re: How did mainstream country music get to where it is today?

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What happened here?

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As far as the male singers/bands, Nickleback is the answer you're looking for; they all sound like a country version of Nickleback

It has no soul. It's purely formula driven

Nashville/corporate took control of the airwaves.

We were told radio was dying but it's alive and well, just in the hands of a few.

See the terrible, redundant pop music forced upon us as well.

Some of you guys insist that rock must sound like Elvis and country must sound like Waylon. If anybody is different, they are just crap. All genres change over time. Take a second to listen to them all.

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Record labels (Bid Machine, etc.) hire "songwriters", stick them in cubicles, and give them a song quota to meet.

They pick the songs that sound most like the latest hit, hire "singers" to record them and shite out "albums".

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This. The music industry never really recovered from how the internet changed consumer habits. Long gone are the days when music for record labels was monetized via album sales. When the revenue stream collapsed, the industry saw massive consolidation and partnered with radio to survive. Now, the vast majority of radio and tv stations, record labels, and ISP's are owned by less than 2 dozen total companies. In radio airplay, it's more like 3. The record labels are no longer independent from radio and tv, but are subsidiaries. And radio and tv are no longer independent of ISP's or cable providers wireless companies or promoters of music, or music magazines, or music blogs, or websites, or social media.

Basically, the labels are just a cog in the massive entertainment/information leviathan controlled by an ever shrinking handful of companies.

When the record labels went into this new environment where revenue was shrinking rapidly, they went ultra-conservative. Gone are the days when record labels sought out talent to then mold, mentor, and market. No, unless one is already connected, they wait for the talent to come to them, already self-sufficient with a fan base and music and everything already done for the record label.

In the meantime, they keep staffs of songwriters and studio bands. They record the same formula-driven music to promote (their parent companies own all of the promotion apparatus that tell people if something is a hit or not) and find a marketable face to sing it.

Their music is centered, not to find a niche, but to create a demographic. They're not pandering, they're indoctrinating. They are trying to create social groups that all subscribe to the same trends and norms and create a lifestyle bundle for them. That way, each consumer can conveniently be fitted for their societal box and be told exactly what products they should want.

For example: you are in white country music male block, therefor your status symbol is a brand new chevy with a lift kit. You must drink fireball whisky and wear baseball caps poured into Solo brand cups.

If you are in hipster block E, you must wear birkenstocks, drive a prius, and drink the approved regional craft beer.

That's what it's all about. They're not trying to make "good" music, they're trying to sell products. Music is simply their indoctrination method. They have hijacked the means of production and distribution and bastardized it to those ends while laughing all of the way to the bank.

However, the streaming revolution and the ever-growing indy musician market is starting to show serious cracks in the leviathan's facade. People are now creating their own radio stations. Bands are recording their own music and mapping their own tours. Because the labels now expect new acts that they didn't create to come to them fully self-sufficient, artists are realizing that the record labels really do not provide that much of a service. Those labels are now just a scheme to get the copyrights of peoples' music for streaming and licensing purposes. Thanks to technology, musicians are now more able to reach their target audience directly, promote their music themselves, tour, record, perform all of the duties of a classic record label, themselves.

It truly is a fascinating time to be living in. The music industry will change even more over the next 10 years than it did in the past 20.

Better than your shitty band

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kingbob

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This could not be more correct. Spot on

And country hasn't changed since then. Luke Bryan and fgl are the only acts that are innovating the genre any more

People on this board always go on about Stapleton and while his voice is ok I don't even think he's rapped on a track yet

Hate 'em or love 'em, FGL, Luke Bryan, and Sam Hunt are definitely innovators. However, not all inventions are improvements.