Yeah to be perfectly honest nowadays when I go on HBO max or Netix I'm watching the same shyt I've watched 8 million times already. Trying to search for new shyt is just overwhelming. Don't know where to start, what's actually worth investing time in...way easier to retreat to the familiar, tbh.
One hit wonders used to be able to eat off that one song for DECADES. Now they're forgotten about in 3 months.
Stuff like this is why I can’t take everyone blaming the state of music on the labels. It’s every part of the ecosystem. In no world does ice spice get on stage at rock the bells in 2007 yet she’s doing rolling loud in 2022. Now you got 27 festivals all trying to outdo one another with the longest shyttiest lineup and you got not even one hit wonders filling space just to appeal to their 5000 listeners and make the festival look like it’s relevance. There’s simply too much these days
And because there's no artist development you have people with ZERO performance skills, charisma, or even media preparation just thrown out there. Someone like Ice Spice wouldn't have even had music out without the labels making sure she was a competent performer first. Now granted, there are some cases where the music is good enough to Trump poor stage presence - Nas and Jay-Z for instance, were horrible performers in their early years. But they had Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt. Nuff said.
That’s why there’s so many flash in a pan artist. No one wants to work small venues and have a slow build up. Social media and technology made it too easy for anyone to make music.
I keep a list in my phone of projects I need to give a listen to and it grows exponentially faster than I can cross things out. This level of output also means you don’t spend time with an album anymore. I remember the days of an album getting daily burn for a few months straight, now I grab the tracks that grab me in the first 30 seconds, put it in a playlist, and never revisit the project as a whole outside of my very favorite artists
This reminds me of the whole experience buying an album was. You could go to the mall and listen to the preview. If you did buy the album you could view the liner notes and see the album artwork etc. It was an intimate experience.
But everyone still watches the same shows now, so that hasn't changed. The only drawback is that a good portion don't watch them at the same time, but there's still about a week window to where everyone is watching and discussing the same show.
Exactly. You actually driving to the store, buying an album, opening up the packaging and reading all the credits and such just made it stick with you more than current projects, even current projects you really like, and that’s cause we were maybe were getting ten albums in a month instead of ten in a day
It’s worse because there’s less curation and gatekeeping. Back in the day it took so much more effort and layers just to make it. Those layers added a natural filtration process and inserted quality as you go up. Artists had to start by being talented enough to be recognized by their aunt, uncle, mom or whoever to even want to pursue. Then if they didn’t have the money they’d have to convince a local entrepreneur to fund them enough to make demos and go on talent shows and whatnot. Then do that enough times to convince someone to introduce them to a label. Then they’d have to go through layers of ppl for the label to even sign them. Then once signed go through a professional artist development process. And I’m every layer of this that talented artist is being surrounded by other equally talented producers, writers, vocal coaches, etc. Music gets recorded and A&Rs have to be convinced the music is worthy of being pushed. Label heads then sign off. And although payola was prevalent djs and radio ppl still had to be convinced in order to play it. Then usually something would get hot in one market then djs a market over catch the buzz and they start playing and then it spreads from there. Yes the “music business” aspect of this process sucked and definitely lead to a lot of exploitation (financially, sexually, mentally, emotionally) but the quality of music was indeed better. Everything has a trade off in this world.
Agreed I think Tink is an even better example than Dreezy. There really needs to be a scholarly dissertation on Tink and her song Treat Me Like Somebody. It shows the clear problem with social media’s effect on artistry. Tink herself as a personality and also looks (no bbl) doesn’t hit the female algorithm for vitality but it’s clear some of those same audiences liked a song of hers enough to run it up to 300 million views. But even after the song went viral, Tink the artist still didn’t receive the consummate recognition and success not even as much as your typical one hit wonder would see.
