Has Teh Internet rendered us post-pop? (Music-R)
DB_Cooper
Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
Of course, we all know the switch to the internet as our primary medium has changed the way we consume information. Where once you had to go to a library, buy a newspaper, or tune into a radio station, you now just go to wikipedia, newyorktimes.com, or pandora. Pop hits used to happen because of a confluence of mass-appeal songwriting and a set of broadcast mediums that reinforced the ubiquity of a pop hit by repettion ad nauseum. Now you can successfully seek out the most obscure music in the world while never having to hear the latest Lady Ga Ga hit.
The question:
Has the availability of damn near everything and the self-selecting ability of The Internets rendered us unto a post-pop world?
For the prosecution:
Cee Lo's "Fuck You" goes viral on Teh Interwebs and garners millions of listens within a day.
For the defense:
A Facebook comment between two mid-20s ladies I know that are not particularly music-nerdy: "You were right about Jandek. Really weird. Pretty bad though."
The question:
Has the availability of damn near everything and the self-selecting ability of The Internets rendered us unto a post-pop world?
For the prosecution:
Cee Lo's "Fuck You" goes viral on Teh Interwebs and garners millions of listens within a day.
For the defense:
A Facebook comment between two mid-20s ladies I know that are not particularly music-nerdy: "You were right about Jandek. Really weird. Pretty bad though."
Comments
Being the wrong side of thirty and remembering the days before everything was at a click of a button and all this were fields it's tricky for me to say either way.
Using the people I know though who are younger (late teens/early twenties), I'm not sure if day to day consumption has really changed all that much. There's undeniably far easier access now to media that would never have reached these shores even ten years ago but IMO there still has to be an underlying desire to check it out in the first place. I know a fair few people who will happily click on a link if it's sent to them and, if they like it, send it to someone else; however they have no interest themselves in checking out music outside what is played on popular radio/tv so in many ways it's just a more readily available version of someone making a tape for someone back in the day and them then copying it onto a tape for someone else.
For people with a natural curiosity/sickness for seeking out obscure media the internet is a dream as it saves the endless digging round backstreet shops, getting on mailing lists, etc etc but it seems to me that for many people the only difference is that they can now youtube a song they hear on the radio rather than having to wait till the CD single comes out.
Maybe I just know a lot of unadventurous people or we're still in a transitional period and when the people who grew up in this environment start controlling mainstream media we'll see it properly switch over but for now at least I think it's more of the same except quicker.
Tl;dr version: Jandek is still pretty bad.
Speaking for myself, I only got into obscure mediaways to distance myself from the local idiot collective (IIRC at age 17 it was too... white? Even for a white man?) and the hankering doubt that I was not being fed the real thing. Then you go through the snobbery phase, dismissive of anything making money. Then you get old enough to recognise that that tune your kids like is, unequivocally, catchy.
Naturally repping such tunes at high volumeways is not becoming of someone my age so I can finally be that snob without irony.
I used to think optimistically about the next generations musical tastes, with so much music to be exposed right in their homes. Unfortunately, the chase seems to be what kept us afloat. Take away the hunt, and the hunter buys cheetos.
LOL. I just sold a TT to a dude who has never paid for music he DJs with. Except he has a bunch of Radiohead vinyl that he bought BITD or something and he told me they will sound AMAZING on vinyl.
I'll give it a miss.
Becky told me so.
Vs.
We all lose
Facebook has nothing to do with it - you mean the people referencing Jandek.
About half of my active FB friends post songs just as or more obscure than that.
Well, yeah. That.
I'm getting to that age where I'm seeing much more clearly how we recycle our culture. I mean, all the kids are atwitter about Kreayshawn, and really I just see her as the next incarnation of Tairrie B and the like. Pop music was always about the problems of the young: does that boy/girl really love me? lets get drunk! I'm so alone and nobody loves me!!
I think that people are still into their niches, it's just that now any niche has the off-chance to become pop just by having a ton of hits on youtube. And it can happen in a day rather than months or years.
Sure. Now we need a definition of post pop.
The things that are pop today, Lady GaGa, Glee, American Idol, Justin Bebeir, should we now call that music postpop?
I think it is great that a 16 year old kid can find out about The Blues in the morning, and be listening to an ipod full of Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf, BB King, Gary Davis and Stevie Ray Vaughn in the afternoon.
It seems like these new acoustic singer songwriters, that people call folk, have a huge following that might not have happened in a preinternet world.
People still spend ALOT of time in thier car and, even though they can plug in a device and immediatley hear whatever song they could possibly want, i think alot of people (youngsters included) still like the localized feel of Radio.
Internets cant match that.
And the Radio dial is more crowded than ever these days, at least in my town it is.
And what do the majority of those stations play?
"Pop" Music.
True, but that only applies to part of (America's) population. The majority of American citizens live in cities. A large percentage of those that live in cities either don't own a car (raises hand), or own one but take public transportation to and from work. Add in the number of folks who own and use cars regularly but choose to go the CD/iPod route in the car, and you are looking at well over half of the country that isn't listening to the radio in their car.
:oof:
Man, I don't think it's THAT bad, but...
I had a conversation with a friend of a friend the other day about this very subject... she was apparently distraught about the whole Gaga/Madonna nonsense, and she was SHOCKED to find out I discover new music mostly through podcasts ("those were big for a little while, but who still uses them??") / internet radio / blogs etc... I was probably just as shocked to find out she and most of her friends don't...
As long as there are humans, there will be pop-tarts.
My weekly gig draws a fairly young audience (late teens, early twenties) and EVERYTHING is possible, believe me. Last time, requests included Eazy E and Jimi Hendrix and when I played "Purple Haze" some kids sang along, that was such a beautiful thing to see! And of course you have your Rihanna requests, but that is nothing different from 20 years ago. Access might have changed, but the content is still the same. Pop and all other forms of music and culture will always be there. They need to be. And just because it's easier now to stay away from Gaga's new song, doesn't mean it's not having an influence on people.
I dunno man, it probably depends on the venue... I did a set for the first time in ages a couple weeks ago (because D*** T******* asked me to assist) and it went brilliantly at a club where most of the patrons are ~10 years younger than me and at least 50% of my selections had never been heard by anybody there before. The insistent requesters (in their early-mid 20s) were demanding AZ, Jurassic 5 and ODB (!!!). But they were also still happy & cool with what I was already playing.
:happyday: