...To be sure, today’s 20-something file-sharer may someday pay $200 to watch Vampire Weekend rock the Astrodome. Or maybe not; the Internet tends to fragment audiences. Generation X, of which I am a member, was probably the last to grow up with the Top 40 and only a few TV stations—and the kind of common taste that this structure instilled. The bounty of the World Wide Web encourages niche interests....But the broader music industry, like other entertainment fields, has always worked on a tournament model: a lot of starving artists hoping to be among the few who make it big....
Time was, the music industry was made up of a lot of regionally located companies (Motown and Fortune in Detroit, Chess in Chicago, Sun and Stax in Memphis, King-Federal in Cincinnati, Starday and Duke-Peacock in Houston, Imperial in New Orleans...) in addition to Decca, Columbia, Capitol, and later big boys like Atlantic.
These got gobbled up (Stax by Atlantic, Duke-Peacock by ABC, and so on). Now it is Warner Bros., Sony, and a few other major monopolies.
SubPop was the last fluke rock and roll label to get on radio coast to coast. And SubPop's acts of the last 15 years haven't gotten the same radio or tv exposure despite them being "something different" than the majors offer as well as something other than "Nirvana-PearlJam-Soundgarden" retreads.
Time was that a band gigged around awhile, put out a single and got picked up for regional and national distribution. Now they are all manufactured. If you ARE a viable band for 5 years, the majors don't WANT you unless they can completely own your back catalog (as happened with Sympathy For The Record Industry's White Stripes releases, all released on a handshake).
Plenty of talent there. The labels won't touch it. The public doesn't want the crap they push same as home viewers don't want the same crap Big Media is pushing as "news" on tv or in newspapers or magazines.
Big Media's circle jerk has petered out. The public has gone elsewhere. Call it "niche markets". It is UNTAPPED markets. Same with the tea party frustration over the political establishment evermore pushing this country into socialism and open borders in spite of public protest against it from voting members of BOTH political parties.
Good assessment.
I never aspired to be a recording artist...I just like playing. The last two bands I was in had websites where you could listen to mp3’s of our songs and short clips of performances. We earned our keep by performing not selling records.
I guess my ambitions are out of step with Corporate America...
After subpop, NOTHING.
Nobody new who has anything resembling original talent. Nobody.