As for the question that prompts such an answer? “Is the internet stifling new music?”
Via BBC no less.
The article is written by once-rock star John Taylor, former bass player for Duran Duran and Power Station. The man has been pelted by his share of female undergarments while performing live, and it shows:
When artists today are asked to Twitter their every thought, their every action, to record on video their every breath, their every performance, I believe they’re diluting their creative powers, their creative potency and the durability of their work.
And in the long run I believe they’re also diluting the magical power and the magnetic attraction that they can or will ever have over their audience.
Right. So the inaccessible rock god has given way to the singer-songwriter who shares a campfire with us all. That has long been established. But why exactly is the internet stifling new music today? What makes the situation now any more dire than it was ten years ago?
My stepson is at New York University (NYU) and he was telling me how he’s currently into Cole Porter, music from the 1920s and swing music from the 40s. So the availability and accessibility of music on the internet today is truly incredible, and I applaud anything that can inspire interest or curiosity in anyone.
But this also means that those of us who before would have been looking towards the current culture for inspiration are now often to be found, like my stepson, in various backwaters of older music.
This relative lack of need for current, innovative culture can cause, has caused, is causing – maybe – the innovative culture to slow down, much as an assembly line in Detroit slows down and lay-offs have to be made when the demand for a new model recedes.
Gotcha.
It’s great to have a theory. It’s even better to have a little data to support it. As we go to print, the 1962 cast recording of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (re-released in 1990) stands at #48,447 on Amazon’s music bestsellers. Not bad. You could do a lot worse. For example the “beautifully imaginative … magnificent” LP The Snake stands at #162,064. He just might have a point. The internet (better said: the internet age) might be disincentivizing creativity.
But one release is 19 years old, the other has only a few months of promotion behind it. By point of reference Radiohead released Pablo Honey in 1993, and Amazon ranks that album at #5,070. Too pedestrian? OK. Try, well, OK Computer at #729. Looking for something in the double digits? How about The Killers at #23?
It’s great that new listeners are uncovering old jazz, and it’s a shame that a rock übermenschlich has been forced to come down from the ivory tower (/sarcasm). But arguments with two data points are two dimensional, simple as that.
