Music in 70's and 80's

Not near the degree that having music people trying to make money by running a record company instead of business people trying to make money by running a record company had.

In my opinion, there were 3 big factors for why that era put out so much good stuff:

1. Record labels had margins: selling records actually made enough money to cover the cost of recording and then some if a band was even moderately successful. As a result, labels would invest serious amounts of money in marketing and managing a band. While bands grossed money from their live shows, the shows were meant to promote the album sales that really made money. After Napster, pirating, and later streaming took over, these margins disappeared even as the costs of recording plummeted. Now, the recording exists to promote the live show because album sales and streaming royalties are almost nothing.

2. Record labels took risks: because they had margins, they could afford to miss on a few bands to find a hit. Record labels at the time basically assumed that they really didn’t know what would sell. So, they took risks and gambles on experimental bands. Some of these bands flopped, but some of them really took off. By the 90’s, you had labels employing younger people who “knew what was cool” and passed on bands that didn’t fit a label’s “sound”. Labels developed identities for the bands they signed. In the 70’s and 80’s, that wasn’t so much the case as record labels throwing darts at the wall to see what would stick.

3. The barriers to entry for the music industry were crazy high. Due to the rudimentary technology, quality recording was expensive. You had to save up tons of money to get studio time as an unsigned band. You also had to be a really talented player, especially a drummer, to record a record. So many bands had to fire their drummer in the studio because they couldn’t keep well-enough time. Today, anyone can release a record, and there’s so much being released that it’s almost impossible to find undiscovered stuff you like. There’s simply too much information to process. Back then, the great cost filter whittled the field down into a number of artists that was much more manageable and kept quality more consistent. Eventually, this began sacrificing innovation as labels became more calcified, but early on there was a great balance between experimenting and filtering out the unready.

Born in 1966 which put impressionable me at 10 years old in 1976 and was blown away with the stadium rock bands, bowie, floyd, ELO, cars, alan parsons project etc etc then i turned 16 in 1982 and was completely ALL IN on the early 80s sound. Every day another amazing band came out of nowhere with a fresh sound and optimistic outlook.

"left of the dial" TYFYS KNLU and KLSU

now this old man yells at clouds when my 16yo daughter listens to a non-stop diet of hiphop/rap that is nothing but F and N bombs. yeah, i'm looking out my window as we speak and shaking my fist.

quote:

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Bose, Klipsch, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, Fischer, Technics, Harmon-Kardon

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Soundesign

I think it's the way we consume music that screwed us.

in the 60s- early 90s, bands had to put out more truly great music, because consumers had to buy entire albums. So the Albums with the most good stuff sold the most copies.

and that competition drove everyone to be even better.
and radios would play everything, because everybody had different favorites.

then we got to the download age.
and we got to the point where autotune and computers etc. made appearances even more important than talent.
and you could just listen to 1 song however often you liked.

so now people only know that one song, FM radio plays in on endless loop, artists quit even trying to produce entire Albums in favor of landing one hit.

now being controversial sells better than being any good.
so songs like WAP get hits on Spotify, YouTube, etc.
so execs think that's what people want. and we get more of it.

quote:

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Bose, Klipsch, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, Fischer, Technics, Harmon-Kardon

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Crutchfield magazine

who remembers this?