BBC Sound of 2006 poll
- Thread starter Blackdown
- Start date
IdleRich
IdleRich
Whoever wrote the blurb doesn't seem to see Guillemots as an indie band
"Their defiantly creative use of styles and sounds makes it near-impossible to contain them in any pigeonhole. Are they pop? Great tunes, but too weird. Are they jazz? There is lots of experimentation - but too poppy. Are they rock? There are guitars, but they have a minority stake in the songs."
He must have different ears from me (as do a lot of people who write about music).
"Their defiantly creative use of styles and sounds makes it near-impossible to contain them in any pigeonhole. Are they pop? Great tunes, but too weird. Are they jazz? There is lots of experimentation - but too poppy. Are they rock? There are guitars, but they have a minority stake in the songs."
He must have different ears from me (as do a lot of people who write about music).
Paul Hotflush
techno head
Blackdown said:
Cos Indie makes the most money?
bassnation
the abyss
Paul Hotflush said:
if the recording industry promotes nothing but indie then its obvious why it makes the most cash.
which impartial music critics and broadcasters did they ask i wonder, and how many of them actually write for publications which have a very conservative agenda, ie broadsheets, nme, etc
is it also perhaps the case that out of the 100 people asked there were only around 50/60+ different answers, skewing the results to the few which had mulitple occurances?
i assume / hope you were asked martin, and hopefully chantelle fiddy and hattie collins also, but unless say, Skream came up 10+ times he won't feature. And considering the fact that the most successful publications are indie biased, the majority of the 'impartial' industry critics are likely to be most interested in indie?
i could be completely wrong of course.
is it also perhaps the case that out of the 100 people asked there were only around 50/60+ different answers, skewing the results to the few which had mulitple occurances?
i assume / hope you were asked martin, and hopefully chantelle fiddy and hattie collins also, but unless say, Skream came up 10+ times he won't feature. And considering the fact that the most successful publications are indie biased, the majority of the 'impartial' industry critics are likely to be most interested in indie?
i could be completely wrong of course.
Last edited:
Raw Patrick
Well-known member
"Why is it so easy to break indie band after indie band at the expense of all other genres?"
Because people like indie bands.
Because people like indie bands.
MATT MAson
BROADSIDE
Raw Patrick said:
Depressing, but true.
It really is as simple as that.
but surely it is the role of the savant taste makers to open up horizons? just because people like something doesn't mean that they are aesthetically predisposed to only liking that.
even from a record label, money-centric perspective, injecting freshness and promoting new sounds makes sense; it could work with the right backing. i mean, i know very few people who have been life long indie obsessives. even fifty quid men can be open minded enough to buy what they are told to by the music press
the problem is that there aren't the risk takers to take things forward, so it falls to the underground who can only push things so far.
even from a record label, money-centric perspective, injecting freshness and promoting new sounds makes sense; it could work with the right backing. i mean, i know very few people who have been life long indie obsessives. even fifty quid men can be open minded enough to buy what they are told to by the music press
the problem is that there aren't the risk takers to take things forward, so it falls to the underground who can only push things so far.
Raw Patrick
Well-known member
MIA got a look in and no-one was interested. Grime got a look in, but it didn't have anything to sell at that point.
Jamie Cullum and Katie Mellua and K T Tunstall get a look in and they sell a lot.
Tons of filter-house records based around eighties samples hit the charts and they're not on massive labels necessarily.
Well on one hand Sway's made the top 10, though on the other The Feeling are "hoping to resurrect a brand of middle-of-the-road soft rock, inspired by Supertramp and 10CC."
The depressing point about this list is it's not a list compiled by the general public, it's tastemakers, people who are supposed to be forward looking and open minded. If the general public mostly like what they're given, this list is mostly giving them more of what they already know.
The depressing point about this list is it's not a list compiled by the general public, it's tastemakers, people who are supposed to be forward looking and open minded. If the general public mostly like what they're given, this list is mostly giving them more of what they already know.
IdleRich
IdleRich
But how did these people get to be tastemakers? I think that they are popular/mainstream tastemakers because they like popular/mainstream music.
Does it matter what's on the list? To the people in this debate it only matters in the most abstract or tangential way I would imagine.
Does it matter what's on the list? To the people in this debate it only matters in the most abstract or tangential way I would imagine.
boomnoise said:
I suspect boomnoise might be on to something here. On the one hand, it's kind of unreasonable to describe the polling mechanism as a "skewing the results" - I'm not sure how else a poll of this kind could work. The top of the poll is, by definition, always going to be populated by "the few [nominations] which had mulitple occurances".
That said, I wonder to what degree the wealth of music available nowadays is making these kind of polls (whether they be of the general public or industry 'taste-makers') increasingly redundant as a measure of what's happening. Does not the sheer diversity of musical styles that have emerged since the early 90s make the lowest common denominator (for which, read: 'indie') ever more likely to rise to the top?
Paul Hotflush
techno head
The reality is that most people like middle of the road pop-rock, therefore it makes money, therefore major labels spend most of their advertising budget on promoting these kinds of acts. It's not a conspiracy!
it's not a linear relationship though: it's cyclical. People like what is marketed to them. the more something is covered in the press and marketed the more it sells. just saying people like pop-rock so labels sell them pop-rock is only half the equation.
a clear example is Adverts. Some obscure underground/independent track - destined to sell 500 copies through indie shops - goes on an advert. it gets shown to 10m people a week, and then suddenly it's popular. is it the same obscure tune it was the week before? yes. would the tens of thousands people who now like it have bought it before the ad: no.
so to return to the subject of this post, an example like this show why polls shouldn't be safe or mediocre, because people in positions of influence should use that influence to promote diversity not mediocrity.
a clear example is Adverts. Some obscure underground/independent track - destined to sell 500 copies through indie shops - goes on an advert. it gets shown to 10m people a week, and then suddenly it's popular. is it the same obscure tune it was the week before? yes. would the tens of thousands people who now like it have bought it before the ad: no.
so to return to the subject of this post, an example like this show why polls shouldn't be safe or mediocre, because people in positions of influence should use that influence to promote diversity not mediocrity.
Last edited: