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David Bowie Has Died

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Re: David Bowie Has Died

#81

Post by cageface »

kbart wrote: post #77
cageface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford. There's a ton of interesting music being made outside their domain but most people will never hear any of it.

My music style is far from trendy, but I can't remember the last time I listened (even more so bought something) from the major label. I'd say is much harder to become millionaire rock star now, but for indie bands, that play as a hobby, situation is very favorable as you can contact you audience directly and you don't need to frame yourself into "format" dictated by the labels.

It's an amazing time to be a hobby musician. You can record and produce your own music very cheaply and publish it to the world at the touch of a button. The problem is what happens next, which in most cases is nothing, unless you've got somebody spending money marketing your music or you're willing to work very very very hard to promote it yourself.

The difference between now and the 60s through early 90s was that labels were willing to put their weight behind more oddball artists like Bowie. He wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving the same fame if he were starting now. We're in a weird time where mainstream music is the most timid and cynically commercial it's ever been but the fringes are exceptionally vital.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#82

Post by agumonkey »

eropple wrote: post #73
agumonkey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the situation reversed ? were men without hats big ? the good music today is in the shadow while the mainstream pours industrialized music overwhelmingly. I don't understand how Kanye West is anything but an arrogant dude, but I'm biased against Hip Hop nowadays. Radiohead is very much a 90s in my eyes.

Well, it's fortunate that Kanye West isn't a "hip-hop" musician, he is a musician , and pulls in influences by the wheelbarrowful. Even were that an adequate definition--congratulations: you know your biases. Now overcome them, because if you can't draw a barely kinked line between David Bowie and 808s and Heartbreak , that is on you. But I don't think that's the problem here, is it? :) He's "arrogant"--and my, but y…

  > > I'm biased against Hip Hop nowadays Congratulations: you know your
  > biases. Overcome them. Because if you can't draw a straight line
  > between David Bowie and 808s and Heartbreak, that is on you.  But he's
  > "arrogant" (my, but the coded language, isn't that interesting!), so
  > that doesn't matter I guess. Bowie was just a shrinking violet, right?
I don't get what you mean about drawing a straight line ? you mean judging fair ? I admit it's difficult to understand why I would say "Let's dance" is good iconic music while West is tasteless Pfip Pop. And Let's dance isn't Bowie most beautiful music. I just discovered Space Oddity .. well.

I just heard '808s' and I quit before half. I never heard anything from West that was worth being arrogant that what I meant. Most of what I heard from him was just mundane flat post 2000s hip hop that I can't bear anymore. It's far from my definition of music, flat, processed, easy. It's barely even music to my ears. People should dig in Jazzy Jeff, Dilla, D'angelo then reflect on todays mainstream.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#83

Post by apatters »

eropple wrote: post #54
agumonkey wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As easy that joke was, I'm very often wondering about generations these days. I often feel this generation is really cheap. Now, surely most people feel this way about how the new one isn't worth their own, but really there were such iconic periods from the 50s to the 90s (in a westerner point of view) .. and this makes his leaving (among other peers who shaped the 70s) as powerful as hurting.

The "50s to the 90s"--which is so laughably general, that's four generations of music, if not more--had The Beatles and David Bowie and it also had The Monkees and Men Without Hats. We have the artists who it's funny to make fun of, like Bieber, and we have Jack White, we have Kanye West, we have Radiohead--and we had David Bowie, he's a modern artist today , have you listened to Blackstar, which openly tips its cap…

For every one of those decades I could name several rock bands who were commercially successful and whose music also represented a major, youth-oriented cultural movement which challenged the status quo. I am hard pressed to name a single band like that which started recording in the 21st century. Interpret it as you will but I think he has a point that the stuff that gets into the top 40, certainly within the rock genre, is not as politically or culturally relevant as it used to be. If that kind of music is still out there, people aren't buying it anymore.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#85

Post by gbog »

Do we all have to share this culture of mourning and condoleances? I have listened to some music made by David Bowie, but I kind of feel not that much about his death. Am I heartless? Or just honest? I mean, listening to some guy's music do not make it a close relative, is it? (If so, then well we all have too many "close relatives" for this mean anything anymore). Or should I just shut up and let the people weep until we go to some other topic?

Also, I fail to see what this is doing on HN, sorry.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#86

Post by firstworldman »

"The future is not only going to be about hard-edged people with metal faces. There will be broken hearts in the future."

That's a Bowie quote I think of with unusual regularity. It appeared 16 years ago in Spin Magazine. He was asked why his then newest album wasn't as contemporary sounding as his previous album, Earthling.

It's advice that may be applicable to the projects worked on by many here as well.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#87

Post by brandnewlow »

cageface wrote: post #56
bootload wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford." That's what record companies would like you to think. Counter-example, Milk Records, Melbourne. It's might be a record company but it looks so much like a startup. - http://messandnoise.com/features/4666617 - http://diymag.com/2015/03/23/courtney-barnett-its-like-tur…

I've been traveling all over the world and all I hear everywhere I go is crap American top 40 pop music. Like I said there's a ton of interesting stuff going on outside their purview but they control the conversation right now.

That's unfortunately what most people want to hear.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#88

Post by eulo_ »

cageface wrote: post #56
bootload wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford." That's what record companies would like you to think. Counter-example, Milk Records, Melbourne. It's might be a record company but it looks so much like a startup. - http://messandnoise.com/features/4666617 - http://diymag.com/2015/03/23/courtney-barnett-its-like-tur…

I've been traveling all over the world and all I hear everywhere I go is crap American top 40 pop music. Like I said there's a ton of interesting stuff going on outside their purview but they control the conversation right now.

I've been traveling all over the world, and all I hear is techno

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#89

Post by pbhjpbhj »

eropple wrote: post #31

This sucks. Not because I listened to a lot of Bowie. I mean, I did, but only relatively recently. But because of how insanely influential his stuff is on almost everything we listen to. The ripples of his work are close to incalculable. You don't have to have listened to a minute of David Bowie to go "oh, shit" right now and mean it wholly. > When in doubt, listen to David Bowie. In 1968, Bowie was a gay, ginger, bo…

I don't really care beyond it being a point of fact but I thought Bowie was famously bisexual and that he had marketed himself at various points as homosexual.

In 1968 Bowie was 2 years off getting married and 3 years from having a son by his wife.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#90

Post by dluan »

rplnt wrote: post #48
cageface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford. There's a ton of interesting music being made outside their domain but most people will never hear any of it.

One would think services like Spotify would help, but they only make the music more accessible, they don't help you find it. I don't have pro and only ads I hear (besides the spotify ones that are trying to annoy you into paying) are ones from Universal Music.

Really? What about the anti-Spotify's like HypeMachine? Fiercely independent, trendspotting/trendsetting, and sustainable. It's a very valuable service to lots of folks.

IMO Spotify/Rdio/Pandora could only ever hope to go the advertising route over subscription because they couldn't crack the much harder distribution problem (e.g. the HypeM's, SoundCloud's, Drip's, etc).

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