motion. Sure you had songs like 99 luft-balloons, and Forever Young, but 80’s pop was super happy overall, and it really peaked just as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and it was, like rock before it, almost exclusively white. Music from the black community, and I won’t call it African American as that would leave out the UK and others, had popularity in the 80s/90s, but the most popular was happy and not edgy whether Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, or Whipme Houston.

But as the 80’s progressed, if you wanted "edgy" music, music that spoke to youth either disinfranchised, or wanted to be, and certainly through the 90’s and 2000’s, it came predominantly from the Black community, through rap, hip-hop, urban. In the 90’s it was Janet, Mariah and Darius (Hootie and the Blowfish), in the 2000’s it was 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, and Usher, and I would throw in Eminem for the genre. Have you looked at what the top artists are with the <=25 crowd for the last 10-20 years? ... Ed Sheeran is not their Who/Stones or even Depeche Mode. If you can’t take off your "I am offended by everything" hat, then just exit the conversation. Whether rap, hip-hop, urban, it reflects angst, anger, or just being rebellious ... what drove much of what all those old white audiophiles thought was great "popular" music in the 60s, 70s, 80s.


The rise of latin music to me more mainstream language agnostic is a combination of demographics, but more so readily available streaming like you-tube. Perhaps cultural reflection, but it it generally happy music, and people need that escape too.


.. and whether I am black, white, or pink with blue pokadots does not change the argument.

simao1,147 posts01-27-2021 7:29pm@tjkurita That whole album was pretty good when it came out. The original title of that track was to have been "Mediterranean Queen", but marketing music peeps thought that wouldn't appeal to the lucrative American audience, so Ocean changed it.

Its and interesting comment. While music is popular world-wide, English countries really drive the dollars. Despocito may be the biggest on Youtube, where most streaming is free, but on paid sites, Ed Sheeran is the big dog. Psy was initially a bit "dismissive" of the U.S. till someone reminded him that virtually all his income was from the U.S., UK, as artists by law pretty much can only make a pittance in Korea for their music. They can make good money touring, but from the music itself,little.

@simao haha!  Tipper Gore is on her way. 

Nobody was ever able to predict what would hit. There were some notable record men (I can’t think of any women who ran labels back in the day) who had a good ear, or were artist friendly. Mo Ostin at Warners in the ’70s built a substantial empire, and those young guys he hired produced some great records. That company was regarded as artist friendly. Chris Blackwell was adventurous in his musical tastes and signed a lot of different acts that helped define the sound of several different genres: from Crimson and Tull to Bob Marley (throw in Traffic, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, U2 and a whole catalog of others). He was regarded not as a suit but as a guy who respected the artist. There were others.
There was always a tension between the artist side and the bean counters. That was true in the cigar chomping days and was true even during the late ’60s. The ’70s seemed to reflect a shift from London to LA and the singer-songwriter scene (I’m leaving out The Band, who were regarded as musician’s musicians by many and did sell records, but that whole LA mob become a "thing" in the ’70s). I kind of dropped out in the ’80s-- I listened to everything from Bad Brains (Rastafarian punk played by fusion guys out of DC to audiophile crap. I really didn’t have time for music because I was working in a profession that serviced the music industry. Most of the people I dealt with were suits. Artists who made big money had day to day lawyers, agents, managers, PR people, personal assistants, and almost all the folks who serviced them had lawyers, accountants, PR people and personal assistants.
The bottom dropped out finally in large part due to a combination of things, not the least being the Internet and the ability to file share, the reliance on catalog and established artists rather than the risks associated with new acts (although I gotta say, I remember in the ’80s how much money was thrown at totally unknown artists to fund them through advances). There was push back against "the industry" that kind of peaked during the Napster era and by that time, the industry was effectively gutted. They weren’t selling as much in the way of physical inventory, albums weren’t even released on vinyl in the US-- you had to buy an EU pressing to get some stuff if you were into new music and there were so many other diversions for the youth market, including Internet gaming.
Music was no longer a thing you focused on as an activity but something that got played while you did something else. It was a cheap commodity, made cheaper by how it was delivered. The expectation of "free" music made it hard to compete. It became even more niche as we turned the millennium.
I don’t pretend to completely understand any of it, though I witnessed it, was part of it in some ways and have some ideas about how music reflects culture and how culture can change music. Can music change culture? Yes. I think so.
In a way, and this is way beyond the scope of the thread, I think we are between epochs; we have lost some or much of the old, and the promise or potential of the new has not been fully realized. I had hoped to be driving a jet car by now, based on watching the Jetsons in the ’60s. The younger generation? Man, I know a guy-- thirties- majored in music in school, plays, but not for a living--huge knowledge of jazz, eclectic modern stuff, old school funk, etc. We trade listening notes.
I can still get excited firing up a record I haven’t heard or listened to in a long time. That, at this point, is largely what it is about for me, but I’m from an older generation of audiophile/listener. We’ve been talking about the death of the high end audio industry for decades, but through thick and thin, it’s still there. Stuff changes. C’est la vie.

audio2design943 posts"I don’t remember (and I remember it well), people giving much attention in the 80’s to nuclear war. Not at all like the 70’s and 60’s." Oh stop. You clearly don’t remember it well. I started out wanting to take your side but the others are right, you are just making crap up....The 80’s were all about the Cold War and nuclear war. My "well regarded" college forced me (and 8000 others) to watch the crap Made for TV movie , "The Day After" in 1983 and the overtly fearmongering "Nightlight" afterwards about how Reagan was going to start WW3. Forget "Mr Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall"? How about No Nukes Concerts and Protests in US cities, how about the Doomsday Clock which, supposedly, was at, 1 second to midnight before world destruction...lol., the Reykjavík Summit when every television "expert" told us we has lost the Cold War? Forget the riots in London and Brussels as the Pershing Missiles were being deployed to Europe? How about Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, CSN, etc leading the Unilateral Disarmament Marches? Hear of Lech Wałęsa ? John Paul II being shot by a Bulgarian Security member, the 1,000 of Soviet dissidents, the near-like nuclear flashpoint of the Soviet shooting down of Korean jetliner 007 in 1983, the tales of genocide from Siberian Gulags. You really do live in a bubble. How else could one justify such blitheful amnesia, or perhaps it’s just a blindspot for being horribly wrong about positions taken, that in retrospect, were some of the worst things to be wrong and vocally opinionated about, in any lifetime.....