Poll: Who is responsible for all the crap on the radio? (NOTE - multiple answers ok)

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Poll: Who is responsible for all the crap on the radio?

  • kid consumers with no taste

    Votes: 77 48.4%
  • adult consumers with no taste

    Votes: 46 28.9%
  • adult consumers with no taste, nostalgic for when they were kids with no taste

    Votes: 32 20.1%
  • sophisticated adult consumers who turn their fickle backs on quality artists once the riffraff disco

    Votes: 22 13.8%
  • evil record company execs

    Votes: 65 40.9%
  • evil record company A&R guys with no taste

    Votes: 53 33.3%
  • evil record company A&R whores

    Votes: 49 30.8%
  • evil radio program directors with no taste

    Votes: 47 29.6%
  • evil radio program director whores

    Votes: 46 28.9%
  • clueless deejay whores

    Votes: 39 24.5%
  • musician whores

    Votes: 33 20.8%
  • All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God

    Votes: 69 43.4%

  • Total voters
    159
Haha...I didn't say she could dance, or sing, or even lip sync convincingly. I just meant that her fans probably think she's the most talented artist in the world...
 
What you are missing here is that the label decides who is going to be a star and who is not. They have the money, they bank roll it, they PR it. They lobby the radio stations to play it. They PAY Mtv to rotate it (yes, it cost money to have a video played everytime it's played...it adds up to alot in heavy rotation) It doesn't get in the top 10 by not being heard alot.
 
Ah well, nothing we can really do about that, unless we ourselves take over the labels. I'd say it's kind of a chicken vs. egg question (what makes execs decide which music to promote?), but in the end we lose either way because we're not part of the audience of "mainstream" music.

I've never really given a rat's ass about what's mainstream and what's not...as long as I can buy CD's by actual artists that I like (even though prices are waaay overinflated now — subject for another post), I don't really care what other people listen to. I'll try to introduce music I like to friends and other people whom I think might enjoy or benefit from discovering new, interesting, artistic music, but for the average teeny bopper I'm more than happy to let her listen to whatever the hell she wants.

The current state of affairs is only a problem because it makes it nigh impossible for artistically ambitious musicians with a real vision to realize that vision, but the "starving artist" scenario has been a sad reality throughout history, in every discipline. *Sigh*

-Derrick
 
I think where we're going with this centres on 'control'. Artists like Britany and the boy band stuff are CREATED for a market based on certain criteria of age, looks, ability to dance ability to sing in a certain style. Everything about them is created by an army of professionals and you end up with a bland but perfect product.

Now of course artists in the past were shaped and groomed and produced, that has always gone on, but the difference was FIRST there was the artist THEN there was the process. Nowadays its like a company thinks up an image for a product they are going to produce and then goes out and auditions some cute looking people who can dance and sing and look pretty and then moulds them to fit the the product design.

To use a food analogy the boy band is like your perfect supermarket apple, faultless, no marks or blemishes, lovely colour, nice and shiny, comes in lots of plastic disposable packaging, but then when you bite into it...there's nothing there. Now the artists most of us would like to see being promoted are like an organic apple - imperfect, has its faults, maybe not the best looking, but bite into it and you know you're getting the real apple experience!

In the past an artist would start out playing places, growing, developing building up a fan base, getting GOOD at what they did, and then they would get picked up polished up and promoted by big business, nowadays the 'vision' of the product comes first and some hired hands are brought in like actors in a movie to make the 'band' a reality. Things are the wrong way round!

Oh, before anyone mentionms it first, yes I do know the Monkees were a made up band in the '60s - but they were very much the exception, now its becoming the rule!
 
Funny, there was a thread about "who made you start playing" or something like that...
I forgot to list the Monkees. LOVED that show (band?) when I was just a tot. They f**ked up when they started to see themselves as a band and refused to do what they were told. It's funny to see how it all fell apart without the "master mind" behind them. Sugar Sugar was writen for the Monkees...they refused to do it....it was a #1 hit. The Monkees never had a hit after that.
 
King Elvis said:
I dont know who is guilty but I do know one thing. I dont hear anything on the radio today that I will be listening to 2,5,10 years down the line. Todays music is so disposible it makes me SICK!!! I hate boy bands, suck ass girl dancer-singers, rap, rap-rock, rap-metal, CREED....you name it. It is all bullshit, that is why I like to hear the postings on this website because it is still real music made by real people. Where is the hope for today?? Where are the musical heros that will be looked up to for generations to come??? We have no Elvis, no Beatles, no Zep, no Boston, no Skynard, no Sabbath...nothing!!! Even Kiss decided to give it up again. And, I hate when young people act like Aerosmith is THEIR band. They dont know SHIT...Aerosmith??? They stopped being Aerosmith once Tyler and Perry went to rehab!!! Metallica was the last thing that we had, and I dont know what happened there. If Axl and Slash could patch it up there might be some hope, but Slash wants to play with Wacko Jacko and Axl just sux so...I dont need this kinda pressure in my life, who started this fuckin' thread??? I about to bust a vein thinking about this!!!

Toker41 said:
12

Radio has sucked for so long now. Surely the god of rock weeps.

College radio guys! You are missing so much good music. Death Cab For Cutie, The Arcade Fire, Metric, Postal Service, damn that list just gives me a bone!

Oh, and I voted for all of the above.
 
Let's take all the emotion out of this post for a moment and look at it from a factual, logical point of view:

Fact: The music on the radio seems to have fallen in quality to a droning mess of noise that makes my rectum want to vomit.

Fact: The public at large is in fact living in a semi programmed state: Most music that makes the radio has a "catchy hook" or beat that will bounce around in your head for hours after it's gone - weather you like it or not.

Fact: Advertising agencies have been using NLP (Nero-linguistic programming) to help boost sales for YEARS now - not paranoia - - truth. There's even courses on NLP offered in many colleges/universities as part of their psychology courses.

Fact: The Billboard top 100 is based on the most PLAYED songs NOT the most REQUESTED.

Fact: If you have $1,000,000 to throw around (And most record companies do) and a product that meets the FCC standards and the radio stations' criteria (which is a WIDE field if you have the $$ to spend) then you simply launch an AD campaign for your band - pay the station to play your song X times per hour for the next 8 weeks. -- Record companies DO this - you can buy airtime for music just the same way companies buy air time for comercials. (Works the same way on TV - don't believe that? then explain infomercials to me!)

Fact: Crying about it is a futile excercise, put this energy into your music then either try to sell out to the industy, or try to make yourself known as an indie artist.

Fact: The WAS another shooter on the grassy gnoll.

Fact: Ask any accomplished artist WHY they tour and they'll say: That's HOW they boost sales and make the money. If you think you can make a CD and sit back while it sells itself you're WRONG. You HAVE to tour and do live gigs to get sales.

Fact: My left ear is .275 inches lower than my right - which is why my glasses always look crooked - I HATE THAT!

Fact: Video did indeed kill the radio star... but it did NOT kill the live musician. Go to any local venue and LOOK at the people playing - many of them are quite ugly - but they're PLAYING... and getting paid for it!

Fact: If you're so ugly that small children and women run screaming into the night at the sight of you, then charge extra and travel with the circus. "And now ladies and gentlemen: Rupert the singing monkey-boy!"

Fact: My facial hair is turning grey as we speak... I HATE THAT TOO!

Fact: Spam, although annoying, is 98.7% fat free.

Fact: My rectum STILL wants to vomit...

I hope this clears things up for everyone...

- Tanlith -

DISCLAIMER: This post was not meant to flame; insult or spam anyone here. the very fact that people

are comming to this site to share and learn indicates a certain level of intelectual prowess. If anyone has taken offence I

sincerely don't care. May contain sodium phosphate; void where prohibited by law. Side effects may include dizziness;

vomiting; dihareah; constipation and the urge to hump the nearest cooking appliance. Do not take with alcohol or any other

prescribed depressant. You must be 18yrs or older to participate. Let there be light! Let there be cable TV so my children

will have something to watch while the worship me! Let there be HBO, Show Time, and Comedy Central so that those with no real

talent will have a place to express themselves! Let there be The Hansens, Spice Girls and The Back Street Boys; because every

generation needs their Partige Family! Let there be Spam! Let my children taste this foul Spam and resolve never to touch it

again! Let there be Satan so that people won't blame everything on me! Let there be lawyers so people don't blame everything

on Satan! Let there be higher education and learning centers so that my children can spend most of their life learning and

not doing! Let there be three classes of people: The rich who will resolve to continually divide up the worlds riches among

themselves; the middle class who will do all of the work and recieve none of the pleasures the rich have; and the homless to

scare the middle class into continuing with their jobs! Thou shalt not pork thy neighbor's wife (the daughter is OK though)!

Thou shalt not kill (unless it is in my name and is reasoned by ignorance and biggotry)! Thou shalt not take my name in vien

(unless you hit your thumb with a hammer)! Thou shalt be excellent to one another!
 
I voted adult consumers with no taste because they have the $$$$. Kids these days are too busy with their faces buried in their cell phones to give a shit.
 
in the 90's they played Nirvana, Pearl Jam, AIC and Soundgarden on the radio... a lot. Here are some examples of more good stuff I've found only because I had a radio playing at some point (1995 to present): The Verve, Chemical Brothers, Spacehog, Black Crowes (last two albums), Live, 311, Queens of the Stone Age, and Drivin' and Cryin'. How much would I know about Ted Nugent's songs without radio? Nothing. Radio is how I heard Electric Light Orchestra, Edgar Winter... it's how Rush became one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and there wouldn't be no Blondie in my heap of CD's either without radio. Two more mentionable and undeniably talented entities you can find frequently in mass media: Outkast's 2003 stuff and Rob Thomas's brand new 2005 stuff.

If you honestly look at those of us who seek something besides pretty fluff music, you'll see that we are too damn nit picky for mass media to be worried about pandering to us. Think about how every time you hear something new, you analytically rip it to shreds (and often your critique isn't really all that justified in its details). So, if radio ever did say "to hell with them", I'd understand why.

I don't know how many times a truly great new heavy metal song wound up in accelerated rotation on a video music channel, only to be followed up by millions of metalheads-up-their-butts clogging request lines and Internet forums with "that band sucks!" See, the metalheads dug their own grave in that regard. They refused to give props to any new stuff or at least pick their battles (kept their mouths shut when no one's listening anyway), nit picked every last new band to hell & back, so radio said screw ya'll. And here we are with Iron Maiden still putting out great albums, and they are "too old" for those idiots to accept anything from Iron Maiden as being "new". So, metalheads have even written off the old/new as being something that sucks for unfounded reasons. Metalheads are just one example of how they alienated the masses, so the masses alienated them right back.
 
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I guess the "crap on the radio" comment is subjective. Obviously, the kids with spending money don't think it's crap or they wouldn't buy or listen to it. I doubt that the music I like will ever return to popularity because, like many in my generation, I stopped buying CDs except for Greatest Hits and listen mostly to oldie stations and talk radio. Money drives the radio; but something else has caused the biggest change.

It used to be that talented artists and independent radio disc jockeys had a lot of influence on what got played on the radio. The system wasn't perfect; but, if the song was good enough, chances were that it got played, then requested by independently-thinking listeners, and possibly became a hit. Now it seems that radio music is the bastardized result of an unholy alliance between producers and programmers. The artist and the listener play a lesser part. The independent DJ is gone. And the result is, for those of us who remember the "good old days", today's music has lost its soul. In fact, most of today's R&B sounds like soul music with all the soul sucked out of it.

Good and inexpensive recording gear gives far more artists the opportunity to get recorded. The internet side-steps all the music industry gate keepers and permits anyone to sell their music. All we need now is a international radio system of totally independent disc jockeys; with that in place, new music on the radio might someday be worth listening to. I'd be willing to bet that right now there are hundreds of independent artists as talented as or more talented than our radio heros from the past.
 
ashulman said:
My feeling is that there are a lot of fine songs floating around (even in teeny pop) and there are even a fair amount of decent singers and musicians on the radio. The problem much of the time is in the packaging. For example, many fine songs are ruined by cloying and sappy arrangements, or heavy handed singing when a more subtle approach will do, and most of all by a complete and utter lack of risk taking. Gotta blame the execs as it is their bottom line that drives all these trends. Radio is a spent force artistically speaking, which is fine by me, as Cds don't have commercials (yet).

Cds don't have commercials (yet) - bet you that will change soon. Just like they added commercials to movies at the theatre......
 
not the DJ's that's for sure, they don't make decisions, the program director does.

I always thought it was funny how a guy in NY who was in a band became a DJ and he never played his band's stuff on the air. I guess he learned how it's done. He wasn't part of the system that pays for plays, he was at the controls, but he couldn't even control them. Ironic.
 
I work for a public radio station and I'm proud of what we do. I can't listen to commercial radio, it makes me sick.
Support your local public radio station! The main problem with radio as it is with all media is consolidation. The airwaves are increasingly being controlled by fewer and fewer corporations.
 
persondude said:
cds have commercials on music channels.

I'm pretty sure he meant that CD's themselves dont contain commercials for other bands/toothpaste/w.e
 
azraelswings said:
I'm pretty sure he meant that CD's themselves dont contain commercials for other bands/toothpaste/w.e

Ah......me understand. Well, they have endorsements in the liner notes. Let's hope they stay there.
 
Sorry to join this thread so late, and I'm sure someone has said it above:

Clear Channel is to blame. In other words Big Corporate Business Whores.
 
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