Royal Blood and "Real" Music

roberty · June 2023

darthed1981 said:

PotentialDonkey said:

I think the problem now is volume.
There is too much choice.
I look at the iTunes Charts and the preorder lists and I am regularly finding there’s really only a couple of things I like the sound of coming out or a new album by an already established band coming… most of it I’m scratching my head going “who the fuck are Travis Collins, Janelle Monáe, Billie Eilish and alt.?!”

...

I like Royal Blood. IDGAF about the singer having a dummy spit. The Gallagher brothers have probably had more dummy spits between them than they own pairs of undies. I don’t claim to be an Oasis fan. I like some of their songs, save for the last album they released which I thought was bloody brilliant. Talk about going out with a bang sure there’ll be some who disagree, but who cares?!

There's two points in the first bit. As ICBM said there has always been volume, but yes, 60,000 songs per day are uploaded to Spotify. In one lifetime there is no way you could listen to once, let alone learn to love even 100 songs per day, and indeed even in a world with 7 billion people, most of that 60,000 goes unlistened to by anyone but the band and their mums.

The music was still made before, BTW, it just sat on cassettes and CDs in the musicians garages, now anyone who can play with a PC with a bit of practice can meet the flexible minimum standards to upload.

If the net effect is that the bastards in suits who acted as gatekeepers while some coked up drummer made the GDP of a small African nation are removed from the industry, so much the better.

Ultimately the power of back catalogue is as much nostalgia as it is genuine era defining quality, for most people looking back, a few greatest hits will do for almost every band.

As for Royal Blood, totally agree, looking like a pillock and behaving unprofessionally aren't exactly going to win them fans, but it doesn't make them bad if you liked them before.

The distribution of music has been ultimately democratised. If everyone has a voice, no one does. Not that the record industry was an unwavering force for good, but so much revenue that would support music goes straight into the pockets of streaming platforms, just as all the advertising revenue that used to support journalism now goes mostly to Google. Tech companies that aggregate and surface other people's work are even less interested in the relative merit of young composers. Most people don't care what's in their music but I feel like they could be more generously enriched if the mainstream wasn't so saturated with lazy four-chord diatonic writing. My old man rant for the day!

roberty · June 2023

Where does that leave Royal Blood? I don't know if they could tell you what a secondary dominant is, but I know where I'd put my money

darthed1981 · June 2023

roberty said:

The distribution of music has been ultimately democratised. If everyone has a voice, no one does. Not that the record industry was an unwavering force for good, but so much revenue that would support music goes straight into the pockets of streaming platforms,

That's not accurate - Spotify gives 70% of it's revenue directly to the labels, a higher percentage of sales value than the average retailer back in the day, none of the streaming providers make money from music streaming. Spotify is largely owned by the major labels which is why it survives without the backing of a mega-corporation like Apple or Amazon.

The villain of the piece has ALWAYS been the major labels. I'm not sure what you mean by when "if everyone has a voice, no one does" but you seem to mean "if there are no gatekeepers - then there is no quality control...", but that's based on the false assumption that overall, music was better in the past than it is now. The charts have always had at least as many Freddie and the Dreamers and Gerry and the Pacemakers as they have had Beatles and Stones.

What you had in the past that you don't now, is single acts, chosen ones if you like, riding to the absolute top of the pile purely because of the economics of the industry. It's a lot cheaper to push the stink out of one act than it is to push dozens. The album cycle meant that you didn't have to convince people that Band Y was great.... because Band X are back, and still good, buy this CD the lot of you.

It meant all the revenue was always concentrated in a handful of artists. What this DID mean that in the 90s for example, the labels signed a shit-tonne of indie rock acts who sounded like Suede, Blur and Oasis - brilliant if you liked those bands, not so much if you didn't. Same applied back in the 70s - a lot of very similar sounding acts making what we now call "classic rock", or in the 80s with "hair metal".

As with the James Hargeaves video I linked to in my OP - no, you are very unlikely to get another Oasis (haha good thing to go the people who don't like Oasis harrrharrr...) or even probably another Arctic Monkeys (or if you were a NWOBHM fan another Iron Maiden, or another GNR if you were the right age, etc. etc.) but what you WILL get is lots of musicians working to give their fans great product, not as high-and-mighty gods of their scene puffing big mountains of cocaine, but as actual talented individuals and their "1000 true fans".

It's a much, much healthier industry. How long will the majors last? Not sure, possibly forever, but as much as I like some of their recent efforts, they will never be where they were, it all changed with Napster...

roberty · June 2023

darthed1981 said:

roberty said:

The distribution of music has been ultimately democratised. If everyone has a voice, no one does. Not that the record industry was an unwavering force for good, but so much revenue that would support music goes straight into the pockets of streaming platforms,

That's not accurate - Spotify gives 70% of it's revenue directly to the labels, a higher percentage of sales value than the average retailer back in the day, none of the streaming providers make money from music streaming. Spotify is largely owned by the major labels which is why it survives without the backing of a mega-corporation like Apple or Amazon.

The villain of the piece has ALWAYS been the major labels. I'm not sure what you mean by when "if everyone has a voice, no one does" but you seem to mean "if there are no gatekeepers - then there is no quality control...", but that's based on the false assumption that overall, music was better in the past than it is now. The charts have always had at least as many Freddie and the Dreamers and Gerry and the Pacemakers as they have had Beatles and Stones.

What you had in the past that you don't now, is single acts, chosen ones if you like, riding to the absolute top of the pile purely because of the economics of the industry. It's a lot cheaper to push the stink out of one act than it is to push dozens. The album cycle meant that you didn't have to convince people that Band Y was great.... because Band X are back, and still good, buy this CD the lot of you.

It meant all the revenue was always concentrated in a handful of artists. What this DID mean that in the 90s for example, the labels signed a shit-tonne of indie rock acts who sounded like Suede, Blur and Oasis - brilliant if you liked those bands, not so much if you didn't. Same applied back in the 70s - a lot of very similar sounding acts making what we now call "classic rock", or in the 80s with "hair metal".

As with the James Hargeaves video I linked to in my OP - no, you are very unlikely to get another Oasis (haha good thing to go the people who don't like Oasis harrrharrr...) or even probably another Arctic Monkeys (or if you were a NWOBHM fan another Iron Maiden, or another GNR if you were the right age, etc. etc.) but what you WILL get is lots of musicians working to give their fans great product, not as high-and-mighty gods of their scene puffing big mountains of cocaine, but as actual talented individuals and their "1000 true fans".

It's a much, much healthier industry. How long will the majors last? Not sure, possibly forever, but as much as I like some of their recent efforts, they will never be where they were, it all changed with Napster...

Point taken. I guess I'm talking about the state of things in general, industries being replaced by microtransactional gig economies by tech monopolies. Spotify would work better as a giant A&R desk if there was more revenue to pay journalists. Also recording studios had to close, engineering talent was lost, indie labels folded, the little guys suffered as well

darthed1981 · June 2023

roberty said:

Point taken. I guess I'm talking about the state of things in general, industries being replaced by microtransactional gig economies by tech monopolies. Spotify would work better as a giant A&R desk if there was more revenue to pay journalists. Also recording studios had to close, engineering talent was lost, indie labels folded, the little guys suffered as well

Oh I remember the carnage around Napster, a couple of little bands I liked got dropped as little labels folded, I remember Nude Records who were home to Suede going and they were far more.

It's worth watching that James Hargreaves video in the OP because he gives one of the most understandable explanations yet of why everyone embraced "free" music so readily. We all knew we were being ripped off, so when the chance came to get it all for free... we jumped at it.

I like buying physical media of my favourite artists, because I'm old and weird enough to like having the "stuff" and to support them, but once again, the big labels take the piss. When I first queued up for Recordstore Day back in 2019, I bought about five albums, doubles mostly for between 22 and 26 quid... this year, no stock but the one they did have... £40 for a double album of Blur B-sides... no justification any more in capacity or cost of material... sheer, unadulterated gouging.

roberty · June 2023

darthed1981 said:

I'm not sure what you mean by when "if everyone has a voice, no one does" but you seem to mean "if there are no gatekeepers - then there is no quality control..."

Not making a judgement here, just describing a situation. The pre-internet era was about seeking things out, and the digital era is about filtering out the noise. It can sort of have the opposite effect, where the number of options are overwhelming so people just reach for what they know is safe (or let the algorithm decide, which is well and good but it'll never go out on a limb because it saw something exciting)

distressed · June 2023

roberty said:

Not making a judgement here, just describing a situation. The pre-internet era was about seeking things out, and the digital era is about filtering out the noise. It can sort of have the opposite effect, where the number of options are overwhelming so people just reach for what they know is safe (or let the algorithm decide, which is well and good but it'll never go out on a limb because it saw something exciting)

Maybe, but in the old days, unless you were picked by some major label A&R guy, you were nonexistent. Imagine how many good or great bands just didn't made it because of that.

darthed1981 · June 2023

roberty said:

darthed1981 said:

I'm not sure what you mean by when "if everyone has a voice, no one does" but you seem to mean "if there are no gatekeepers - then there is no quality control..."

Not making a judgement here, just describing a situation. The pre-internet era was about seeking things out, and the digital era is about filtering out the noise. It can sort of have the opposite effect, where the number of options are overwhelming so people just reach for what they know is safe (or let the algorithm decide, which is well and good but it'll never go out on a limb because it saw something exciting)

Could be argued as well that's what opens the door...

Traditional model, Royal Blood, come out on stage at a gig you don't want to do, you aren't unconditionally loved for simply turning up doing WORTHY ROCK MUSIC, so spit your dummy and be a bit of a stroppy little tart. He might have been putting it on for marketing, but he was probably sincerely put out...

Say you are Mary Spender, James Hargreaves or Violet Orlandi... by building relationships with their viewers on Youtube over time they gradually single themselves out from the thousands of other artists and get a following, the "1000 true fans" model.

So you aren't wrong, the nice experience I had as well in record shops is really long gone, but these days artists stand out in different ways.

You've made me terribly nostalgic for the racks of singles for £1 in Spinadisc in Northampton - discovered Travelers Tune by OCS from there, Late in the Day by Supergrass, still got my £1 CD singles of Stand By Me and All Around The World by Oasis... ahhh, the past

roberty · June 2023

I still think the writing in mainstream music has been dumbed down, because the intangible quality of good writing is hard to quantify and the revenue is a slither of what it was. Why pay a writer when you can put a top line on something a producer has made. Also it is easier to tell a band to change key than it is to program a key change

darthed1981 · June 2023

roberty said:

I still think the writing in mainstream music has been dumbed down, because the intangible quality of good writing is hard to quantify and the revenue is a slither of what it was. Why pay a writer when you can put a top line on something a producer has made

Songwriters are currently fighting the major labels for a fairer share of streaming revenues, as are artists, so something is certainly rotten in the state of Denmark, for sure. The biggest problem is that your tenner a month is not distributed based on who YOU listen to, but who EVERYONE does, so if you listen to all independent artists, 95% of your money still goes to the majors...

... it's really amazing they get away with it.

I can really only link to the James Hargreaves video again, he's put together a really good summary of what's happening, which hopefully will benefit creatives across the board...

Philly_Q · June 2023

@darthed1981 it feels like that's the first time you've mentioned Mary Spender for a while!

darthed1981 · June 2023

Philly_Q said:

@darthed1981 it feels like that's the first time you've mentioned Mary Spender for a while!

Sorry - but she is a great example of making a living from the "new" music industry.

Philly_Q · June 2023

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

@darthed1981 it feels like that's the first time you've mentioned Mary Spender for a while!

Sorry - but she is a great example of making a living from the "new" music industry.

No apology needed! I don't have to watch her videos. And I don't.

Cranky · June 2023

The binary of rock-pop is false. Rock music is only another form of pop music. It always has been.

Good article, btw.

NelsonP · June 2023

What I dislike a lot about the algorithms is how they just lead you deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, rather than broadening your horizons. Most of the recommendation engines seem to recommend slightly less good versions of what I've already told it I like.

The spotify app seems almost unintelligible to me, and I spend most of my time on it trying to think up creative ways to tell it to find music I actually want to listen to, rather than the shit it throws at me. Any tips greatly appreciated!

It also doesn't help that the integration with Alexa is crap. This means that the whole family end up playing stuff in our house on my Spotify account. Despite our diverse musical tastes, it still rarely points me in the direction of any new music I want to listen to. I greatly preferred HMV, with their listening stations and curated 'content'.

distressed · June 2023

NelsonP said:

The spotify app seems almost unintelligible to me, and I spend most of my time on it trying to think up creative ways to tell it to find music I actually want to listen to, rather than the shit it throws at me. Any tips greatly appreciated!

I try to limit it to -so to say- more leftfield and obscure stuff I like. Because If I throw in some Hendrix, Cream or such stuff, I would end up with Eagles, DP/Rainbow and the likes mixed into random playlists. So I use Youtube when I'm into listening to classics.

Philly_Q · June 2023

NelsonP said:

What I dislike a lot about the algorithms is how they just lead you deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, rather than broadening your horizons. Most of the recommendation engines seem to recommend slightly less good versions of what I've already told it I like.

The spotify app seems almost unintelligible to me, and I spend most of my time on it trying to think up creative ways to tell it to find music I actually want to listen to, rather than the shit it throws at me. Any tips greatly appreciated!

Spotify works great for me. But maybe I like rabbit holes and don't want to broaden my horizons.

My only complaint would be that if I've listened to an album by Band X and it moves on to a playlist starting with Band Y, it's usually the same track by Band Y that it played a previous time.

darthed1981 · June 2023

NelsonP said:

It also doesn't help that the integration with Alexa is crap. This means that the whole family end up playing stuff in our house on my Spotify account.

That's nothing to do with the integration with Alexa, it's how the accounts work, one account, one user.

I actually went down a road of using a Spotify family account for the Alexas in the house so I could stop the kids screwing up my account.

To make Spotify more like a traditional collection, add the albums you want to your library, you can have a collection to browse through then.

ALR · June 2023

It's not the first time a completely inappropriate act has been booked for an event. I can still remember seeing U2 at Leeds Roundhay Park on the PopMart tour in 97 and along with with 60000 other people enduring a DJ Set by Howie B that just seemed to piss everyone off. During the U2 set, Bono thanked Cast (big cheer), and Howie B (silence). In the case of Royal Blood, the blame must be shared between the band management and whoever booked them. What either party was thinking that that crowd in particular would like that band, I don't know.

The Guardian article was typically condescending, but did make some good points. That whole rock scene has been as artificial as pop for years, but they've been on the losing side since the decine of landfill indie, emo and Nu-Metal 15-20 years ago. Occasionally I tune into Planet Rock and hear some of the awful modern rock acts and I'm not surprised it's died - wannabe attention seekers churning out lowest common denominator budget value dirge with the connections to get exposure. It has even less authenticity than the current pop scene, but as things stand they're two sides of the same coin.

darthed1981 · June 2023

Philly_Q said:
My only complaint would be that if I've listened to an album by Band X and it moves on to a playlist starting with Band Y, it's usually the same track by Band Y that it played a previous time.

Yeah the radio function needs a little work.

Again AI can probably help - scouring fan pages and tiering tracks by each band, tier 1 being "greatest hits", which it knows anyway, "tier 2" being fan favourites, "tier 3" everything else except excluding sillly stuff (you don't want a 3 second spoken word intro on a playlist etc.)

Then when selecting an artist, you playlist the artists tracks overall on a sliding scale by tier, and introduce more 2nd and 3rd tier as you "guess" that your listener likes the band (as they dont skip).

Jfingers · June 2023

I tend not to use streaming services for my music. While I have fairly eclectic tastes my core go to is something that I tend to describe as "music made by former punk rockers who after having substance abuse issues have turned to country or folk, and Dylan and Young"

I watched the full video shared above and it raised a question for me.

Didn't Crass and Dead Moon do that decades ago?

Are they rich? I'm not sure that huge fame and wealth is a good thing.

Meanwhile making and/or enjoying music is a very good thing indeed. My fave classical composer is

Antonín Dvořák

PotentialDonkey · June 2023

Ah I see we have descended into the old “music streaming service comparison trap”.

I just use that Macintosh music application, Apple Music or iBands or something whatever it is because it’s just there and it just appears on my iTelephone at the same time and sometimes I find it in other places too. Quite wonderful.

That has its quirks. Just wait until you want to listen to something it doesn’t know! Oh my!

I did once upon a time indulge in that spotty fly program but I found once that Apple thing came out it was just seamless to go back to (being of “the iPod generation” where one used to “rip” CDs or buy songs from iTunes and store them on that little nugget!)

Now I sound like (and feel like) an old fart.

crunchman · June 2023

roberty said:

Where does that leave Royal Blood? I don't know if they could tell you what a secondary dominant is, but I know where I'd put my money

I doubt BB King knew what a secondary dominant is.

Philly_Q · June 2023

crunchman said:

roberty said:

Where does that leave Royal Blood? I don't know if they could tell you what a secondary dominant is, but I know where I'd put my money

I doubt BB King knew what a secondary dominant is.

Isn't it something to do with gimp outfits?

darthed1981 · June 2023

Jfingers said:
Antonín Dvořák

Gives me an idea for another thread "post your favourite classical composer in a big font"

Dvorak is brilliant, but I prefer

Edward Elgar

PotentialDonkey · June 2023

darthed1981 said:

Jfingers said:
Antonín Dvořák

Gives me an idea for another thread "post your favourite classical composer in a big font"

Dvorak is brilliant, but I prefer

Edward Elgar

I thought DVORAK was just a keyboard layout. Bummer. You learn something new every day I suppose

MagicPigDetective · June 2023

Hard to say if any music is objectively better. To me, music is something that creates an emotional response... some positive and some negative, which will differ for everyone. Personally, mainstream pop does not do much for me, however, it does for many others, different strokes for different folks.

I don't see much point in getting hung up on the demise of rock in the mainstream. It's still about, and there are so many bands out there if you go looking for it, just that it's more fragmented and a niche market. With some digging, I can find some incredible metal bands from all over the world that do something for me hardly anyone knows about apart from fans of those genres etc. As long as people love making rock/metal, and there are people to listen to, it will continue. If it's underground, so be it.

On Sunday night, I was in Manchester. While tens of thousands were enjoying Coldplay at the Etihad, I and 500 others were experiencing one hell of a heavy performance by sludge masters The Melvins. Everyone was happy!

Oh, and the support band was Taipei Houston (Lars Ulrich's sons, which I didn't know at the time). Same bass and drum two piece set up as Royal Blood..... and far better imho!

roberty · June 2023

darthed1981 said:

The biggest problem is that your tenner a month is not distributed based on who YOU listen to, but who EVERYONE does, so if you listen to all independent artists, 95% of your money still goes to the majors...

It sounds silly but this is a problem that blockchain could solve, with revenue distributed on an open ledger. I think there is a good case for Web3 content delivery. Tokenised economies could be a halfway house between service subscriptions and media ownership. I'm not a crypto evangelist but I think there are some legit use cases

roberty · June 2023

ALR said:

Occasionally I tune into Planet Rock and hear some of the awful modern rock acts and I'm not surprised it's died - wannabe attention seekers churning out lowest common denominator budget value dirge with the connections to get exposure. It has even less authenticity than the current pop scene, but as things stand they're two sides of the same coin.

My feeling is that a lot of modern rock and metal is 'rock' first and 'music' second. It all seems very put on

In the interest of balance I still see stuff that genuinely excites me, like this:

roberty · June 2023

crunchman said:

roberty said:

Where does that leave Royal Blood? I don't know if they could tell you what a secondary dominant is, but I know where I'd put my money

I doubt BB King knew what a secondary dominant is.

BB King really knew his shit

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