[bane]

Nice analysis, but maybe still missing some things. e.g. it's not clear that "DJ" here is professional radio-DJs vs dancehall/wedding etc. which tend to be small single-person businesses in an entirely different function.

A good radio-DJ might be hired to fill a key block of time in a major metro. They may select to play a local band's new song during evening rush hour and suddenly 3 million new people know about it instantly moving them up the charts. They were just as much a part of the tastemaking stream as the labels and often provided interesting color commentary, local community info, places for meet and greets, upcoming concert info, and so on.

I live in a top-10 metro in the U.S. and I think it's very telling that the FM dial mostly plays pre-2000 music, with very little commentary by DJs if any between commercial breaks. They may as well just be a streaming internet feed pumped through an antenna. Some stations just play the same songs I remember from middle/high school decades ago and they aren't even advertising themselves as "classic" or "nostalgia" in any way.

Once the big consolidation events happened, it seems like the ability for popular music to really get ahold of the zeitgeist died with it and now tastemaking seems to be almost as much a function of push by labels and artists/influencers than a pull-and-present by people sitting in curation seats.

Music has become "flatter" in a sense which in theory is good. But if everything is unknown, it's much harder for utterly unknown geniuses with bad marketing skills to break through.

[svnt]

Yes, I agree with your statements. This was a quick attempt to roughly bound the problem. Comment I responded to was surprised that the field had shrunk, I feel this clearly shows it has shrunk at least by a factor of three, but yes, probably more anecdotally as I also live in a large metro area and the only live radio DJs are very niche or very syndicated.

[goosejuice]

> Music has become "flatter" in a sense which in theory is good. But if everything is unknown, it's much harder for utterly unknown geniuses with bad marketing skills to break through.

Man, I read stuff like this and it's just so far out of touch it blows my mind. Let me introduce you to the internet. You'll never run out of geniuses if you actually make an effort.

[bane]

Right, but you aren't really acknowledging four realities:

1 - 90% of everything is crap.

2 - > if you actually make an effort so now I have to be the curator! But I don't have time to sift through the 90% of crap. That's the point somebody else used to get paid to separate the creme from the top. You may have and unlimited amount of low value time to dedicate to listening to thousands of artists and tens of thousands of songs, but I certainly don't.

3 - even among curators, 90% of them aren't any good at it either, which is why, even if you shared your personal playlist of your very carefully curated list of songs that you spent 2000 hours last year carefully putting together, I'm more than likely to not like it myself. Being able to find good music, and then find an audience for your curation that is able to connect millions of people to those previous unknown is also a skill.

> You'll never run out of geniuses if you actually make an effort. 4 - then where are your multiple times a year new breakthrough artists that show up out of nowhere, dominate the charts for two weeks then are subsumed by newer geniuses? The charts are slammed full of artists who've been top of their game for 10-20 even 30 years now. It's the same old artists over and over, but that pales in comparison to the before times when you'd get something new and big and hit big every week.

I'm looking right now at the U.S. top-40 pop charts and there is on it this week -- no shit get this: Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Charli XCX, Akon, Alphaville, Kendrick Lamar, Ariana Grande, and a few more that, let's face it have careers that are nearing drinking age in the U.S. Great artists all, but that used to be the age music shifted up-frequency to the oldies channel in the past.

If you disappeared from the planet in 2005 and showed back up today, you'd feel that the list was familiar. Where are your endless parade of geniuses on the top-40? We could have tight-beamed these old artists' entire discographies to Alpha Centauri and Back and they'd still be relevant and dominating the charts.

[goosejuice]

Honestly, it sounds like you don't appreciate music very much or have very limited taste.

Top 40, billboard, and the grammys aren't representative of contemporary music quality or the depth of talented musicians out there. It's not a secret and every musician knows it. Pearl Jam '96 grammys. It represents the consumers of music.

If you can't be bothered to watch or listen to some kexp live, audiotree live, tiny desk. Or listen to internet radio. Or read any of the numerous music publications. Or dig through related artists on a streaming platform. Then it's a problem with you the consumer of music, and makes you really no different than all the other people that make those top 40 charts what they are. It has no bearing or makes no comment on the overwhelming amount of good music we have today and how accessible it is.