HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

PSA: Folks, if you have not seen them at Madison Square Garden, you should :)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv4wf7bzfFE

I love complaining about 'kids these days' & their music tastes as much as the next guy, but don't lose sight of the fact that we now have more access to amazing music than ever before. You just have to find it. I thought I would share some cool links that help me find music.

NPR Tiny Desk concerts are one of my favourite ways to discover new music. Their audio team is so great the recording often sound better than the studio versions:

Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ferZnZ0_rSM

Snarky Puppy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfzu33BfRHE&t=107s

KEXP has an amazing YouTube channel where they post full performances of an amazingly diverse array of artists. Discovered my currently favourite artist ADHD via them:

ADHD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSHSpy_Iy_g

Public Service Broadcasting:

https://youtu.be/mScesON6Kx4?t=41

Paste Magazine also has some really great sets:

Kate Tempest:

https://youtu.be/gM4aPRiZJbk?t=57

Avishai Cohen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Bulmk2MzY

There is so much going on that doesn't involve Spotify at all, for example funk band Vulfpeck sold out Madison Square Garden without any charting songs, manager or big label, just by having a passionate internet fandom. They recorded it on like a gimballed iphone, It's glorious: https://youtu.be/rv4wf7bzfFE?t=591

Makes sense given that making new music is easier than ever before—the people who do it for the love of music are probably already making good-enough recordings on a shoestring. Just look at Vulfpeck: they've had massive success just doing everything themselves.[0]

What have the labels got to compete with talented artists with a few grand of equipment in their bedroom? A bunch of commercially-minded manufactured acts pumping out me-too crap while countless layers of expensive executives and expensive "experts" polish away anything human from the art? Labels used to be successful because making recordings was expensive. Then it was because they held the keys to distribution and radio. Now it's... what?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv4wf7bzfFE&t=475

⬐ bsder

There's a couple of BIG qualifications on your comments.

1) Vulfpeck slid through the YouTube music window about 2010-2012 that has since closed (that also produced Beiber, Jepsen, Psy with "Gangnam Style" etc.).

2) Vulfpeck were the backing musicians for Darren Criss who was very much a product of the standard system.

3) They are probably the antithesis that making new music is easier. They save a LOT of money because they can get away with doing minimal production because they are SOOO smoking good.

If you have to be at the level of Vulfpeck to make a living making music, then basically nobody is going to be able to do so.

⬐ sjwright

I only mention Vulfpeck because they're at the pinnacle of their genre, not because they're the threshold. There's plenty of opportunity for anyone. Look at akageorge. (If you can—previously known as George Barnett, he seems to have reset his identity and thrown away much of his earlier material.) He's a self-evidently brilliant musician who can write and perform every part of a radio-ready hit. To the extent anyone makes money in music, he could make it if he bothered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK-UcQ6T2Lg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvJCZr8BjUM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkzJPoehZf4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ofkJfXJpNs

⬐ lonelappde

That guy is talented, but those songs aren't radio-ready hits. In large part because the music/recording is nowhere near the major part of what makes a radio ready hit. Radio hits are the result of advertising and marketing, not music creation and production.

⬐ sjwright

Expensive marketing is effective for established acts that already have an existing audience—whether that be international superstars like Coldplay or relative newcomers like London Grammar.

But it's also true that traditional marketing is becoming increasingly less relevant for new acts. New music discovery used to be driven by radio, media and advertising. Those gatekeepers are now being challenged by algorithms and social media—and there's no sign of that trend slowing down yet.

———

To my original point: making music is now an order of magnitude cheaper than it was just a few decades ago. And venues where an act to break out are more accessible than ever. I'm not saying the industry is now or ever will be perfectly egalitarian, but the distance travelled is monumental.