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Post by mossy on Nov 11, 2011 12:40:04 GMT -5
Not a Noel or Liam article, but they get a mention and it's an interesting (if slightly depressing) read...
There are more young songwriters in the UK than ever before, so why are all the biggest live acts over 40?
It's called the YouTube boom. The number of registered songwriters in Britain has topped 83,000. That's a 62% increase in just five years.
They are performers like Birdy, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who was introduced to a song by her aunt, recorded her own version, posted it online and then found that six million people had watched it.
She now has a two album deal with Atlantic - home to stars like Bruno Mars, James Blunt and Flo Rida - but it's a tough market for new artists.
The Foo Fighters can sell out Wembley - but where is the next generation of stadium acts?
Britain's Performing Rights Society (PRS), which collects royalties on behalf of songwriters and musicians, says there is a crisis brewing.
The number of young performers breaking through in terms of album sales is down by 30% compared to 2009, it says.
The industry is increasingly relying on aging heritage acts and failing to turn this huge resource of young songwriters into stars who will actually make money in the long run.
PRS chief economist Will Page says: "You've had an explosive growth in live music to the point where it's outselling recorded (music) for the first time in modern history.
Birdy talks about her album and the runaway success of her YouTube videos
"I think it's right to point out the imbalance of heritage bands dominating that music sector and ask the question who's going to be selling out the stadiums and festivals in 2025?"
That is exactly what Birdy would like to be doing.
"I hope to be getting my own music out there and travelling round the world playing huge concerts, because that's what I love - performing," she tells the BBC.
But the chances are getting smaller every year, says Elliot Kennedy - a music producer, songwriter, and this year's X Factor talent director.
"It's incredibly shortlived," he says. "Many artists aren't surviving more than 12 months".
Unsustainable
"It was Bryan Adams who told me he didn't have a hit until his third album.
"Think about that. That's a huge investment. Nowadays, if you don't have a hit with your first single you're dropped. It's over."
The problem, he says, is that there are thousands of young people who can sing but "an artist is someone who has transcended from being able to sing into being a 'singer'.
"It takes a long time to graduate to that status, to know what you're doing, to relate to people, to be sustainable."
Bon Jovi were the top-earning live act of 2010, taking $201m (£130m) worldwide
There are, of course, exceptions to the trend of high turnover pop acts. Brit award winners Elbow did not achieve success until their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid, for example.
But the market is increasingly cut-throat, and bands are being allowed to fade out when they should be at their commercial peak.
The situation is highlighted in a study by Deloitte of the biggest selling live acts in America over the last 10 years. Forty per cent of the bands had a lead singer who was 60 or over. Only one act in the top 50 was in her 20s, and that was Britney Spears. A stunning 94% of the top 20 was aged over 40.
The problem, according to PRS economist Will Page, is the collapse of the record market. Established bands can easily make money from touring but new acts used to rely on income from albums and CDs to fund a tour and build up their fanbase.
"What you're seeing now is fewer labels are willing to give tour support because fewer fans are willing to buy the CD. Hence it's tougher for bands to get on the road and develop a fanbase and become the heritage acts of the future."
That decline in album sales for new acts is marked.
In the five years to 2009, about 25 homegrown acts in Britain managed to break the 100,000 sales barrier every year. Last year it was down to 17.
This year the total has reached 16 and, of those, two of those are new bands led by Oasis's Gallagher brothers. Not exactly new, youthful, emerging talent.
In a presentation to Britain's top music venues, PRS said 2010 had already seen a 7% drop in live revenues, with a shortage of big names touring.
The Society says this will only get worse in years to come as the "classic rock" generation head into old age.
Rock music's biggest earners are approaching their twilight years. "Who," asks Will Page, "is investing in the heritage acts of tomorrow?"
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Post by Jessica on Nov 11, 2011 14:28:32 GMT -5
Yeah, like we want more Westlife/X Factor/Glee acts like Birdy. She sings covers. She will be one of the acts that aren't around in the next year.
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Post by youandmegirl on Nov 11, 2011 16:31:41 GMT -5
Who gives a shit--- all I know is Lana del Motherfuckin' Rey is gonna take the contemporary pop musical world by storm.
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Post by Silence Dogood on Nov 11, 2011 17:14:47 GMT -5
there's only a handful of bands that can sell out stadiums and that are even able to do stadium tours.
Oasis used to be one of those select few. the RHCP, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Green Day and of course U2. Who else does stadium tours?
let's not pretend like it's a common thing.
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Post by Shockmaster on Nov 11, 2011 19:17:23 GMT -5
I blame Radio 1, in a big part.... They massively neglegt the rock sounds.... I mean, the one "rock" DJ they have is Zane Lowe.... he gets a bit in the evening.... But it's the casual listener that needs to be given a hand.... They need to dump that Moyles twat in the morning for somebody who is going to play a fair balance of music so that everyone, that includes me, whoever reads this, my mum, my nan, my neighbour, some twat living in the flats across the street, can listen to a balanced variety of music and they can be stopped in their tracks again by a song liek DLBIA.... Not go "Oh, I hear that a lot, somebody please whack that on my iPod".... because us lot are going to go "We don't care, let's have HFB, Beady Eye, Arctics, Kasabian, Miles Kane, etc".... It's just Average Joe that needs speaking to.... And Radio One is responsible in a large part for those lot
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Post by BlueJay on Nov 11, 2011 22:07:16 GMT -5
People can complain about an ailing musical industry and landscape all they want, but the truth is most new acts are not very successful because their creative output is weak. The most successful bands these days (Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Chili Peppers, U2, Radiohead, Green Day) all hit their peak over 10 years ago.
As Dave Grohl pointed out recently, a really good artist who hits the right notes creatively and commercially will always be successful like their predecessors before them. Of course, the best example today is Adele. Truth is the quality of music now in comparison to 10-15 years ago is shocking, and even when there are really good bands they are very inconsistent. It seems to be around 80% of acts that emerged in the last decade (within the UK anyway) hit their commercial and creative peak with their first album and have been on a downward spiral with their next few releases, something that sometimes involves in the group imploding altogher.
The Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, The Kooks, The Strokes, Jet, Wolfmother, The White Stripes, TV On the Radio, Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, The Killers and The Libertines are just a few of a select group of bands that have come out with a bang, but have failed to show any ability to either a) expand commercially or b) reinvent themselves creatively. There's plenty of others, but I can't be bothered naming them all.
The few that have progressed are Arcade Fire (this may be debatable), Coldplay, Green Day (to an extent), The National, LCD Soundsystem, Kings of Leon (only commercial progress of course), Kanye West, Foo Fighters (commercial resurgence), Muse (once again commercially, not creatively), U2 (Recovered from a late 90s decline), Gorillaz and even Kasabian. It's no surpise that all of these acts here are among the most successful in the world today.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2011 2:12:55 GMT -5
People can complain about an ailing musical industry and landscape all they want, but the truth is most new acts are not very successful because their creative output is weak. The most successful bands these days (Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Chili Peppers, U2, Radiohead, Green Day) all hit their peak over 10 years ago. As Dave Grohl pointed out recently, a really good artist who hits the right notes creatively and commercially will always be successful like their predecessors before them. Of course, the best example today is Adele. Truth is the quality of music now in comparison to 10-15 years ago is shocking, and even when there are really good bands they are very inconsistent. It seems to be around 80% of acts that emerged in the last decade (within the UK anyway) hit their commercial and creative peak with their first album and have been on a downward spiral with their next few releases, something that sometimes involves in the group imploding altogher. The Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, The Kooks, The Strokes, Jet, Wolfmother, The White Stripes, TV On the Radio, Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, The Killers and The Libertines are just a few of a select group of bands that have come out with a bang, but have failed to show any ability to either a) expand commercially or b) reinvent themselves creatively. There's plenty of others, but I can't be bothered naming them all. The few that have progressed are Arcade Fire (this may be debatable), Coldplay, Green Day (to an extent), The National, LCD Soundsystem, Kings of Leon (only commercial progress of course), Kanye West, Foo Fighters (commercial resurgence), Muse (once again commercially, not creatively), U2 (Recovered from a late 90s decline), Gorillaz and even Kasabian. It's no surpise that all of these acts here are among the most successful in the world today. Have plenty to say about this post, but I want to focus on one point. You don't The White Stripes expanded commercially? Elephant sold 7 million copies. They didn't reinvent themselves creatively? Have you heard get Behind Me Satan or Icky Thump? I'll tell you what, I never thought I'd fucking hear a mandolin, bagpipe, or a mariachi inspired song by a band that was pegged as "garage rock". It's debatable whether or not they could of pushed their sound even more forward, but they were pretty much the ultimate rock act of the past decade. I'll get a lot of shit for that, but I fucking stand by it. They had the commercial success and they were fucking amazing both album-wise and live. And how can you say Arcade Fire is debatable when you mention LCD Soundsystem and The National? If anything, Arcade Fire are another band that are defined by both commercial success and creative work. Who'll be headlining festivals twenty years from now? I can guarantee they fucking will. The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys already headline festivals. They wont be doing stadium tours any time soon, but I don't see how they haven't expanded commercially (Reptilia and Juicebox are The Strokes' biggest singles) or creatively. I don't know how you can list bands like Vampire Weekend or Fleet Foxes as failures when they're only two albums in. I get what you're saying, but branding bands as failures because they haven't creatively and/or commercially reached some arbitrary level after two albums speaks to the real downside of the internet and it's affects on the way people perceive music. Stating that the quality of now is shocking compared to 10-15 years ago is purely subjective. Mainstream music, sure, but the industry has changed dramatically over that time period. To damn all of the great bands you don't know about is sad. Dave Grohl is lucky that the Foo Fighters got a kick start thanks to his drumming in Nirvana. A lot of quality bands out there don't have the means to make it in a big way, whether or not they have the right tunes is a completely different matter. Greed has fucked everything up, so if festivals and stadiums are running out of fresh headliners, it's because of corporate greed and their poor attitude towards helping new bands out. |
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Post by BlueJay on Nov 12, 2011 2:54:36 GMT -5
Have plenty to say about this post, but I want to focus on one point. You don't The White Stripes expanded commercially? Elephant sold 7 million copies. They didn't reinvent themselves creatively? Have you heard get Behind Me Satan or Icky Thump? I'll tell you what, I never thought I'd fucking hear a mandolin, bagpipe, or a mariachi inspired song by a band that was pegged as "garage rock". It's debatable whether or not they could of pushed their sound even more forward, but they were pretty much the ultimate rock act of the past decade. I'll get a lot of shit for that, but I fucking stand by it. They had the commercial success and they were fucking amazing both album-wise and live. And how can you say Arcade Fire is debatable when you mention LCD Soundsystem and The National? If anything, Arcade Fire are another band that are defined by both commercial success and creative work. Who'll be headlining festivals twenty years from now? I can guarantee they fucking will. The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys already headline festivals. They wont be doing stadium tours any time soon, but I don't see how they haven't expanded commercially (Reptilia and Juicebox are The Strokes' biggest singles) or creatively. I don't know how you can list bands like Vampire Weekend or Fleet Foxes as failures when they're only two albums in. I get what you're saying, but branding bands as failures because they haven't creatively and/or commercially reached some arbitrary level after two albums speaks to the real downside of the internet and it's affects on the way people perceive music. Stating that the quality of now is shocking compared to 10-15 years ago is purely subjective. Mainstream music, sure, but the industry has changed dramatically over that time period. To damn all of the great bands you don't know about is sad. Dave Grohl is lucky that the Foo Fighters got a kick start thanks to his drumming in Nirvana. A lot of quality bands out there don't have the means to make it in a big way, whether or not they have the right tunes is a completely different matter. Greed has fucked everything up, so if festivals and stadiums are running out of fresh headliners, it's because of corporate greed and their poor attitude towards helping new bands out. Arcade Fire have maintained an impressive balance of commercial viability with creative aptitude with The Suburbs, I only labelled them as debatable because many fans, die-hards and casuals alike, still believe Funeral is their high point. This would indicate that the general consenses is that they haven't progressed beyond this on a creative level, commercially they probably have. In regards to The White Stripes, I should have pointed out that seeing as they released 2-3 three albums before they became a household name, I was more referring to the groundswell of hype that surrounded them at the start of this century than any single album alone. I'm not bananas on the White Stripes, they may have progressed creatively, but the fact is the cloud of hype that hung over them for three-four years kind of forms into a single idenitifable entity, their albums become irrlevant under this. They haven't progressed beyond this hype, that's what I'm saying. I am very much entitled to label Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes as having declining significance two albums in (I never labeled them as failures, being on the decline isn't necessarily synonomous with failure, Oasis were on the decline for 14 years, but still generated enormous amounts of money). In the past, labels backed artists with a lot more peserverance - Blur didn't really find success until their third album - but in this internet era, as demonstrated by Glasvegas being dropped by Columbia records, labels and the public at large are much more impatient. Tom Waits would not survive as the mysterious enigma he is if he started out now, he would simply be another musician who is struggling in this temptuous climate. In regards to my summation of the musical climate, yes I was referring to mainstream, alternative markets and cult audiences are too hard to follow or categorize, something which is one of the blessings of the internet. Bands will have the means and the industry machinery behind them to be successful if they have the songs and the commercial appeal in the first place. It is harder than it was in the past, I'll grant you that, but it is still fully achievable. Bands have to make their own way to success, and make the musical landscape best work for them. This is not an absurd concept, it is what anyone in any competitive business has to do to find success. |
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Post by Bittersweet Split on Nov 12, 2011 3:06:13 GMT -5
Sorry mate, I'm gonna have to disagree with you on the Arctic Monkeys one.
If you had only heard WPSIATWIN and then FWN it would be fair to say that they hadn't expanded themselves or changed creatively.
But since then, they really have.
Their first album was so huge that if their second one topped it by enough, it would probably be a modern Morning Glory. It didn't, and didn't do much for the band (a few singles, from 505 to Brianstorm) - and in that sense, you agree.
After though, they changed their sound, and made strong albums (not saying FWN isn't strong though).
--The Kooks I agree with a million times though.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2011 3:12:42 GMT -5
Debating between The Suburbs and Funeral is like arguing whether Definitely Maybe or Morning Glory is better; both are considered high points by plenty of their fans. But, I can say this for sure, that songs from The Suburbs get a much better reception in my experience after seeing them over the past year.
How have The White Stripes not gotten past their hype? Elephant was a massive album and Seven Nation Army is one of the most identifiable tunes of the past decade. It was a massive album and by no means irrelevant. Labeling the rest of their albums as irrelevant is ridiculous. All of their albums since have sold an excess of 500,000 albums, with their last two probably toping a million by this point, and all of their albums have garned huge amounts of critical acclaim. For a band that was originally considered to be in the shadow of The Strokes (I wish I had my issue of Q from 2002-ish for the exact quote), they reached huge levels of success. I don't see how they haven't lived up to the hype; they surpassed it, proved they weren't a one trick pony, and broke up too early.
And why can you label both of those young bands as failures? Both of their second albums have been graded nearly the same scores as their first, they've moved on to bigger venues over the touring cycles for their second albums, and both of their second albums have charted higher than their first. This is one of the, few, downsides of the internet in regards to music. Bands aren't given any room to grow before they are labeled as successes or failures.
Yes, it is fully achievable, but I think you underestimate how much harder it is. Like you mentioned, labels are much more impatient. Success isn't guaranteed by signing to a major label, even if they see the commercial and/or creative potential in your music. Not every great band will find commercial success, even in the past this has proven to be in true. In fact, I'm sure the majority of the great bands out there wont find commercial success simply because they aren't given the chance. Bands can't mold the machine to fit their specific means, it's as much luck as it is anything else.
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Post by masterplan2011 on Nov 12, 2011 7:55:56 GMT -5
People can complain about an ailing musical industry and landscape all they want, but the truth is most new acts are not very successful because their creative output is weak. The most successful bands these days (Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Chili Peppers, U2, Radiohead, Green Day) all hit their peak over 10 years ago. As Dave Grohl pointed out recently, a really good artist who hits the right notes creatively and commercially will always be successful like their predecessors before them. Of course, the best example today is Adele. Truth is the quality of music now in comparison to 10-15 years ago is shocking, and even when there are really good bands they are very inconsistent. It seems to be around 80% of acts that emerged in the last decade (within the UK anyway) hit their commercial and creative peak with their first album and have been on a downward spiral with their next few releases, something that sometimes involves in the group imploding altogher. The Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, The Kooks, The Strokes, Jet, Wolfmother, The White Stripes, TV On the Radio, Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, The Killers and The Libertines are just a few of a select group of bands that have come out with a bang, but have failed to show any ability to either a) expand commercially or b) reinvent themselves creatively. There's plenty of others, but I can't be bothered naming them all. The few that have progressed are Arcade Fire (this may be debatable), Coldplay, Green Day (to an extent), The National, LCD Soundsystem, Kings of Leon (only commercial progress of course), Kanye West, Foo Fighters (commercial resurgence), Muse (once again commercially, not creatively), U2 (Recovered from a late 90s decline), Gorillaz and even Kasabian. It's no surpise that all of these acts here are among the most successful in the world today. Fair play for putting so much thought into a post and you probably knew that categorising all those bands would lead to much debate. Firstly I don't think you can include the Libertines in that list. They made two great albums and then split up. If anything as shown by Reading and Leeds Festival last year they have a bigger following now than they did after the release of Up the Bracket. The Arctic Monkeys is a interesting one. They're third and fourth album have probably lost them some commercial success but they have definitely expanded creatively. Alex Turner is a genius imo. Whilst their latest albums have lost them the a lot of their casual fans, they have also made many people realise just how musically talented they are. I love NGHFB but for me Suck it and See is the best album I've heard all year. |
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Post by johnnyb on Nov 12, 2011 8:28:15 GMT -5
Of course i agree with Tom Wells on Radio 1, they have got alot to do with this, the fuckers...
And i'm starting to find youandmegirl rather entertaining
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Post by Jessica on Nov 12, 2011 14:15:36 GMT -5
I wouldn't blame R1. They can play all the music they want in the daytime, but it doesn't mean that it'll chart well. That latest Beyonce track is a good example. It is doing so bad to the point that she's already pushing out another single. Actually, for them playing everything from that album, it has been doing very, very poorly compared to the last one. Same thing happened to the last Madonna single.
They champion loads of records, sometimes they chart, sometimes they don't.
But then again... How many of you actually listen to Radio 1 still? If you don't like what you're hearing, you can write to the BBC Trust about it.
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Nov 4, 2024 5:04:30 GMT -5
Nov 4, 2024 5:04:30 GMT -5