austerity tunes

[shakahislop]

uk music has been shite for a while now and the timing corresponds almost exactly to the tory gov. there hasn't been a dry spell as long as this one. contrary to everyone else i think that's a uk-specific thing. there's a load of confounding factors that we go on about on here all the time ie the internet. but the uk seems especially to have ground to a halt after fifty years of punching above its weight

 

[shakahislop]

new kinds of people are being bred all the time. the people we've got now have been utterly disciplined. there's no way to do anything outside of the strict market. you've got to have money to live and the old wells have dried up.

 

[shakahislop]

the US isn't the same at all. there's still so much cash around. all the foundations and cash-deductable donations to arts organizations. but also there's just money around. the two economies have diverged so much over this period

 

[shakahislop]

i don't know nothing about it really, maybe someone can educate me, in one way or another it looks there's still a cash bonanza in rap. playboi carti can get $200 a ticket at madison square garden, people emerge out of seemingly nowhere and make some serious paper. there's still a big prize

 

[0bleak]

new kinds of people are being bred all the time. the people we've got now have been utterly disciplined. there's no way to do anything outside of the strict market. you've got to have money to live and the old wells have dried up.

I guess if you're talking about making a "real" "living wage" off of your own music without also having to have side jobs or making musical concessions, but that's always been virtually impossible even in the states except for a very lucky small percentage of an even smaller percentage of people.
But as far as doing anything outside of the market, it's both easier and easier to make music now (you don't even need a laptop - you can even buy incredibly powerful pieces of standalone hardware, that you could theoretically use to create all of your music, for your entire career, for just $200 each - see the roland p-6 sampler and other bits of $200 standalone hardware in the same roland series). to release your music for the entire world to hear on spotify and elsewhere
I wonder if everything is just getting drowned out?

“More music is being released today (in a single day) than was released in the calendar year of 1989”: How the music production industry has taken note of the huge number of self-releasing artists

More and more people are publishing music directly - and the industry has recalibrated

www.musicradar.com

 

[Corpsey]

i don't know nothing about it really, maybe someone can educate me, in one way or another it looks there's still a cash bonanza in rap. playboi carti can get $200 a ticket at madison square garden, people emerge out of seemingly nowhere and make some serious paper. there's still a big prize

That's more true of UK rap music now than it ever was in the past, although obviously not on the scale of US rap.

The height of drill musically was during the Tory years, and I suppose you're right (if you're saying this) it is austerity music in spirit and mood.

It's funny I think of grime as quite brutal, too, certainly not the music of economically secure people, but it did have more of a dynamism about it more of what you might call optimistic energy along with the anger.

An interesting topic, cos the emotional "affect" of music can be overlooked (on here e.g.) in favour of its sonic qualities. Which is something really tied to social conditions of the artists and audience. What resonates with a large number of people in any given era.

 

[version]

It's funny I think of grime as quite brutal, too, certainly not the music of economically secure people, but it did have more of a dynamism about it more of what you might call optimistic energy along with the anger.

Some of the grime stuff sounds quite cartoonish now, CBBC music.