Music is totally corporate now. The licencing laws mean you can barely play music in a pub now, the legit venues are closing, the points of entry are being closed off. As some journo wrote recently, "I watched a video of the nice from the 60s and watching proto-prog rocker Keith emerson stabbing his hammond with a knife was just as preposterous as it sounds. But somehow it was still a whole lot more like rock and roll than the Arctic Monkeys are ever going to dream of." keep to the Fen Causeway
Whether more people make music today as % of population compared to, say, the Post-war family piano playing and singing, would be interesting to know. Sheet music sales in the Fifties were staggering. You can't be me, I'm taken
One of the things music does is gives people narratives to aspire to. When your highest aspiration is to get five recs and a handful of comments from your work in progress, standards may have slipped a little there.
I don't agree (see Helen's point) that the music and the politics were irrelevant. A lot of people dropped out after Woodstock and tried to live sustainably. Some of them had some very exotic adventures in consciousness, not all of which were created by enthusiastic drug use. Some of them are still around working in renewables and such.
The promised utopia never happened, but considering the buttoned-down up-tight consciousness of the 40s and 50s, a lot changed in a very short time, and strange ideas like sustainability started to have an influence on the mainstream - even if they never dominated it, they became acceptable, and the counter culture which was evangelised by music was a huge driver of that.
Now there's no narrative, so there's no scene, and certainly no politics. Without media exposure - and a few hundred YouTube hits doesn't count - it's almost impossible for a non-trivial mass scene to form.
Elsewhere - the Straight Edger scene is funny. It's been around for at least a decade now that I know of, and I suppose when your parents are the ones having casual sex and snorting, smoking and sniffing all sorts then restraint is the only rebellious place to go. It's a bit odd that the music is post-punk thrash and not - say - Val Doonican, but that's kids for you.
b) Not to be too down about things, but isn't it less that music is lacking in narratives, more culture as a whole is lacking narratives?
A lot of people dropped out after Woodstock and tried to live sustainably. Some of them had some very exotic adventures in consciousness, not all of which were created by enthusiastic drug use. Some of them are still around working in renewables and such.
Or on blogs and such.
Sales of albums in the US dropped by 14% in 2008, but figures rose overall thanks to a surge in digital purchases. Digital album sales went up by 32%, while singles were 27% up on 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The year's biggest-selling album was Tha Carter III by Lil'Wayne, while Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis was the top digital track with sales of 3.42m. Vinyl records also enjoyed an upsurge in 2008, with sales of 1.88m - an 89% increase on the previous year. The biggest-selling vinyl album was Radiohead's In Rainbows, which shifted 25,800 copies. Music sales, including physical and digital formats, music videos and ringtones, were more than 1.5 billion in 2008, compared to 1.36 billion in 2007. It is the fourth consecutive year on record that music sales in the US have topped the billion mark, while digital purchases broke the barrier for the first time in 2008. But sales of physical releases - CDs, cassettes and vinyl - via internet sites dipped by 8.6%, slipping three million beneath the 30 million mark of 2007.
Digital album sales went up by 32%, while singles were 27% up on 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The year's biggest-selling album was Tha Carter III by Lil'Wayne, while Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis was the top digital track with sales of 3.42m.
Vinyl records also enjoyed an upsurge in 2008, with sales of 1.88m - an 89% increase on the previous year.
The biggest-selling vinyl album was Radiohead's In Rainbows, which shifted 25,800 copies.
Music sales, including physical and digital formats, music videos and ringtones, were more than 1.5 billion in 2008, compared to 1.36 billion in 2007.
It is the fourth consecutive year on record that music sales in the US have topped the billion mark, while digital purchases broke the barrier for the first time in 2008.
But sales of physical releases - CDs, cassettes and vinyl - via internet sites dipped by 8.6%, slipping three million beneath the 30 million mark of 2007.
