Is the cost of living crushing music?

[tegs07]

1 minute ago, Burns-bass said:

I’d obviously read about gentrification and how it erases existing communities and replaces them, now I’m seeing it first hand - and it’s pretty crazy here.

 

It’s the paradox of it, too. People (like me) came here because living costs were low, there was always a party going on, and the city was full of artists and interesting people.

 

Now it’s becoming one massive middle class paradise. On one hand, I still love it, and on the other feel a bit sad.
 

Of course, that’s an indulgence as I’ve massively benefitted from the process of gentrification (and obviously played my part).

Yeah I am part of that process too. I’ve witnessed a huge increase in the numbers of people living in vans (and the muttering from the nimbys) but people are genuinely priced out of living anywhere in many parts of Bristol.

I remember an early morning walk in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco many years ago and seeing large numbers of people living rough and being utterly shocked that this could happen in the richest country in the world. It’s now not so inconceivable that this could happen in the place I call home.

[BigRedX]

23 hours ago, la bam said:

Just having a think... mainly due to the dire situation current pop music is in.. 

 

The cost of living at the moment is crazy. How youngsters are supposed to own a vehicle or home, or even rent is beyond me. 

 

Being a musician has always been seen as hard graft, being in an originals band trying to 'make it' was always fought with little money and being difficult to make ends meet. But, with a bit of luck it was possible. 

 

But now.... How are bands supposed to make it or even try when even renting a flat is astronomical, hotels and b and bs cost a fortune, you can't buy a decent van for under 5 grand, tax and insurance will be the same, and then there's fuel and food???! 

 

Most will be forced into a job before even being able to give it a go. 

 

The only ones I can see having half a chance are bedroom producers on their laptops. I can't see genuine real bands having a chance at all. 

 

Is new music and new bands strictly a rich kids game going forward? 

 

For those people who absolutely HAVE to create music (or anything else) will always find ways of avoiding the obstacles in their way. IMO anything that discourages the casual dabbler who has heard a Coldplay or Sleaford Mods album and decides to have a go, is a good thing. There are far too many musicians playing in uninspiring bands, and if they want to have a bit of fun in the privacy of a rehearsal room that's fine, but lets not have them clogging up venues, Bandcamp and Spotify.

 

I think that too many posters on here appear to have forgotten what it was like to be in their first originals band. You don't need half the stuff that older musicians seem to to think is absolutely necessary, and many other things are far cheaper in real terms than they were in the 60s, 70s and 80s. If you want to do something badly enough you will work out ways of doing it within your financial constraints.

 

Firstly almost no originals band needs the hassle and expense of PA ownership. All the venues worth playing on the originals circuit have in-house PA systems and if you want to play somewhere different that doesn't it is still possible to hire a system for the gig. In 50 years of playing in originals bands I been two that had their own PA and in both cases that is because we had our own dedicated rehearsal space. The PA was primarily rehearsals and only used for gigs on a handful of occasions.

 

These days everyone thinks they need personal transport but actually you can get a long way (pun intended) without car ownership. In my first few bands hardly anyone could actually drive and if they did, only a couple of them owned cars which were invariable tiny and unreliable. For local gigs we walked or used public transport. For out of town gigs we would hire a car or a van and if none of the band could actually drive we'd have at a least one fan who could and would be happy to drive for us. Remember that all the decent out of town gigs your band would most likely be supporting so all you'd need to take would be instruments amp heads and drum breakables. A four-piece band plus that fits into a typical car. It might not be comfortable but it gets you to the gig and back. If you put on a decent show you'll soon get better gigs with better pay and be able to think about buying a cheap van. I still go to local gigs by taxi. It's cheaper than the running and parking costs for the evening (especially if the gig goes on past midnight) and taxi drivers have no problem stopping in the middle of the street directly outside the venue while I load in/out.

 

As has been said plenty of other aspects of being in a band are much cheaper in real terms than they used to be. Instruments and equipment are a fraction of the price for the same level of quality. In fact unless you buy something dodgy direct from China you are very unlikely to be saddled with the sort of unplayable crap that was all most musicians could afford when starting out right up to the end of the 80s. And recording (if you're not doing it yourself) is ridiculously cheap these days. For my first 3 forays into proper recording studios, we had to watch every minute on the clock otherwise we might not be able to settle the bill at the end, and there were always "hidden extras" like the cost of the tape, both master and multi-track, that you used.

 

Back when I started gigging there were all sorts of free or cheap resources available to those of us who were prepared to put the effort in tracking them down. And they still exist if you can put in the time networking to find them. Four out of the first 5 recording sessions for The Terrortones were absolutely free because they were either part of some training initiative, the studio owner liked us enough to offer us a couple of free sessions when the studio would otherwise be empty, or paid for by the record label who were putting out a compilation album with the band on.

 

Maybe the challenges that face originals bands these days are different to those when I was first recording and gigging, but anyone really committed to getting their music heard will find ways around them. You do have to be living and breathing and dreaming about music 24 hours a day 7 days a week if you want to treat it as anything other than a hobby, but IME that has aways been the case.

 

Edited January 8 by BigRedX

[Barking Spiders]

Viz affordability of housing in England the real problem is the private rental sector is unregulated so landlords charge what they can get away with. Tory backbenchers who are landlords have pretty much blocked any attempts to bring in regs

[tegs07]

24 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

Viz affordability of housing in England the real problem is the private rental sector is unregulated so landlords charge what they can get away with. Tory backbenchers who are landlords have pretty much blocked any attempts to bring in regs

A combination of the attempt to regulate private landlords combined with the spike in costs of debt repayment is reducing the rental stock significantly and pushing up rents at an alarming pace. 

 

Once inflation is brought back under control the UK needs a good hard think about how treating homes as assets is crippling the young causing unprecedented inequality and stymying economic growth.

 

I doubt if anything will change though.

[Dan Dare]

On 08/01/2024 at 16:27, tegs07 said:

A combination of the attempt to regulate private landlords combined with the spike in costs of debt repayment is reducing the rental stock significantly and pushing up rents at an alarming pace. 

 

Once inflation is brought back under control the UK needs a good hard think about how treating homes as assets is crippling the young causing unprecedented inequality and stymying economic growth.

 

I doubt if anything will change though.

 

Agreed. The biggest problem (imho, of course) is that we don't have a healthy public/affordable housing sector any more, since many publicly owned properties were sold off. A healthy public/affordable housing stock acts as a counterbalance to the cost of private rented and owned housing, because people have a choice and aren't compelled to pay ridiculous prices to rent or buy privately. The crazy increases in the cost of private housing has coincided with the decimation of the publicly owned housing stock. If you suggest doing anything about it, people start frothing at the mouth about "socialism", etc.

 

I don't think anything can be done about treating homes as assets. Put simply, they are assets. That would be true even if they cost a fraction of what they do. Property prices are a simple consequence of demand massively out-stripping supply (in areas where people want or are able to live). People have no choice other than to pay the prices demanded if they want to live a realistic distance from where they work. The only thing that will change that is a massive increase in the supply of housing, but land is in short supply in populous areas, so where do you put the new homes?

 

Population growth isn't helping, too. Afraid I don't think anything will change, either.

Edited January 10 by Dan Dare

[peteb]

4 hours ago, tegs07 said:

A combination of the attempt to regulate private landlords combined with the spike in costs of debt repayment is reducing the rental stock significantly and pushing up rents at an alarming pace. 

 

Once inflation is brought back under control the UK needs a good hard think about how treating homes as assets is crippling the young causing unprecedented inequality and stymying economic growth.

 

I doubt if anything will change though.

 

2 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 

Agreed. The biggest problem (imho, of course) is that we don't have a healthy public/affordable housing sector any more, since many publicly owned properties were sold off. A healthy public/affordable housing stock acts as a counterbalance to the cost of private rented and owned housing, because people have a choice and aren't compelled to pay ridiculous prices to rent or buy privately. The crazy increases in the cost of private housing has coincided with the decimation of the publicly owned housing stock. If you suggest doing anything about it, people start frothing at the mouth about "socialism", etc.

 

I don't think anything can be done about treating homes as assets. Put simply, they are assets. That would be true even if they cost a fraction of what they do. Property prices are a simple consequence of demand massively out-stripping supply (in areas where people want or are able to live). People have no choice other than to pay the prices demanded if they want to live a realistic distance from where they work. The only ting that will change that is a massive increase in the supply of housing, but land is in short supply in populous areas, so where do you put the new homes?

 

Population growth isn't helping, too. Afraid I don't think anything will change, either.

 

I used to work in housing policy and still am involved in the sector (domestic energy). I think that between the two of you, you have accurately summarised most of the issues affecting, what I would say is, a dysfunctional housing market in the UK. 

 

Edited January 8 by peteb

[OliverBlackman]

11 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Firstly almost no originals band needs the hassle and expense of PA ownership. All the venues worth playing on the originals circuit have in-house PA systems and if you want to play somewhere different that doesn't it is still possible to hire a system for the gig. In 50 years of playing in originals bands I been two that had their own PA and in both cases that is because we had our own dedicated rehearsal space. The PA was primarily rehearsals and only used for gigs on a handful of occasions.

 

Genuine question because I’ve not played in originals for quite a few years. But when I was, a lot of local places that booked young bands were closing and only those that required decent followings remained. Do the small, local music venues for original bands still exist?

[diskwave]

On 07/01/2024 at 10:26, la bam said:

mainly due to the dire situation current pop music is in

Im 63. What exactly do u mean by that....creatively or something else? Not trying to be clever, genuinely would like to know as I have my own view which tends to upset a lot of people.

[Silvia Bluejay]

Let this post of mine be the last that mentions politics in this thread, please.

 

I was born in a country that has imposed caps to most rents for decades and has very tenant-friendly laws. Result: dire shortage of properties to let. The only letting activity that people are happy with is AirBnB. Why should a landlord let out a property if they can barely pay the mortgage with the maximum rent they are allowed to ask for? While at the same time throwing out non-paying tenants is almost impossible because the law  defends them as opposed to the landlord? I certainly won't keep my parents' property and let it out once they're gone - that would be madness. I'll sell it straight away.

 

So I wouldn't blame the Tories or indeed any other party for what happens in this country. In places like London, regardless of politics, one of the problems appears to be the marketing of all new properties under construction to wealthy overseas buyers even before those properties are made available to (usually slightly less wealthy) locals. And then many of those properties are bought as an investment and left unoccupied. Another problem is the lack of affordable housing - developers of new builds appear to use a very flexible definition of "affordable" and, even when a percentage of the new properties is described as affordable, what it boils down to is that some of the new flats in the build are simply less outrageously expensive than others, but still far from affordable to the majority of those who need them.

 

There is no easy solution.

 

[la bam]

29 minutes ago, diskwave said:

Im 63. What exactly do u mean by that....creatively or something else? Not trying to be clever, genuinely would like to know as I have my own view which tends to upset a lot of people.

 

I feel current 'pop' music is not inclusive of everyone anymore. 

 

Its not for a wide range of people like it used to be. 

 

There's no BBC weekly main pop music show to involve everyone. And there wasn't even a Xmas totp. Therefore the charts are just for the under 25s and it's those who choose what's in it with sales and streaming. 

 

The creativity is appalling. Drivel. Same old thing. Worse, it's the same old thing that's been been going on for years. It's stuck in a rut. For example I watch all the old totp on bbc4 on a Friday and 1994 and 1995 sound fresh and new and streets ahead of anything released nowadays in every way. And that's 30 years old. 

 

Melody has disappeared. Musicianship disappeared. Genuine bands are sparse. 

 

There's so much in the minor key or just samples with someone talking over the top. I can't remember the last happy sounding upbeat melodic party track. 

 

It just feels like it's been abandoned to me. Either deliberately or its been allowed to rot. 

Edited January 8 by la bam

[tauzero]

7 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

I don't think anything can be done about treating homes as assets. Put simply, they are assets. That would be true even if they cost a fraction of what they do. Property prices are a simple consequence of demand massively out-stripping supply (in areas where people want or are able to live). People have no choice other than to pay the prices demanded if they want to live a realistic distance from where they work. The only ting that will change that is a massive increase in the supply of housing, but land is in short supply in populous areas, so where do you put the new homes?

 

You start by confiscating the empty homes, at least the long-term ones - https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-empty-homes-are-there-in-the-uk/. Also remove right to buy, or completely reverse the Thatcher approach of ring-fencing the proceeds of RTB so they specifically couldn't be used to build more social housing (still partly in place) and say that any proceeds from RTB must be used to build replacement social housing, at a ratio of at least one RTB bedroom to one replacement social housing bedroom.

[tauzero]

2 hours ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Another problem is the lack of affordable housing - developers of new builds appear to use a very flexible definition of "affordable" and, even when a percentage of the new properties is described as affordable, what it boils down to is that some of the new flats in the build are simply less outrageously expensive than others, but still far from affordable to the majority of those who need them.

 

It's not their definition of "affordable", it's the government's - something like half a million for a London house. Plus a developer can get exemption from supplying the appropriate number of semi-affordable houses by doing a bit of fiddling - https://neweconomics.org/2022/02/how-private-developers-get-out-of-building-affordable-housing

[Burns-bass]

21 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

For those people who absolutely HAVE to create music (or anything else) will always find ways of avoiding the obstacles in their way. IMO anything that discourages the casual dabbler who has heard a Coldplay or Sleaford Mods album and decides to have a go, is a good thing. There are far too many musicians playing in uninspiring bands, and if they want to have a bit of fun in the privacy of a rehearsal room that's fine, but lets not have them clogging up venues, Bandcamp and Spotify.

 

I think that too many posters on here appear to have forgotten what it was like to be in their first originals band. You don't need half the stuff that older musicians seem to to think is absolutely necessary, and many other things are far cheaper in real terms than they were in the 60s, 70s and 80s. If you want to do something badly enough you will work out ways of doing it within your financial constraints.

 

Firstly almost no originals band needs the hassle and expense of PA ownership. All the venues worth playing on the originals circuit have in-house PA systems and if you want to play somewhere different that doesn't it is still possible to hire a system for the gig. In 50 years of playing in originals bands I been two that had their own PA and in both cases that is because we had our own dedicated rehearsal space. The PA was primarily rehearsals and only used for gigs on a handful of occasions.

 

These days everyone thinks they need personal transport but actually you can get a long way (pun intended) without car ownership. In my first few bands hardly anyone could actually drive and if they did, only a couple of them owned cars which were invariable tiny and unreliable. For local gigs we walked or used public transport. For out of town gigs we would hire a car or a van and if none of the band could actually drive we'd have at a least one fan who could and would be happy to drive for us. Remember that all the decent out of town gigs your band would most likely be supporting so all you'd need to take would be instruments amp heads and drum breakables. A four-piece band plus that fits into a typical car. It might not be comfortable but it gets you to the gig and back. If you put on a decent show you'll soon get better gigs with better pay and be able to think about buying a cheap van. I still go to local gigs by taxi. It's cheaper than the running and parking costs for the evening (especially if the gig goes on past midnight) and taxi drivers have no problem stopping in the middle of the street directly outside the venue while I load in/out.

 

As has been said plenty of other aspects of being in a band are much cheaper in real terms than they used to be. Instruments and equipment are a fraction of the price for the same level of quality. In fact unless you buy something dodgy direct from China you are very unlikely to be saddled with the sort of unplayable crap that was all most musicians could afford when starting out right up to the end of the 80s. And recording (if you're not doing it yourself) is ridiculously cheap these days. For my first 3 forays into proper recording studios, we had to watch every minute on the clock otherwise we might not be able to settle the bill at the end, and there were always "hidden extras" like the cost of the tape, both master and multi-track, that you used.

 

Back when I started gigging there were all sorts of free or cheap resources available to those of us who were prepared to put the effort in tracking them down. And they still exist if you can put in the time networking to find them. Four out of the first 5 recording sessions for The Terrortones were absolutely free because they were either part of some training initiative, the studio owner liked us enough to offer us a couple of free sessions when the studio would otherwise be empty, or paid for by the record label who were putting out a compilation album with the band on.

 

Maybe the challenges that face originals bands these days are different to those when I was first recording and gigging, but anyone really committed to getting their music heard will find ways around them. You do have to be living and breathing and dreaming about music 24 hours a day 7 days a week if you want to treat it as anything other than a hobby, but IME that has aways been the case.

 

I’d politely ask who decides what’s good music and who decides what’s derivative rubbish that should be avoided? 
 

All individual artistic expression should be encouraged, even if you don’t like the output. The music you make I simply have no feeling for, but I’d damn near fight anyone for your right to make it and share it. Why deny that to someone else?

 

 

 

 

[Bassfinger]

5 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

It's not their definition of "affordable", it's the government's - something like half a million for a London house. Plus a developer can get exemption from supplying the appropriate number of semi-affordable houses by doing a bit of fiddling - https://neweconomics.org/2022/02/how-private-developers-get-out-of-building-affordable-housing

 

I have cause to be in central/North London recently.  My companion pointed out the fairly mediocre inter-war semis we were driving past and casually told me how they were now selling for more than a million.  I've got a 5/6 bed farmhouse with outbuildings and 11 acres and woukd have significant change from a million were I having to buy it today. The thought of a normal Joe trying to buy one of these Lomdon on a normal wage is frightening, and just unimaginable for a struggling artiste.

[SumOne]

20 minutes ago, Bassfinger said:

 

I have cause to be in central/North London recently.  My companion pointed out the fairly mediocre inter-war semis we were driving past and casually told me how they were now selling for more than a million.  I've got a 5/6 bed farmhouse with outbuildings and 11 acres and woukd have significant change from a million were I having to buy it today. The thought of a normal Joe trying to buy one of these Lomdon on a normal wage is frightening, and just unimaginable for a struggling artiste.

They could live communally in 5/6 bed farmhouse with outbuildings and 11 acres instead of central/North London in that case. (Or live in cheaper London places like Sutton, Croydon, Feltham/Hounslow). 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 9 by SumOne

[tegs07]

9 minutes ago, SumOne said:

They could live communally in 5/6 bed farmhouse with outbuildings and 11 acres instead if central/North London in that case. (Or live in cheaper London places like Sutton, Croydon, Feltham/Hounslow) 

Not sure if the music scene or liberal attitudes are that prevalent in Hereford or Somerset compared to London, Bristol or Brighton. Then there is the complications of actually paying the mortgage, rent, maintenance and energy bills on an isolated rural property.

 

As for any suburb within commuting distance of the capital yes it’s cheaper but not cheap. My move to Bristol was partly due to the cost involved in moving from a flat to a house in the south east and going down to one income. It would have been tough 20 years ago. Now it would be even harder. Whenever a recruitment company offers me work in London I always respond sure if you triple the salary on offer I will consider it. That’s the sum it would take to replicate my life in Bristol (which is fairly modest and achievable only by the luck of timing).

Edited January 9 by tegs07

[Burns-bass]

I fear it was my post that brought property values into it (and for that I apologise).

 

The broader point I was making was that we need to create the social conditions where creativity (in music, art, acting, etc) can be enjoyed by everyone.

 

The alternative is that culture becomes the preserve of the upper classes. Evidence is everywhere. Most of our actors are upper class privately educated, as are our musicians, writers and journalists.

 

As a society we should invest in and support arts at every level. I bang on about working with old people, but seeing how music can transform people is incredible - and we should all be able to enjoy that.

[BigRedX]

11 hours ago, OliverBlackman said:

Genuine question because I’ve not played in originals for quite a few years. But when I was, a lot of local places that booked young bands were closing and only those that required decent followings remained. Do the small, local music venues for original bands still exist?

 

Plenty of them. They're not the same ones from 10-15 years ago, but if your band is sufficiently entertaining you should have no problem getting gigs. 

 

The trick is to make the gigs you do count. That means either financially or those that allow you to grow your audience. I could probably be out gigging with one or the other of the two bands I play in every weekend if we took everything we were offered, but both bands have chosen to be more selective, so at the moment we are sticking to genre-specific supports and "festivals". Having said that we already have 10 gigs booked (and more promised that just need finalising) for this year, all of which are decently paid, and/or will put us in front of a good-sized receptive audience who may not have seen us play before.

[TimR]

1 hour ago, Bassfinger said:

The thought of a normal Joe trying to buy one of these Lomdon on a normal wage is frightening,

 

Nobody buys £1m homes as their first house. The people who live in them didn't pay £1m for them. 

 

I'd suggest most people move up the ladder using inherited money along with equity they have in their previous property. My peers in their 50s bought their first houses in the mid to late 90s for around £120-150k and spent a lot of time and energy doing them up and moving up the ladder as they went.

 

A big 'problem' on London is active retired people 'blocking', living in properties they can just about afford the rates on and who have no reason to be living in 3 and 4 bedroom houses. 

 

Ideally they should be the ones buying second homes and living off rental from their 1st property. Which I suspect is the case and a lot of these 'evil landlords' are just people trying not to lose money. 

[SumOne]

I think it's quite a big assumption to say life is worse/everything is relatively more expensive for musicialns (or anyone) now than it was in the past.

 

It's a bit of a media thing to keep banging on about 'cost of living crisis', yes - many things have shot up in price, but one of the worries for the Bank of England is wages are also rising quickly and combining to cause longer-term inflation. There's always some sort of 'crisis' wheter it's 2008 banking crisis, early 90's recession, 1987 'Black Monday', late 1978/79 winter of discontent (look at the interest rate rises in those years compared to now), it seems to happen every decade for a few years.

 

Some things, like car insurance have definitely relatively increased. But the flipside is there are now services like Uber and hourly car/van rentals. And if car ownership is so unobtainable now compared to the good ol' days then how to explain this:

 

"The proportion of households without a car has fallen from 48% in 1971 (based on the Census) to 22% in 2021. In 1985 to 1987, there were 8 cars for every 10 households in Great Britain; in 2021 there were 12 cars for every 10 households in England" https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-survey-2021/national-travel-survey-2021-household-car-availability-and-trends-in-car-trips#:~:text=Household car access,-Chart 7%3A Percentage&text=The proportion of households without,every 10 households in England.

 

Unemployment is relatively low (especially compared with times like the early 80's). House prices are relatively much higher than historically, but that's partly due to what are still historically low interest rates making the high borrowing possible:

 

 

I dunno, I think by-and-large things are not worse nowadays - just different.  Yes, people on lower incomes can't afford to live in what are now fancy areas, they might have to move out to un-glamourous suburbs, but for many jobs you probably don't need to commute most days of the week, it's different.  Islington or central Bristol probably aren't the place for a young aspiring musician on low wages to live nowadays, perhaps they'd need to live in places like Sutton, or Newport (I mean, hasn't this always been the way? Haight-Ashbury wasn't a fancy part of San Francisco in the 1970's - being cheap is why artists moved there).  

[la bam]

2 hours ago, Burns-bass said:

I’d politely ask who decides what’s good music and who decides what’s derivative rubbish that should be avoided? 
 

All individual artistic expression should be encouraged, even if you don’t like the output. The music you make I simply have no feeling for, but I’d damn near fight anyone for your right to make it and share it. Why deny that to someone else?

 

 

 

 

 

I guess that's one of the things I'm getting at. I'm not bothered whether or not I like something, but pop music used to be week in week out a mixture of pop, disco, rock, metal, reggae, love songs, party songs, dance, indie, world music, novelty, and new styles breaking through, a whole plethora of music. 

 

I genuinely haven't looked at the charts, but I'd bet they were nowhere near as diverse as a 70s 80s 90s chart. 

 

People's creativity and output has been stifled, even suppressed. Mainly because it's not financially viable to practice, gig, perform, tour, get your voice heard and make an income off the back of it, when starting from scratch. 

 

Therefore I believe it's becoming more and more of the same old boys club, producers, artistes and performers, controlling what music is out there, and financial restraints make it hard to break that chain. 

 

Unfortunately as its been like this for so long it's become the norm and people have just accepted it. 

[tegs07]

7 minutes ago, la bam said:

 

I guess that's one of the things I'm getting at. I'm not bothered whether or not I like something, but pop music used to be week in week out a mixture of pop, disco, rock, metal, reggae, love songs, party songs, dance, indie, world music, novelty, and new styles breaking through, a whole plethora of music. 

 

I genuinely haven't looked at the charts, but I'd bet they were nowhere near as diverse as a 70s 80s 90s chart. 

 

People's creativity and output has been stifled, even suppressed. Mainly because it's not financially viable to practice, gig, perform, tour, get your voice heard and make an income off the back of it, when starting from scratch. 

 

Therefore I believe it's becoming more and more of the same old boys club, producers, artistes and performers, controlling what music is out there, and financial restraints make it hard to break that chain. 

 

Unfortunately as its been like this for so long it's become the norm and people have just accepted it. 

For all its evils Spotify introduces me to great music constantly. There are new, exciting and diverse artists out there. The mainstream media just churns out processed meat, the masses seem to like it, but there are alternatives out there.

[hill76]

On 07/01/2024 at 11:20, Bolo said:

Was it much different in the late 70s-early 80s? 

 

Yes - housing costs were *much* cheaper. The average house cost was 2-3 times average income, now it's more like 10 times. Rents follow house prices. The current cost of living crisis is an extra financial load, with our super-rich PM allowing energy companies to continue to profiteer off the Ukraine war and milk the domestic energy market.

Edited January 9 by hill76

[TimR]

18 minutes ago, la bam said:

genuinely haven't looked at the charts, but I'd bet they were nowhere near as diverse as a 70s 80s 90s chart. 

 

8 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

For all its evils Spotify introduces me to great music constantly. There are new, exciting and diverse artists out there. The mainstream media just churns out processed meat, the masses seem to like it, but there are alternatives out there.

 

 

It's the algorithms of social media that determine what you are exposed to.

 

If you don't actively look for new music, the algorithms will just serve you up what it thinks you like. 

 

There's tons of new music out there,it does get more difficult to wade through the nonsense. 

[Burns-bass]

22 minutes ago, la bam said:

 

I guess that's one of the things I'm getting at. I'm not bothered whether or not I like something, but pop music used to be week in week out a mixture of pop, disco, rock, metal, reggae, love songs, party songs, dance, indie, world music, novelty, and new styles breaking through, a whole plethora of music. 

 

I genuinely haven't looked at the charts, but I'd bet they were nowhere near as diverse as a 70s 80s 90s chart. 

 

People's creativity and output has been stifled, even suppressed. Mainly because it's not financially viable to practice, gig, perform, tour, get your voice heard and make an income off the back of it, when starting from scratch. 

 

Therefore I believe it's becoming more and more of the same old boys club, producers, artistes and performers, controlling what music is out there, and financial restraints make it hard to break that chain. 

 

Unfortunately as its been like this for so long it's become the norm and people have just accepted it. 

I’m 100% with you. I was actually responding to RedX who said he wanted old man indie bands and middle aged rockers to get out of the way. I felt that wasn’t fair.