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Old 11-25-2021, 05:01 PM   #6
T&T
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Location: montreal
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the market has changed.

IN 1996 the telecommunications act, which is good for a lot of things but loosens the restrictions on who can own how many stations fucked up everything. Clear Channel went on a buying spree, and this turns out to be Armageddon for rock radio. Suddenly one dude in Texas is programming nearly every alternative station in the country (or at least enough to dictate the tone for everyone else). Forget local scenesters bubbling up or weidos like with Ween and Presidents of the USA getting airplay - we got pop punk, rap rock, and boy bands on repeat. Music calcifies in 1999. You can even tell when it happens because Enema of the state topped the charts EVERYWHERE for ever.
And women dissapear from rock radio. completely. Lilith fair rans from 1997-1999 and puts out multiple double CD collections; by 2001 you'd think no woman but Gwen Stefani and Meg White ever touched an instrument. And entire burgeoning folk-rock ecosystem got snuffed out. Instead, we got Britney and Christina and the rest. which is FINE, and I don't hate pop punk either, and nu-metal... but that single TEXAN locus of musical control was NOT ok.

if you were a Gen Xer who went off to college, in a cocoon of college radio of 1996, coming back to mainstream radio in 2000 was like surveying an astroid aftermath.

Rock Music NEVER recovers. not really. sure we had a brief Stroke resurgence in 2001 thanks to the white stripes and the NYC scene, but it's nothing like before.

pleanty of stuff is wrong with the music right now. the incubation system and studio gatekeeping lables used to provide is gone. which is good because production/plubication has been democratized but it's also bad because no one is making any $$ and SOOO many songs just feel 75% finished

and pop and hiphops habits of using the SAME 10 producers for YEARS has glued those genres into stone. Please, i odn't want to hear another hi-hat triplet in my life ever again)

so when we feel like something went terribly wrong with the music industry, when we feel like the ideal era was 1991-94 (or 91-97), something DID go wrong.
as usual, the culprit was deregulation under capitalism
and as usual it's easier to point ant each other and say "you're doing it wrong, get over it" when the proper respons should be "damn, you guys got screwed, here's a hug, I wonder how else we are getting screwed".

 
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