The Music Fan’s Lament #1: Fragmentation
I have been reading a few things recently about the state of music in the 21st Century. Not the state of the music industry exactly, but the state of music itself and its relationship with its fans. There are a lot of things I want to write about in response to this, so rather than one massive great big monster post, I think I’ll break it down into a small series of things which I’ll write over the course of the next day or so.
Firstly, here are the various articles that prompted this little festival of self-indulgence, so you have some idea what to expect:
A Penny For Your Thoughts by The Vinyl Villain (read the comments as well, because some of them are very thought-provoking.
Does the World Need Another Indie Band? by Tim Walker, writing in The Independent.
Why Has Modern Music Lost So Much Impact? by the Kings of A&R.
This comment, from a reader called Alex in the comment thread of my recent podcast – The Tribecast.
So, how am I going to break this down into relatively digestible chunks, so this post doesn’t just ramble on forever? Like so:
1. Fragmentation
2. Over Saturation
3. Hype Overload
4. Decreasing Quality
#1 Fragmentation
I may quibble with either the existence or the seriousness of some of the other things I am going to discuss in this series, but I don’t think I can honestly argue against the fact that there is severe fragmentation in the music market. Whether it’s a bad thing or a good thing, however, I couldn’t rightly say, although I don’t think it is great for the vast majority of music fans.
If you think about it, no-one really knows where or what the mainstream is anymore. Jay-Z headlines Glastonbury, the NME left relevance behind years ago, Top of the Pops is dead, radio stations are struggling and internet ones are actually under attack from the music industry itself, so where do we all find out about the next big thing together?
Well for the fanatics like myself and probably, given you’re here reading this, you too, the fragmentation is actually a bonus most of the time. It is what allows us to be here, examining some of the more obscure
corners of the indiesphere, whilst still keeping half an eye on the wider mainstream acts at the same time. It also helps us build communities of people, even ones who have never met, nor are ever likely to.
For the more balanced music fan, however, it can be a problem. I mentioned during the Tribecast that pop music, particuarly mainstream pop music is not particularly about the music itself from an artistic standpoint. I mean, there’s a reasonably rigid formula for pop hits, and they have to be catchy as hell for some reason, so it’s not like the music can get away with being entirely inept (vapid is another question), but for the listener the social aspect is often equally important.
Culture is a crucial part of group bonding – basic tribal behaviour – and the act of sharing cultural entities is an important way of binding a community together. So it really doesn’t matter what you think of a song, what matters is its capacity to appeal to a large number of people and enough awareness that it has the chance to become something shared by as many people as possible.
In the Tribecast I mentioned Mr. Brightside by the Killers as a perfect example of a song and an album that was so ubiquitous that it is now completely attached to the Summer of 2005 and in five or six years time, any of us who hear that song again will instantly associate it with whatever was going on in our life at the time. We’ll have that ‘Aaa, remember this!‘ conversation with a random person in a pub, and this will allow us to instantly bond that little bit more, and that little bit more easily.
At the moment there seems to be no shared mass market for this stuff, in fact Top of the Pops’ very breadth was probably what killed it. Looking at the Top Ten Albums lists for 2007, we see the Billboard Charts – the barometer of major label sales – giving us obviously ludicrous hits such as Hannah Montana and Now Fifty-Whatever. Even the superficial magazines were writing out lists full of LCD Soundsytem and TV on the Radio – a bloggers’ delight perhaps, but is it that representative of mainstream tastes? Bloggers are prominent at the moment because we are very easy to find, and there is a definite style of indie rock that seems to be very popular amongst bloggers. So we’re one of the most coherent, available voices out there, but I really have my doubts that we are representative of mainstream tastes.
All this results in the fragmentation we are talking about. As Alex said, in his comment on the Tribecast thread:
“I think songs like ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ and bands like Arctic Monkeys – that really capture the imagination of the mainstream, but that can also be looked back on a few months down the line without any hint of embarrassment – are so important. They’re the only point of cultural bonding (and drunken singalong) I can expect to have with anyone of my age in 10 years time.”
He’s right, but in other ways this fragmentation is a good thing. It allows, for example, smaller, more close-knit communities to form, often locally centred. Imagine if you find someone in ten years with a Toad Session recording in their music collection, for example. Or imagine, on a larger scale, meeting a fan of King Creosote and realising that you both talked on the Fence Beefboard at the same time. Or even just meeting someone who also reads The Vinyl Villain or, more likely, Said the Gramophone. That bond will be a hell of a lot stronger than a wishy-washy, generic ‘Oh yeah, I liked that Killers song’.
But remember that it isn’t just radio and television that forges these shared bonds. ASDA radio plays more and better indie music in an hour that pretty much any major radio station, and they probably have more listeners too, albeit not by choice. But this seeps in everywhere – in every pub and bar that plays music. If you’re in the same pubs as someone, you’re listening to the same music, and if it happens a lot you remember it, however subconsciously, so this process really hasn’t been stopped. Think about the ubiquity of cutting edge music in advertising and television as well – if we’re all watching Big Brother, we’re all listening to the same music.
Ultimately though, I think these things will consolidate. That’s what Capitalism does: builds bigger and bigger and shitter and shitter companies until there is an explosion and it all tumbles down and starts over. You can already see the growth of things like The Hype Machine and Drowned in Sound and to some extent The Guardian as well, all starting to point the way to the kinds of large entities that could easily grow out of the current sea of tiny enterprises. So for anyone worrying about the fragmentation in the actual music industry itself, I honestly doubt it will last that long.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that we often don’t know what is going to define a period of time until afterwards. What’s going to define 2008? Well we don’t know, do we – Vampire Weekend? It’s not unlikely.
The Killers – Mr. Brightside
Vampire Weekend – A-Punk
Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
Hey Matthew
First of all I’ll be picky and say you’ve got your rappers mixed up,
Secondly, that Independent article was piss-poor, though the premise was a good one. Actually the best thing about it, that you don’t get online, is the 2-page photo spread of a few of these ‘indie bands’ where they all look pretty much identical. The photos make the point better than the article does.
Anyway, I’ll give more thoughful comments later. Need to go home now. Actually, was fermenting a similar type of post myself, but probably won’t bother now. Let’s see where the discussion goes….
Shurely shome mishtake?
- “see where the discussion goes….”
+ look forward to interminable thread about snuffling about in Rod Stewart’s jockstrap.
Cheers Tim, mistake corrected. Actually I really wanted to tackle more about that Indy article, but it doesn’t entirely cross over with this particular part of the topic, so it might have to wait until tomorrow. But the fact that celebrity culture has found another market to try and exploit, whilst not at all edifying, hardly negates the core of the indie movement, which is alive and well today in my view, albeit more in the fields of folk and electronica than in guitar music, whence it came.
Darling, I doubt it. I am guessing everyone will have blown themselves out on that ridiculous fucking thread. Unfortunately though, this may mean I don’t get another comment for the rest of the week, but anything to put that fiasco behind us.
That Indy indie article, I mean.
You question the state of music in the 21st Century (by which I can only guess you mean the state of the music market or music culture) and yet you fail to realize that the 21st Century can no longer be judged by 20th or 19th Century standards. Fragmentation is only a useful measurement when we are looking through the lens of a unified, meaningful, and linear whole. To trace the evolution of Western music from one eon to the next, for example, from American Blues to Elvis Presley, to Led Zeppelin to The Sex Pistols to The Talking Heads and onward is a particularly 20th Century way of categorizing and understanding music and yes it made sense in our time as it WAS the way music flowed in it’s dissemination via radio stations and television and record sales. However, with new forms of communication, namely the internet, which is not as specifically bound to local markets and cultures and is not driven by local audiences’ tastes in the way that ratings shaped radio play or ratings shaped television or ratings shaped advertising in the past, we have a whole new animal here! So, no… it’s not fragmentation anymore. It’s co-optation and fusion and confluence and a mass orgy of music that can not be linear any more and time will not reveal a path of transmission. Things will NOT consolidate, the internet and bloggers like you will prevent that process, Capitalism will forever be altered because of the neutrality of internet forces, you see?
And by the way, your post on women’s music and “frontloader” was so completely misogynistic I don’t even know why I’m taking the time to share my thoughts with you on this other than to show you what a fool you are.
xoxox,
a tart who feels ever so sorry for you, lol
I tend to agree with you, Toad. But, & this is purely from a point of view that is, not unlike yourself, but yourself is obviously chin-scratching this a bit more than I, does it really matter anymore? By that I mean the speed at which things change these days is of such a pace, & will inevitabely leave us standing agog, should we really be that bothered to apply energy worrying about such things when we could just be listening to the stuff we really enjoy? Sure, trends/phases etc. will swing back around, music will live & die on its ingenuity/copycat/bandwagon ratio. It always has. I get really annoyed listening to 1000’s of tracks sent to me that ape alt.country, nu-folk, whatever fucking terms you want to apply to the ‘genre’ raping happening right now, just because there’s a perception this is hip & a cert. Remember when the Polyphonic Spree were about the only orchestral pop around? Or when Whiskeytown/Adams were pretty much the only alt.country strummers bashing out crafted pop numbers? Like you said, the gypsy/carnival/circus/kitchen sink phenom will bury itself up its own ass shortly. It has to. & maybe not just because of the shifting tastes of the listener. Financially, how the fuck can such an endeavour (whether live or on CD) sustain multi-member bands like Arcade Fire & I’m From Barcelona, etc.? Not very long on the basis of the number of CDs they sell vs. the paypacket at the end of every gig.
All I’m saying, really, is, recognise it for what it is, squeeze whatever drops you can from its tit, shrug a shoulder or two, unscrew a Gordon’s (or whatever your juniper selection may be), switch on the turntable & drift off to the pop & hiss of an old favourite. It’s less strain on the brain muscle & a lot less likely to inflame your ventricles.
Not that I’m pooh-pooing intellectual debate, but (& I know this may seem like a contradiction given what I’ve said on previous shows about the importance of music in your everyday makeup & scaffold) it is only music, afterall.
Nevermind that, Tart – do you have big tits?
LolZ!! ROFL! LMFAO!!!
As Einstein once said.
Tart, I really wish I agreed with anything that you’d said, because it would be far nicer that way, but I just don’t.
I suppose you could well say that fragmentation is the wrong word, and maybe decentralisation is more appropriate. If anything, I’d say that currently things are more like the very old days actually, with small networks building up around particular nodes, although this time those nodes are often in cyberspace rather than geographical. That’s not always true however, because one of the things that the information superhighway has done is enable local geographical networks to flourish as well, albeit without the restrictions these networks used to have.
But to suggest that net neutrality is going to change Capitalism forever is just naive, really. It also seems to rather misunderstand either Capitalism or the way the internet works, and I guess it’s probably Capitalism. The competition that exists in the current internet model is pretty much the essence of Capitalism. There is almost unlimited choice, and almost complete freedom of movement – basically the way websites and various other networks organically grow and change at the moment is almost the definition of a free market economy.
The economic policies of what we would call the Industrialised North today are absolutely not Capitalism. In fact, they are almost feudal, which is in many ways how I fear the internet is likely to go in the coming years. Basically big, powerful companies will always struggle against a climate in which their size and financial muscle does not confer them a massive advantage, and they will seek to change it so that this is no longer the case. And they will succeed, in all probability, because they have the access and they have the incentive.
When the copyright discussions take place, how well do you think normal people are represented compared to the massive media conglomerates that currently own pretty much all of the West’s cultural output? And consequently in whose favour do you think the decisions are going to be made, when it comes to the crunch? Equally net neutrality. Participating in the discussion will be lobbyists from the telecoms industry who will be able to levy massive charges for privileged access to their networks, and the massive companies who can afford that outlay in return for massively favourable treatment from the networks. Representing the bloggers who are going to change the world, who will there be?
And suggesting that things will not consolidate, well that seems to be to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the way power works. If someone gets a bit bigger, they can squash a couple of rivals which makes them bigger again and reduces the competition by a couple. This makes their next conquest that little bit easier, and so on until you end up with the virtual monopolies you see in so many industries – particularly media. Now these things do often implode and start again from scratch, but the tendency is always to consolidation and growth.
And actually, to what extent do you think most people would dislike that? How useful would Facebook or MySpace be if there were hundreds of such sites? You’d end up with so many different accounts it would be pointless, all your friends would be on different ones and things would be a nightmare. How annoying would it be to have to try five different search engines before you got the results you needed?
Even in terms of music, people who read sites like this – even people like you who hate it – are in a very small minority. The overwhelming majority of people just want to be able to go to Pitchfork or NME or somewhere like that, read some reviews and pick up a handful of things that scored 8/10 or more. Most people do not care about music even a fraction as much as myself and the most dedicated readers of this site. Most people care less than even the casual readers. Consolidation of sources is not just an economic inevitability, it is something that the vast majority of people really would not be bothered about at all, in fact they might well welcome it.
Oh, and DC, I wouldn’t say that I was agonising. I am not talking about the music industry here or how to make money, I am just musing about things through the eye of the average music fan. I know there’s an extent to which I can’t really put myself in their shoes because I care too much to be able to really, honestly set it aside. But I reckon half the hand-wringing you are talking about is pretty unfounded – I think we were agreeing, actually.
*Oh and Tart, did you read Mrs. Toad’s riposte to my Toploader post? If I am a misogynist and she a misandrist then what hope is there for us, really? We’ll be divorced within the year I should imagine.
Nevermind that, Toad – do you have big tits?
Ah net neutrality rears it’s ugly head! Well… I’ll make a few points and then leave it at that. (And incidentally, I do have amazingly HUGE tits,
).
A. my insistence on the neutrality of internet forces has nothing to do with the political emphasis of late on so-called net neutrality wherein those on the left call for open and economically free access to the information superhighway. I was referring to what already exists now, the theoretically free flow of ideas from across the mainly English speaking world and specifically about music and American/British music. The forces that shape cultural tastes that now determine whether a musical artist gets a record contract are no longer television ratings or record sales but sometimes blog hits and mp3 downloads and attendance at the major summer concerts which are hyped online.
B. as for Capitalism, you’re confusing a misguided philosophy of free-market liberalism with Capitalism. The invisible hand is a farce, Capitalism is very simply the exercise of the elite’s power (yes, I’m an unreformed vulgar Marxist with HUGE tits, don’t forget those) and even with internet advertising, limited access to music sites and downloads, and higher and higher costs of major concert venues in the US and abroad, Capitalism *still* has made very little inroads into the unbridled fervor of the 18-24 age group’s hunger for music. They download it for free from blogs like yours, they pirate it from myspace, from bands own web sites, from anywhere they can. They hack their iphones, their ipods, their mp3 players of any variety, and they will continue to do so because they CAN. And that is why Capitalism will never control the music market and why it continues to loose a grip on the music culture of our future. The UK and the US are some of the *only* places where the wars over online music sharing wage so fiercely.
C. majority v. minority – yes we are the minorty, agreed! And Capitalism’s elites only thrive on the masses who propel their buying machine. However, without becoming apocalyptic, it’s easy to read current economic forecasts here in the US and see that the majority are NOT buying. So, like me, they turn to the kindness of others, such as yourself and find their music online. Thank you.
D. I still hold you to be a misogynist but at least you can hold your own in an argument without calling me names :p
xoxoxo,
a tart, a bovine old slapper, and a fellow Wedding Present fan, size 38DD
“but at least you can hold you own”? God, there’s nothing like a patronising ‘no one understands but me’ lecture to put a man off breasts!
I
Also Toad, there is no hope for your marriage. Not because of the respect with which you each hold each other gender, but rather because eventually she’s bound to sober up and realise she’s made terrible terrible mistake.
God bless you Mrs. Toad and you infinite strength and liver of steel!
I think I missed the bit about Rod Stewart’s jockstrap. Must look harder. With an addition to the science of musicology, I’d like to prosper the theory of relativity. Your own taste in music has no doubt been conditioned by exposure. If the internet had been a 19th Century invention, then the concept of fragmentation would entail completely different boundaries. The very fact that the Independent can fill a spread with Indie bands that may bear an uncanny resemblance to each other may just be an indication of the diverstiy of music now available. The irony of it. Using a purely statistical analysis, the greater the plethora of entities, then the smaller the deviation between the entities required to identify a pattern. Depending on the period in time, then the way we listen to music determines to a large degree the level of our exposure to different musical entities: in the 19th Century, if you wanted to listen to music whilst collecting yur messages from the local grocer on the corner, then you whistled. A 19th Century toad would no-doubt have felt the necessity to travel the length & breadth of the country, if not further, frequenting the local taverns to sample the fares of live music on offer. Even although, the toad is in fact a more competent whistler than one might suspect, given his dry lips and wiry tongue. The desire to soak up fresh new sounds would compel him to eek out alternative sources of music.
With the advent of recorded media, subsequently the availability of music: the personal stereo, ‘piped’ music in shops, radio (which of course preceded many forms of musical recording) and internet and mobile phones and advertising and the ubiquitous elevators and and and ….then we have the ability to listen to music pretty much non-stop. I’m quite sure given the marketing pitch of the whale music industry then we could even be persuaded to listen to music in our sleep. Given the accessibility of large volumes of music, then it is quite conceivable and already oft-whined that even listening to music non-stop would span more than an average lifespan. The oft-whined aspect is largely associated with Coldplay penetration. That does indeed feel like a very painful lifetime. I am quite partial to a merry little ditty, but am indiscriminant as to whether it be shitty, so I like to think that in any period of time, I’d be quite content with anything to punctuate a mime, whether it be ballad, aria or shanty reinvented, that music just can’t be enjoyed is indeed to be lamented.
Jake,
your ideas intrigue me,
and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I agree with that tart.
And for once, when I say “that tart”, I don’t mean Matthew!
We’re in uncharted waters here. You can try and apply historical models to the situation we’re in now, and – hey – they might become reality, but from my point of view the historical models don’t have a particularly greater chance of happening than countless other scenarios.
One thing I believe is that as long as there are governments, corporations and conglomerates running the show, there will always be an underground, a left-field, an anti-establishment movement. That is fundamental to collective human nature.
Yes, it’s true to say that history tells us these underground movements often move over-ground and become part of the establishment they initially railled against, but history also tells us they’re replaced as soon as they move on.
Misogynist or misanthropic in general?
I think there are two different, but related things going on here. Firstly, for the vast majority of music fans there is a fragmentation of sources taking place – there is no one place to get the current pop music conveniently any more (be it dance pop, indie pop or whatever). Pubs and bars, adverts and TV shows are currently your best bet, and for most people this convenience and lack of effort is pretty much all they want out of the music industry.
In terms of shifting the key factors that score a record deal, I agree that festivals and certain blogs are becoming very important – just look at Vampire Weekend and Black Kids. But ultimately, that is just moving the power base away from certain sources to certain other ones; namely LiveNation, who own live music pretty much heart and soul in the States and to an increasing extent over here, and potentially Buzznet, who are buying up the most influential music blogs. For a period the democracy of blogs led to a sort of aggregate, but ultimately I think you will see labels (or whoever ends up signing bands in future – it may well not be what we would call a record label) turning to a few key sources – well recieved at festivals X, Y and Z? Check! Covered favourably on Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Gorilla vs Bear? Check! Shazam, record deal! This is basically just the same power structure as before, with a few key and very influential gatekeepers. Same building, different bricks.
For the more hard-core, I think the things you are describing are more applicable. Certainly I would expect Google to protect Blogger, to a degree, because they want to own people’s hearts and minds and that is a brilliant way to do it. I certainly agree with you that recent developments have been and will continue to be massively beneficial for grassroots music movements, particularly, paradoxically enough given the global nature of the internet, local ones. However, I still contend that this is going to benefit only a very small proportion of music fans overall – the ones who really care passionately.
I was trying to write this piece from a fan’s perspective – not a rabid fan like myself, but a more casual one – and I maintain that the vast majority of people simply don’t have the time or inclination to deal with more than a handful of sources for their cultural references, and that narrowing of sources is actually what most people want because it gives them a more broadly shared cultural experience. So if most people want consolidation, and most commerical enterprises strive for that kind of ubiquity and success, then I fail to see what is going to prevent it happening.
I still think we at the fringes are in a stronger position than we have been for years, but I don’t know about forever changing the face of Capitalism. The rising political influence of places like China and India, with such different political goals to ours, is more likely to do that, but not necessarily to the benefit of the free exchange of ideas and information.
(Ben, I think the ‘hold your own’ thing was just acknowledging that I disagreed with arguments instead of just calling her a slag and telling her to fuck off)
Yes, but aren’t we all just jerking ourselves off a bit here? I personally find it hard to discern any downside to the fragmentation of the music scene. The whole “shared cultural experience” thing is completely overrated if you ask me. As applied to music, the notion of a shared cultural experience calls to mind those bad old undergraduate days where boys and girls would move to opposite sides of a room/bar so they could do some sort of fucking odious call-and-response singalong to Meat Loaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Light.” What do we lose as a culture (nay, as a species) when such “shared cultural experiences” go by the boards? Precious little. If people want shared cultural experiences, they can watch American Idol. And they can go fuck themselves while they do it.
I think the charge of misogyny is indeed ill-advised. The toad is deceptively devoid of sliminess. He is in fact rather partial to the Miss O’Gin&tonicy that he’s married to.
As to the continuation on the reasoned argument thread here: I excuse myself from relevant participation. Currently listening to radio Clyde (of all things) surely eliminates the merest modicum of credibility. An interesting juxtaposition. Can a blatantly casual fan thus pass comment on the possibility of the same one-stop-shops of musical source still exisitng? Is the fare on offer on radio really much different from days of yore? Are casual fans still quite happy to lazily pursue their musical pleasures by dint of coincidental exposure? Are the casual fans merely investing in the music industry differently – more downloads, participation in festivals, live events? Is the definition of a casual fan in rapid transition? Is ignorance more blissful than the awakening from ignorance?
Given my credentials, I only really feel empowered to proffer one answer- the casual fan may indeed have a broader ‘taste’. Analytically, I would attribute this to increased exposure to varying muscial entities. Not something I can accuse of radio Clyde of conspiring to elicit. Ho hum.
This is very true, C&B, very true indeed.
DITTO. DITTO. DITTO
If it weren’t for ALL of you music bloggers, I don’t know what I would do. I am a 50 year old stay at home mother of 3 who needs to get back to the working world as my oldest will be going to college in the fall.
I still haven’t found the “new Elvis”, but thanks to all of you, I have come close.
Unfortunately, we live in clear channel air space and every day I express to my kids how sorry I feel for them. It’s so bad here (CT) I won’t even play the radio in the car.
Thanks to all of you, my kids have a well developed taste for great music. I make many cd’s for their friends and hand them out like candy!
My standard response to hubby’s weekly question – “come across any good jobs yet hon?”:
No honey, I’m afraid not. It’s a full time job just trying to feed my kids good tunes.
“Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.”
Many many MANY thanks again.
Erm, wow. Thanks very much, and thanks so much for the nice comments about the potentially rather, erm, unwelcoming tones of the Popecast.
The thing I find amazing about the internet revolution is the dichotomy between global and local. On the one hand, this blog has helped me become involved in a local culture I would hardly have been aware of otherwise, and I think to an extent it is helping to support that local community.
Then on the other, people like C&B in Virginia and DC in Wales and countless other people are now in a position where they can pretty much participate in the Edinburgh music scene, and have access to all these bands that they might otherwise have never known.
Without wishing to sound like a wet blanket, I find that all rather encouraging.
OMG, not one comment about my HUGE tits!?
That, my dear, is being we are only playing at being misogynists. Basically, if you talk sense here and take a (generally hugely vulgar and/or offensive, preferably both) joke then no one cares about your tits.
Besides, it’s the internet, you could be lying*.
*No, NO pictures!
Or you could have a huge arse as well, in which case all bets are off.
Hey! Why no pictures?
You’re no fun sometimes..
it’s the internets, Dylan. There are plenty of pictures of girls with big knockers who more than likely think I’m a tit, if that’s what you’re after.
Yea, but it’s different when it’s our girl with big knockers who thinks you’re a tit..
That’s true. Any random stranger can think I’m a tit without the slightest effort, but I’m sure you twats all find it much funnier when it’s one of us, eh? Fuckers.
It’s all twats and tits and fuckers with you, isn’t it? Misogynist.
[...] here are the other posts in the series: 1. Fragmentation 2. Over Saturation 3. Hype Overload 4. [...]