Has Teh Internet rendered us post-pop? (Music-R)

DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
edited May 2011 in Strut Central
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."

  Comments


  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    An interesting question.

    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.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    I think as long as wanting to belong is a default human state, folls are happy to listen and watch what is put directly under their noses and cosine it as being the best thing evar (since what was put under their noses last week). It gives them some common currency in the playground, on fb, or at some grown-folks hookup event-type thing. This explains the popularity of Coldplay.

    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.

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,903 Posts

  • DelayDelay 4,530 Posts
    I'd definitely say no. From a personal standpoint, I've noticed a huge paradigm shift. In the last year especially, kids that grew up online have become of legal drinking age. These were kids that not only had the world at their fingertips, but never bought a piece of music once. What happens to an industry without it's economic foundation? Apparently it becomes even more repetitious and commercial. Those same kids are the most fearless, pushy, lame-tasted, song-requesters I have experienced out there yet. They ALL want to hear the most diluted pop crap and they want to heAr it right now. I feel like crowds used to enjoy a trip through music familiarity with a few breaking hits her e and there. They would also feal a little shame when asking for something obvious and commercial. Those days are OVER.

    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.

  • PATXPATX 2,820 Posts
    Possum Tom said:
    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.

  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    I'm still flabbergasted at seeing Jandek referenced on teh Facebooks. It was surreal.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    I had to google Jandek.

    I'll give it a miss.

    Becky told me so.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Yes. There is no such thing as the Song of the Summer now that the game has become fragmented.

  • PATXPATX 2,820 Posts


    Vs.



    We all lose

  • CBearCBear 902 Posts
    The internet is a tool and people use it for what they want. Most people use it to re-create themselves and gain a sense of camaraderie with their virtual neighbors. We use it for that and pioneering found music, but we're not the majority. My fianc?? loves the music I play for her and I keep her iPhone filled with my favorite obscurities, but every time I get in her car the radio is on. Not a bad thing, just different. She's keeping up with celebrity gossip at the moment.

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    DB_Cooper said:
    I'm still flabbergasted at seeing Jandek referenced on teh Facebooks. It was surreal.

    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.

  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    pickwick33 said:
    DB_Cooper said:
    I'm still flabbergasted at seeing Jandek referenced on teh Facebooks. It was surreal.

    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.

  • prof_rockwellprof_rockwell 2,867 Posts
    I agree with what Tom is saying, but also I feel like there have always been pushy, lame-tasted song requesters out there. Are there more now than before? I guess that depends on where you've been playing out at.

    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.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    DB_Cooper said:
    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?

    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.

  • mrmatthewmrmatthew 1,575 Posts
    I think we are all underestimating the power of the Car Radio.
    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.

  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    mrmatthew said:
    I think we are all underestimating the power of the Car Radio.
    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.

  • I feel so completely divorced from top 40 pop and whatever's happening on FM radio these days, that any actual exposure to it just feels like a bad dream . People getting ANGRY about that Rebecca Black video, or that Lady Gaga's ripping off Madonna or whatever. Ugh.

    Possum Tom said:
    . Take away the hunt, and the hunter buys cheetos.

    :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...

  • Mr_Lee_PHDMr_Lee_PHD 2,042 Posts
    J i m s t e r said:
    I think as long as wanting to belong is a default human state, folls are happy to listen and watch what is put directly under their noses and cosine it as being the best thing evar (since what was put under their noses last week). It gives them some common currency in the playground, on fb, or at some grown-folks hookup event-type thing.



    As long as there are humans, there will be pop-tarts.

  • sticky_dojahsticky_dojah New York City. 2,136 Posts
    Well, as a working DJ, I can assure you that all of these things are possible and do still happen. I don't think we've entered an age of post-pop, but rather we face a higher level of coexistence.
    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.

  • bull_oxbull_ox 5,056 Posts
    Possum Tom said:
    I'd definitely say no. From a personal standpoint, I've noticed a huge paradigm shift. In the last year especially, kids that grew up online have become of legal drinking age. These were kids that not only had the world at their fingertips, but never bought a piece of music once. What happens to an industry without it's economic foundation? Apparently it becomes even more repetitious and commercial. Those same kids are the most fearless, pushy, lame-tasted, song-requesters I have experienced out there yet. They ALL want to hear the most diluted pop crap and they want to heAr it right now. I feel like crowds used to enjoy a trip through music familiarity with a few breaking hits her e and there. They would also feal a little shame when asking for something obvious and commercial. Those days are OVER.

    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.

    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:

  • Options
    Jandek is great.

  • bull_oxbull_ox 5,056 Posts
    But to answer the OP: pop music on a grand scale (obviously) still exists... but it isn't nearly as dominant as it once was. Underground shitt can blow up in a way it couldn't 10 years ago. Whether or not these trends will continue, or if the industry will find a way to regain some of its ground, I can't say. I tend to think it will be some of both - underground/self-released music that blows up will be quickly snapped up by the majors (or whatever that means in the future) or flourish outside of that system, while the few major popstars (Gaga, Rihanna) will still be massive.
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