The views expressed are the opinions of the participants.
In this episode, my friend Jim Barber and I unravel the tangled web of policy, corruption, and greed that led to the collapse of the music business in the late 1990s.
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The older you get, the more you realize that everything is corrupt. Every system, industry, corporation, etc. and it's disheartening.
Exactly.
This was my realisation when I was 20. Growing up and working just gave me the examples as to HOW it was corrupt.
“Everything” isn’t corrupt… but capitalism rewards corruption, so almost everything that embraces capitalism either starts out corrupt or eventually ends up corrupted.
@@kierenmacmillan4854 Since the 80s, market fundamentalism has taken over society, so lots more things are corrupt now.
@@kierenmacmillan4854 capitalism and monopolies are the exact opposite. What we are experiencing is the merger or state and corporate power from a philosophical sense. Everything seems corrupt because we’ve slipped into a fascist world not a free market world.
“Rick Beato is not a team player” is exactly why today he has nearly 4 million subscribers and is admired by his musical heroes and viewers from all over the world. It’s his Integrity and love for music.
Well said man, well said !
Yeah we like Rick but just because somebody has followers and subscribers doesn't mean jack s***. Look around social media there are more weasels than decent people
That statement made me laugh. There's only one other channel that is as honest and forthright as Rick's when it comes to the wisdom from experience of music, Rock music, instruments, production, recording and "the business" - you name it Rick covers it. And you hit it on the head with his number of KZhead subscribers. That speaks louder than words! Good comment. Or maybe the "Team" sucks, and nobody with any sense would want to be a part of it. lol
Jeah, but the other guys are richer so they are obviously better and know more than him. $=inteligence and quality. Accountants rule dude! :-)
The two have nothing to do with each other...
And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is FINALLY the answer to the ancient question: “why does today’s music sounds like crap?”
They're too lazy to think of new ideas.
It's all computer no live instruments
Mainstream songs are usually about sex and love. I miss being in California in the 80s when bands like Metallica were singing about war, religion, social issues. The powers that be don't want us thinking about society's problems.
You can switch "music sounds" for many other things and the answer will always be the same.
Just as the book: ' Food Inc.,' which tells the beginning of GMO foods (Monsanto and Roundup resistant soybeans) and the ability to "patent life", Bill Clinton adds another notch to his belt with the Telecommunication Act. Both have a far-reaching negative effects on American Life and culture. It's true, Democrats ruin everything!
I worked in FM Rock Radio in the 80's as CD's were coming out. When I started out, I could choose 20mins of tunes every hour. By the time I quit, I had no choice. The playlist came from a computer in Houston, timed to the second.
Wow crazy. Out of curiousity, what year did you quit?
I remember going into our local radio station when I was kid in Cub Scouts in the 80's. Small city. Kokomo, Indiana. They were so happy about a new computer they got that they showed us that picked the songs for them, instead of a DJ doing it. Even at the age of 10, I hated what they were telling me. Years later, I became a musician and was in a band that was being looked at by Geffen, Immortal, and Maverick. The band that was helping us to get noticed was called Transmatic, and they told us insider horror stories I will NEVER FORGET!! They address some of what they told us in this video. I am so glad these guys have the balls to lay it all out on the table. The things they are saying were the exact things I told other people but was laughed at because of. This video is TOTAL vindication for me!! Lol
So here's my question, if this is the case then what is the point of having a DJ at all? why do they have any humans working at the radio station if it's all computerized now?
Radio personalities were a big thing. Not so much anymore, since the internet There are many stations that don't use on-air personalities.@@trophyscene5015
@@trophyscene5015 they've got very few, most of the commercials are national too. The only reason for a DJ now is for local add reads & to make sure the equipment doesn't break down
This corruption has gotten into and ruined everything. Music, journalism, politics, education, science, medicine ... well ... everything.
Everything wasn't done for making the most money out of something back before 30 years ago. I could see this country going to hell artistically in the late 80's and then through the 90's with this awful grunge garbage and mostly annoying Rap. Through the sixties,seventies and first half of the 80's there was a tremendous amount of great Soul,Rock and Pop constantly on, and people took it for granted. Now that a generation has been raised on the aforementioned. Almost all of it is completely disposable.
It's neoliberasim, baby. The regulations were ment to prevent big money to buy off all the small entreprenours and rise prices. It's been the same in my country too since mid-nineties. Two or three big companies rule the market in every sector that used to be regulated or publicly owned.
Private equity firms…
Marxism, Progressivism, Wokism whatever you callitism is the cause but I agree about greed. @@treignsinblood
"This corruption" in everything else is very different, and did not all happen for the same reasons. Corporatization is a huge part of much of it, but not all.
I worked as a producer for a music channel back in 2006. One I day suggested to the channel director that we create a request rock show amidst the babble of the commercial stupidity. He said no and summarized it with one sentence: "People don't tell us what's cool, we tell people what's cool." That's when I knew real music was dead.
The very reason why Rap music has turned into Crap music. 😢😢
it's always been like that. People just age out of being the target demographic.
Real music isn't dead at all. It's just completely ignored by the mainstream corporate gate keepers.
That violates the law of top 40.
I’ve had conversations with program directors in the radio market I live in, a top 15 radio market by size. They all had this attitude. Somehow it’s just desserts that they’ve orchestrated their own irrelevance: hardly anyone I know listens to radio and it’s roundly mocked for its lameness.
Remember waiting for a record to drop…hitting the record store with excitement, pulling the album out of the sleeve at home, carefully dropping the needle, sitting or lying in the floor, and studying the artwork and upcoming songs on the first listen. IT WAS SUCH A COOL EXPERIENCE….alone or with friends. Man that was a long time ago.
Coming out of the late 70’s into the mid 80’s, nothing was more exciting than waiting for the new Rush albums. You knew it was gonna be different than the last one but never expected what they came up with. Yes, devouring everything written on the sleeve and cover. Used to know the address of Mercury Records in Chicago by heart! Magic days today’s kids will never know. SAD
As a Judas Priest fan I have not been disappointed this year! Though I'm too poor for the record, all I have is Spotify but I did see them live last week, so the poor fellas make some money with me. Plus I did buy every record before the last 3. Hell of a show. Uriah Heep opened for them. Great night, I love both bands. UH have some new tunes as well, enjoyed the album a lot. Some songs came on in shuffle and I actually thought it was an oldie.
you can still do all of this, except be a kid again
Yes in particular With headphone on Steve Miller Band- Book of Dreams..wow.. fare out.
It was last week. And it turns out that Taylor Swift dropped a DOUBLE album. Plus, there has always been ample excitement and anticipation for Beyonce albums. And others that you might not know about because you're not in the target audience. Most of this post, and most of the comments, just reveal some old farts sitting around bemoaning the fact that "today's music is not as good as it was in my Golden Age". Yes, Rick, there are LOTS of kids and young adults who have never heard a note of the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. Especially from the 2nd-tier bands and below. The kids have their own stuff, just like we did, and when I try to get my daughter to listen to Dylan and Hendrix and Barry McGuire, she responds like I did when I was 13 and my dad tried to turn me on to Benny Goodman, Dean Martin, Perry Como and Satchmo. Same as it ever was.
In 2001 I was returning to Denver, having lived elsewhere since 1994. As I drove into town I started looking for my favorite radio stations, and lit on KBCO, an independent Boulder station that had specialized in new and innovative artists who didn't get much airplay on more mainstream stations. I was surprised to hear them playing some bland pop tune; when a commercial break came up, the spot mentioned that KBCO was part of Clear Channel. It was like discovering that an old friend had become a collaborator with an evil occupation army.
KBCO introduced me to tons of great music back in the day! This breaks my heart.
@@kivahunter6959 Well now you have to hunt for it yourself. Spotify will attempt to learn your habits and there's a bunch of options to find similar stuff. It's not the same but it's quicker than going row by row in a record store until you find something good.
I can only imagine how many great bands we missed due to them not having enough money to afford a studio session
But these days artists can get their own studios, do their own productions, distribution. KZhead is one way to distribute.
@@robertewalt7789 This is true, but it's not quite the same. As Bruce Sterling pointed out, what's really scarce is *attention*, not distribution.
worse yet, how much awful music have we endured because they COULD afford a studio session.
Yep, or because no label they approached were interested in helping to promote them. Jamiróquai are a great example of how it used to be: at the start, only the singer Jay Kay was contracted, he had no steady band, few finished songs of his own and he had limited technical skills (reading/writing notated music, playing any instruments etc) - he was a brilliant potential frontman and a good singer, but how to launch him? No major label today would have made the efforts that Sony and Jay's manager expended during the making of Jamiroquai's superb debut album in 1992-93: recruiting a live band and a writing partner who was able to sight read music (Toby Smith), long studio sessions, videos, live brass and strings for the album - for a band where almost no one had been heard on records before. That level of backing for a new and unknown band just doesn't happen today (unless they're heavily styled and hyped to fit some thought-out "project" from the label). If Jay Kay had turned up today, the label would have treated him as just a clothes-hanger for external songwriters, producers, remixers and stylists.
Imagine that across every field, capitalism truly devours the human soul.
I was a DJ at that time. I started in 1990. It was horrific to see the consolidation destroy basically everything I had worked for. Interning, working my way up, and I got replaced by a computer/ repeater. We went from folks that actually did public relations, and played real music. CMJ meant everything, we did remotes, we did local news, local commercials, PSA... ONCE CLEAR CHANNEL CAME IN, IT MADE US NOTHING BUT BUTTON PUSHERS, AND IT RUINED THE ENTIRE Radio CAREER. THANKS TO MONOPOLIES BEING ALLOWED, I HAVE A COMPLETELY USELESS COMMUNICATIONS DEGREE.
This is so heartbreaking. What a waste.
Sorry but if you were creating value for the customer, then why would the customer go to the competition? I think satellite radio and eventually streaming put a big dent into local music radio. The people wanted songs or personalities, not 3 songs followed by 7 minutes of commercials.
@@forgetaboutit1069one size fits all I guess. Once clear channels came in they brought out everything
@@forgetaboutit1069When the market is controlled by a monopoly there is no competition.
@@forgetaboutit1069wouldn’t his argument have been long before the aforementioned?
I remember in the 80s how you could call in and ask the DJ to dedicate a song for you and o someone and it was crazy to hear “and this one goes out to X in Poughkeepsie from Y…everyone would be delirious if their dedication made the cut. And everyone would be sitting around together listening. We all had stereos in our rooms and different music would be heard up and down the dorm. I found Styx and Little River Band and Journey and Flock of Seagulls and Tears for Fears all from different friends It makes me sad that we don’t have that same social experience anymore.
I love that!
Yea of the bald type was corrupt but toothless was pretty fair
The only time I got through to a radio show to request a song, the person who answered the phone told me what song I had to request. Huge disappointment. That was in the early 80s.
My gf and I caught ourselves singing every line to a cheesy Taylor Dane from the 80’s…. We had this shared experience of that song…. Ans no one today will have that
I remember this here in the 90s in London, England, calling and texting radio stations to play our favourite Reggae and R&B songs. I could cry nowadays... I remember when they started phasing out specialist DJs after my favourite station was bought out by Global Radio which now owns 70% of all of the FM stations in the UK. EMAP owns 20% and the national BBC network owns 10%...
That makes sense. I got so annoyed with radio stations by 1999, that I quit listening. I only listened to CD's, and then external media.
I tried explaining this concept to a buddy a few years back, and he didn't believe me. He kept trying to tell me that the radio stations play Drake because he's popular and that's what the people want, and I was telling him the radio stations play him because that's who the powers in charge want to be popular. The consumers don't really have a choice.
Thats a fact.... "they're" reshaping our culture and society by design by force feeding the masses with crap and controlling or attempting to shut down our "Artistic output"... kinda like force feeding GMO foods on everyone.
It's a vicious cycle. Consultants and marketers notice trends from more independent artists, find a malleable artist and make them play music that conforms to those trends, the public hears that music and buy it, and that funds more airplay for the malleable artist.
It really is sickening how the stations pretty much control what we not only listen to, but what we think we like. If a song is played over and over again, it becomes catchy to everyone having to hear it. Even if you didn't like it when it first came out. And that's how music becomes "popular" to the masses.
The corporate media masters control not only what we see and hear, but who and how, thereby influencing how we think and feel. @@keymaster430
Similar to art galleries where my professional interest lies.
And how many great musicians, songs, albums and concerts have we all missed because aspiring musicians decided, "why bother... it's just not worth it". What the handful of greedy & corrupt people did to the music industry was criminal.
Bingo
I was one of them.
They’re still out there, plugging away. Unfortunately, we lack the curators like a John Peel or a Giles Peterson to help us sift through the mountain of good new artists out there now. Program directors just phone it in-like they’ve been doing the last three decades.
I played music for 15 years. Quit because I wasn’t making money. Waste of time
@@johnolmos8670You really need to do it for the true love of it!😀
This explains why I stopped listening to the radio in the mid-nineties, I did notice everything become sterile but has no idea why,
I'm thinking back now .... I was busy doing other things my parents were really ill. OK I take back what i wrote back earlier it was mid-90s now that I pin down the chronology. ok you guys nailed it.
A perfect storm... telecommunications act nukes local flavor [which really is necessary for a music scene of any flavor], massively top heavy recording industry [too big to succeed] and the consolidation of certain non-band operators and the spark was lost.
Same here... In the mid 90s, almost all of the music sucked or sounded the same!
Spot on! Boring, boring, boring..... at that point.
country music has the same problem, if it comes from Nashville, I'm out
I remember when, here in the UK, Radio 1 DJ Simon Mayo was the first to play Def Leppard's new single, Let's Get Rocked. As a DL fan I was really looking forward to hearing it and knew when it was going to get its first airing. Once the song had finished, Simon said, "I really liked that! I'm going to play it again!", and he did. Loved that! Could never happen now.
This was so devastating to so many people. It didn't just kill rock on the radio, it killed diverse opinions, the acceptance of a difference in opinion among friends, and ultimately, diverse ideals that foster innovation in every aspect of life.
💯percent.
Wait! Are you talking about the Civil War? Just sayin, cuz the root of this thing where masses are attached and affected by some kind of centralized word is likely ancient. And if so, the solution also. We don't have to be manipulated so, or at agreement with institutions that wreak anathema.
Good point. It increased corporate profits and consolidation, while downsizing and automation decreased diversity and creativity. Same impact on local media - very negative impact on local communities that tend to be held together by locally produced news. Instead the rise of Fox etc.
Yeah, it's called Fascism.
Good point. Diversity is best for everything/ in biology and environmental science- diversity strengthens and enriches all participants.
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. Hunter S. Thompson
The music business? Every business has its sociopaths in control.
One of my favorite quotes.
And usually, they're men. Corruption and greed has led to the downfall of so many ........makes me sick.
Great quote. And so true.
unnecessarily specific
I’m 72 and my favorite memories of my youth are of the Southern California music scene. Small venues, underground radio (where we would find stations broadcasting in small shopping centers where we could stand outside the storefront windows and watch the DJ as we listened to bands that would never be heard today). It’s almost impossible for many people to believe just how alive the music world was then. Playing the music from that time only hints at what we experienced. I’m hopeful by what I hear from the independent scene that’s rising now. Perhaps we can break free of the clear channel model of manipulation and control of music. I still believe in what music can mean when the artist is in control of their art. The people will vote by what their ears tell them. Thank you for another fine conversation about what has shaped so many lives.
I was a DJ at a small Midwestern radio station in the late 90's/early 2000's. I can remember the DJ's looking at the horrible playlists and scratching their heads and going "what is this crap?" The only way to get a new song by a new artists, or a great new song by a clasic artist was to sneak it in and write it down as a request. The program manager would call you up and say "what was THAT crap?". And you'd reply "That’s ROCK N ROLL, man!". You were risking your job just for playing something you thought music fans might actuality want to hear! By the time I left radio to go back to college, everything was formatted and prerecorded in a computer. They were telling all the jocks what to say and having them read off of cue cards! It was really over. Every time I hear the song "the last DJ", I shake my head and think about the death ride of rock radio......
Corruption and greed has destroyed almost everything.
What it hasn't destroyed , it will .
But in the end, the rich get richer. So it's all good, right? That's the end point of capitalism and the purpose of many politicians.
Almost everything is kinda bland these days, like movies and shows, nothing new,
Corruption and greed has always been with us since the beginning of time. What's different now is our modern technology is a force multiplier that vastly increases the corruption and greed for the tiny few who hold the power and money.
That’s why we need a government of the people to push back against the Apple/Googles of the world.
I worked in a major studio in Hollywood from 1995-2005 and this conversation and examples was EXACTLY how things went down.
I worked at West LA Music for a few years. What studio did you work at?
Same with video game industry 1996-2000, and youtube 2015-2021.
@@bigneiltoo I remember the collapse of the video game industry very well..... back in 1983.
@@Peter_S_ Any time a new technology or medium comes out there is a 5 year "glory days" period before it becomes pasteurized and homogenized by the powers that be.
@NolanVoid-dr1ch ? Look it up; there's even a Wikipedia page on it, LOL. The Video Game Crash of 1983 was a thing and lots of people have made videos about it. By mid-1983, Atari had lost $356 million and laid off 3,000 of its 10,000 workers. Atari also moved all manufacturing to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Lots of companies went bust and lots of amazing scrap also hit the surplus stores in Silicon Valley. The industry didn't start growing again until 1985. There have been crashes before and there will be more in the future.
So thx a lot for that discussion - as a former studio Owner, Sound Engineer/Mixer, Producer and Musician somehow - and my Ex wife was a radio promotor - here down in germany - i really like that - thats so true - and I am lucky that Ive sold my studio way back in the early 90ties - and stopped music at all - ´til 2014 when Ive started again - makin music, build a little studio - and will go on til the end - take care and thx
Great video Rick! That’s exactly what happened to my band around 95-96. We got approached by A&R people that loved us but wanted to see if we could sound more like Stone Temple Pilots or Nirvana. We were more of the Cheap Trick sounding type band
As a freshman in college i wrote a report on how the 1996 telecom act was ruining radio. Broadcast professor brought in a clear channel vp to give a talk and he had a prepared statement but I kept interrupting to ask what happens to variety and discovery of new music if we are always hearing the same stuff. He squirmed as the professor smiled. Somehow I still decided to go into music/ audio recording 😂
Congratulations! Now fetch my soy latte, boy.
@@Paul-mx8sfyou drink soy?
@@dickstrykerLol😂
I remember the odd couple Feingold (my senator) and John McCain fighting against that. Of course that act passed easily as only 18 voted Nay, but those two scored some cool points with me
I'm old enough to have noticed that it was going downhill even beforehand, because Clear Channel antics. The Telecommunications Act just made it much MUCH worse. I stopped listening to Radio in the late 90s due to frustration and disgust.
Rick Beato not a team player? He's not only a genius in what he's created here on KZhead, but he is loyal to where he came from: the music and the musicians. Thanks Rick.
Rick Beato is indeed a team player! For the teams of: listeners, creators, music, truth, and justice. Just not for the so-called "owners," who got no skin in the game, and put no heart or soul into what they do. Who sell death, not life. They took a living thing and killed it by indifference. How many reminders do we need that idolatry of money is a sin? More, evidently. Thank you, Rick!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Truth is painful, but as an elderly rock listener, I wondered how and when Rock died. I now have a sad but fairly definitive description of how it happened.
Music died in the late 50s, but it was buried in the 90s.
This video needs to be 3 hours long...
This was an incredibly important video. It would be worthwhile for Rick to create an entire series of videos on corruption in the music industry.
And name names. Why not?
Might not be too very healthy. LedHed Pb 207.20 🎶 🎸 🎹
This isn't corruption but racketeering.
He should add more people with more examples. And then how autotune took over. etc etc
@@DannyOKC and when turns out that most of the names come from single ethnic group, that would be the end of rick beato.
Hunter Thompson once said "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." He was right on target in my mind.
He was implying that the corruption was a good thing...
@@prod.SonicGems-ii3glNo, you obviously are unaware of HST's work - some of which are one of the best literary work of the 20th century. The implication of that quote is that the music business is even worse.
@@prod.SonicGems-ii3gl no that is not what he was implying. Look up irony in the dictionary, please
a long plastic hallway and a glass staircase
All ran by the usual suspects: your Epsteins and Weinsteins
Tommy James published his book , "The Music The Mob And Me ; One Helluva Ride" I believe around 2011, He said he waited untill everyone he knew in the music mob was dead to do so .
thank yòu for sharing - I grew up in the 80s & by the early 2000s, I started noticing a huge disconnect with music. I always thought, that it was because I was starting to get old. but having switched to spotify five years ago, I find that I do listen to modern music, that is less than a year old. the difference is, that it is 'my' modern music, that I find & I choose... I remember growing up with my own radio & listening in the evening with my tape recorder on the ready, recording my own mix tape, because it was legal & it was a thing & you shared ideas at school & compared bands & then went out and bought the really cool albums. now that my son is old enough to learn to read the clock & figure out when bedtime is over on his own, he wants his own alarm clock. going through the offerings, my inside cringed as I stumbled across a few with radio. it was like: "I'm not paying for that..." radio, for me (now), is something of unreliable quality, that you might listen to in the car, because you get traffic updates & it beets the drone of the engine, but that's about it... but for everything else, broadcast radio is dead to me, witch is sad, in its own way. but yes, to quote bob dylan, the times - they are a changing...
This totally deserves to become a Netflix documentary
How about it as a new episode of "This Is Pop."
@@TranscendentBen Modern pop music, especially that of female artists, is basically an extension of porn industry.
Netflix would raceswap Rick lol
No gay content so no, it wouldn't happen.
Quit obsessing over Netflix. You a a part of the problem. Support other outlets/media.
I am SO glad you exposed how the music industry operates/operated. This will save so many artists thinking they're playing a different game.
Music industry is so greedy that they would hire the non-talent.
Radio is dead now. It's all Spotify now.
every atom of our existence is monitized and anything profitable at all is scooped up by the corporate slime machine and ruined, nothing new here
@@Fearzero spot on comment 👍 or should i say Spot ify 🙄
@@Fearzero I think that is very sad. How are you supposed to hear new music if you’re not exposed to it? As you can probably tell, I’m strictly old school.
Everything I hate about our current country/world started in the mid 90s. Radio and the music business is just a part of it.
This explains why radio became unlistenable to me around the late 90's and I started listening to talk sports radio during my commutes to work and home.
Yes same here. :)
I was a bit young but wasn't it the mythical age of the Walkman? I had a couple from parents that eventually got discarded for Discmans and a box of cassettes. That's how I found Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd. Why not that? Didn't use the last good years of radio to pirate everything onto cassettes? And us kids steal music... says the one with 2000 hand labeled cassettes from borrowed records... FBI open up!
Having lived through this as a radio programmer from the 70s, a radio consultant in the 90s, and a VP of progamming at Clear Channel (and others) this is an accurate assessment of what happened. Corporate greed, consolidation, mergers, and chaos in the systems that built both radio and records/music in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Another factor in radio programming that RIck only touched on here is radio becoming reliant on music research. This amounted to auditorium tests where we would play 5-7 seconds of a song in a hotel conference room of 100 men or women and they would grade the song on a 1-5 scale - it was also done over the phone and later online . Of course the songs they knew and the library songs tested high and newer stuff was not as high. More and more the older songs tested a lot better and the airplay became more focused on the library. When you add all the producer and record company issues it even makes the issue worse Great video Rick and Jim
Do to think rock music would have lost popularity had things stayed the same as they were in the 70s
Because other types of music did not lose popularity
Interesting question. Really the whole business changed as Rick and Jim noted. Really only Country music seems fairly healthy now. Much of that comes from strong tours and listening to Country radio outside of the top east and west coast big cities.
@@davelange4039 yeah it changed but why did rock music become unpopular
As was explained in the video, Producer/Managers wanted every band to sound the same, severely limiting the sounds of bands who got airplay, thus killing musical diversity and appeal to the vast majority of the audience. Rock music itself is still popular, but that simply isn't reflected radio stations that play new acts anymore. @@infintyplus
Man, this really made me appreciate what we had listening to local radio back in the 80s when I was growing up. It’s a shame those days are long over.
For me 70’s and 80’s. We can’t forget unique DJ’s like Wolfman Jack,either.👍👍
It was the public that allowed their Govt to become an Oligarchy ….. corrupt Govt produces corrupt systems and institutions
80's was the best decade for music, awesome variety, labels and studio DJ's took chances on new sounds
I remember the 70's, and I'm going to say it was better than the 80's. There was more diversification on the type of music you'd hear on many stations. By the 80's the stations had pretty locked-in genres, so the diversity was lessened. Still, until the mid-90's I would listened to rock radio to hear new stuff, and revisit old favorites.
@@kelleyfamily2636 Everybody up until the 2000s thought that their decade of music was the best. I’ve lived nearly 7 decades. I remember pre FM and post FM. I remember Free-Form, I remember ClearChannel buy outs etc. I thought that we had lost the art of music making around the end of the 90s. But there are many extremely talented musicians right now who hopefully grow beyond KZhead fame. They deserve a break!
Rick I hope you get to read this. This was so eye opening that I have no words to explain just how fascinating the information was. Those of us who are not in the industry, but hold our Rock music close to our hearts, have always wondered why things have turned in the direction that they have…now we know. As always….great stuff Rick!!!! Keep it coming…you’re the best!!
I fondly remember a time where you could call into your local station and make a request and the Disc Jockey would gladly work it into the rotation.
With all due respect for your incredible work over the years on this channel Mr Beato, this one here is your most important episode of musical education.
I agree.......but I also think that you could show your respect for Mr Beato by spelling his name correctly.
@@chrisfromnoosa1905 True. My bad.
😊@@SmokDiplodoq
Actually... Spotify is the head of that mafia... they want us to listen to reggaeton and mexican stuff...
You are totally right except the correct title to this video should be "Yet another example of how the Corruption and Greed of Neoliberal Economics ruined an Industry." I'm an aerospace engineer with 30+ years working in industrial control systems and automation. I have mostly worked in manufacturing and mining with stints in oil & gas, water treatment, waste processing, dairy and a few other odd jobs. This mentality is so rampant across every business sector I have worked in. You might not think that the current disaster that's Boeing is related to this but it is. Boeing used to have Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas as competitors in jets for airlines. BUT according to Neoliberals that's not efficient so they let Boeing swallow up their competitors. Once you get monopolised control of a market there's no other way to increase profits but to cut costs or raise prices and ECONOMISTS are obsessed with cutting costs and management are obsessed with finding new costs to add to consumers. Economists and Business Managers brag about efficiency but have NO IDEA what efficiency actually is or what it means in any given industry. All of the sorts of activities I am hearing here about costs and practices I can give similar examples in all of the industries I have worked. I can even use it to explain why we haven't been back to the moon for over 50 years.
This explains so much. I played bass in a signed band, and wondered why they needed to rent two vintage SVT stacks to blend with the DI bass tracks. More importantly, they were annoyed when I tracked all the bass lines in two days.
They were annoyed that they didn't get to rip you off enough
Not a team player, eh ;)
Its crazy to hear this conversation, this exact conversation with different key words of course is happening and BEEN happening in the gaming industry for a long time. From the "fear to create/produce something original" to "People taking money from the artist/making their cut smaller etc."
This channel has the finest production quality on YT. Seriously; just a joy to watch and hear. I would have liked to hear more in-depth discussion of how that independent radio ecosystem maps to new media.
I was an on-air jock from the mid 80s until I finally quit in 2000, and I watched this wonderful medium turn from magical to mechanical. Cumuluses huge takeover in the mid-90s turned all the stations into cookie cutter outfits where station managers and thus their lowlife DJs (as they saw us) were slaves to the most lame playlists you could imagine. And came to be all about saving money and not making it. As for the subpar music side of things, the record industry forced formulaic sounding, non-inspiring pablum puke down our listeners' throats. If industry heads new how much different listener tastes can be from market to market even within the same radio format / genre, they surely didn't give two craps about it. It didn't fit the short-sighted blueprint. And mindless local radio managers just followed along like good corporate sheep who would do anything to hold on to their $30,000 a year jobs.
don't forget the ad's. all those millions of ad's $'s just waiting to be enticed by the radio sales team. Fk the music, just get the $'s
It's about and always was about social engineering buddy. They do it in the schools too
Some of the same people who would complain about this will get angry if you point out capitalism’s role in this outcome.
@@Ues2DCbut if thats the system then you or we need to develop consistent methods of implementing capitalism in fairer and better ways. Guitar is a good analogy because it too has limitations but within those limitations are so many possibilities. To me, many things are split off to be in the public domain and management of that public domain, the work of government needs much more robust integration with the people. When you erode that connection then that "democracy" becomes simply tyranny.
Corporations are inherently destructive of creativity. They exist only to make money… they are soulless…😢
My band “blew up” around 2014. We were just 3 musicians in Brooklyn totally independent. But Sirius satellite radio had an Alt station that was pretty much free of the big corporate hegemony of FM radio. They played our single and listeners kept requesting it. It broke their top ten and stayed in their top 18 for like 9 months. FM Radio however would NOT touch it, because we weren’t signed. So we eventually signed and suddenly FM would play our music, as long as there was an expensive “radio campaign” behind the single. From the point of getting signed forward all we could do personally was go further into debt despite the music performing really well on radio (2 Billboard Alt Top 10 singles, many more hitting the charts).
I've heard from an indie band that Sirius is still the money maker.
Care to share your bands name and is it on spotify?
Stay Indie y'all
What’s your band called?
My band is The Klitz
Thank you so much for this video Rick. I worked in the music biz from '84 til '94 at a mom and pop store then went to a corporate chain (the #2 store in the chain and in Atlanta!) as well as a short stint as an intern at A&M records. I never experienced payola at any of those places. It was only at the mom and pop store that we could play anything we chose. We truly were promoters. At the corpoate store we were limited to whatever promo CD or cassettes were on hand on any given week.
I worked as a radio DJ in the 90's. The changes in 1996 were bad, but radio was corrupt since the 1940s. Deciding which records to play was technically done in-house, but we pretty much copied whatever the successful stations were doing. There was also some corruption. For example, record companies paid for "cross promotion" like painting our company van in exchange for playing their record.
I worked in radio from the late 80s until about 5 years ago when my job was eliminated...nationwide! I remember the days when one local station could break an artist, because I worked for one! We got a lot of money thrown at us from labels and indie promoters because even though it was a medium market, if your record was a hit on our station it was almost guaranteed to go national. That's all gone now.
"...someone still loves you!" - Freddie Mercury
Payola. I've often wondered how much exactly a top plugger for say Sire records, or CBS records lays out annually. I gather their is a large amount of gratuities cash, merchandise, working girls, powder etc
Yes, and is know as payola - aka bribery.
it's not entirely gone in a way, the local radio station broke out oliver anthony. they heard about him, sent some recording people to him and posted it on their youtube channel.
Too much power for the monopolists and market consolidators to handle. The repeal of the media ownership rules at the FCC was probably one of the most destructive things that happened in 1996. Pharma was deregulated in 1996 and the Sacklers and their Purdue Pharma started their opioid cartel with help from Congress, after Congress was paid off. Now, 5 huge media monopolies run 99% of our media. You see how the media drives public opinion, controls the narrative, creates fear, and controls what people think and do. Many Americans fall victim to the destructive media narrative of people like Steve Bannon and Alex Jones. The satellite radio stations are riddled with political fear mongering. So people are paying for their own indoctrination. Truck drivers are a great example. They are probably the most hate mongered group in the nation. I can tell that the big satellite radio station monopolies are forcing the old AM/FM stations out of business. Eventually it will all be pay radio. Sad Sad. Not a word about it anywhere. Why? Because all of media belongs to a larger media monopoly. You should check out Nexstar Media Group. They run the destructive narrative of the ACU/CPAC political racketeers. They push private prisons, privatization of public schools very efficiently in several states. They do this by collaborating with fully funded ACU/CPAC elected state official people. People like Governors Noem, Abbott, Huckabee-Sanders, and DeSantis.
So interesting to hear this. I remember the local rock radio changing in 97 almost overnight. It got noticeably worse. Same with music videos. You could tell corporate America took over.
And this is the way everything is going. Gross!
corpos can ruin anything
Great expose. Quality work once again from Rick. So glad I lived through the better days.
Fantastic episode and discussion. Thank you.
I’m Ricks age. I miss it too. When someone like Led Zeppelin releases a new album, the entire world was excited. I think the greatest measure of that era is that the songs from that era are still being listened to by young and old alike. I don’t see any artist today that I think will be getting air time in 2075.
The problem with music right now is there is nothing very original happening. I'm not suggesting there isn't anything good getting released but nothing really original. The 50's to the 80’s was the era for rock, from then on rock music has mostly been a variation of what has been done before. A major problem for popular music in my opinion is nothing new has happened in well over 20 years. Hip hop is still popular but there's nothing original coming out either & the genre is over 40yrs old. It's as if popular music has become stuck in time, nothing groundbreaking is happening.
Plenty of artists will
@@tsurek Give us some names
@@tsurek No, they won't. Have you been listening? The industry will just make up a new "recording artist" that recycles the same sounds you're thinking of, and no one at all will remember the originals.
I think after around 2000 or so, almost no bands/artists have had the kind of wide cross-genre breakthroughs that were a typical thing in the seventies and eighties: a band gaining attention and interest for their music far outside of the particular genre they are in. Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Prince, The Who, Bob Marley, Talking Heads, Pearl Jam are all examples of that, and so are many soul stars (Aretha Franklin, Isaac Hayes, Rod Stewart, Lauryn Hill etc). Radiohead were among the last bands to achieve that, and a musically innovative band too, like the rest I cited - during the last twenty years almost no new acts have managed to do it, and this is a sign of a more and more shut-in music business.
This explains the death of alternative rock in 1996. I was hanging out in clubs in Portland/Seattle area starting in 2000. The amount of revolutionary music I've heard locally would blow people's minds. The number of bands that could have changed the music world that passed without any national notice is heartbreaking.
From some of the stuff I have read, alternative kind of killed itself. Too many drugs and not enough focus.
@@cvr527But there have been other bands and scenes with new sounds that could have been the next Nirvana, Tool, or Primus but there was zero radio play for new bands with new sounds so they never get the chance to reach the national audience like NIN and Janes Addiction did. The fact that radio stopped taking chances on new musical ideas is what killed alternative rock.
@@cvr527they oversaturated the “alternative” scene with all these poser bands that “looked” the part but sounded the exact same. Than the industry went back to the bubble gum boy band crap and the gangsta rap thing post 2pac……
@@americanbadass88 Sure, but the point made in the video is that that happened because there were a small group of corporate radio guys that took over everything. When they got control all the unique stuff just dried up. We didn't hear Don Cabellero or Steve Albini's bands because the squares took over. So we got cheap knock off copies of Nirvana for 10 years ...
@@Napalm6b Agreed. I saw two Bands and one Solo Artist make their way to the national stage from Mid-Michigan in the early and mid-nineties before The Telecommunications Act shut that down, and I'm sure others can remember THEIR scenes sprouting bands that stormed the nation before THAT Law.
Thank u so much Rick and Jim for shedding some light on this topic!! Appreciate it!
Another great interview Rick, and this time with your friend Jim Barber, as you fellows discussed the greed and corruption which went so crazy beginning in the 1990s..... and following years. Yup.... the consolidation of Clear Channel and Cumulus buying up the majority of Radio stations sure killed any D. J.'s creativity..... such a shame...... :(. Anyway, just great insight and a very accurate assessment of the entire Record Production "Waterfront...." Yikes!!! Ted Schempp, Nashville
Frank Zappa nailed this trend in his brief clip about what went wrong with the music "industry". So sad. A local band used to be able to get a demo tape to a station and they would play it!! People would call the radio stations and request those songs and it would take off from there. So friggin ORGANIC!! The saddest thing is, those days will never come back. :(
Web3 fixes this
"So friggin ORGANIC!!" And the antonym of _organic_ is _corporate_ !
Didn't he also say that all the artistic freedom and experimentation occured when the cigar chomping executive "suits" were in charge of the record companies, and it all went belly up when the young hip guys took over?
@@SuperNevileYep, there's a vid of Zappa where he says that. The suits were willing to take a risk to make some money. The hipsters weren't, because of their own prejudiced tastes.
I remember things changing for the worse in the mid 90's. We could really hear the difference on the local radio. This is exactly what many people in my generation suspected. Thank you.
I try to tell people that rock died in the early 90s when bands like Damn Yankees were paid millions to not make new music!
@@johnnyjohnson1326 Rock didn't die, it's just been in hiding. They don't play it on the radio.
@@johnnyjohnson1326rock is alive and well in my house
*I am blown away by that anecdote of a DJ playing The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony 8 TIMED IN A TOW WHEN THE SINGLE DROPPED. It is so alien to me growing up with modern corporate owned radio stations. Unfathomable that a radio station let alone a sole DJ could have that much freedom.*
That makes me think of this story: Mope-Itty Mope" would probably have fallen into complete obscurity except for fact that Mexican border blaster XEAK decided to play it in 1961 -- in fact, they played it over and over for 72 straight hours, stunting its new format: "Extra News", the first 24-hour all-news station in Southern California."
Excellent conversation. Thank you both.
What a great discussion, thank you for sharing.
Amazing story - I remember in the late 1970's when the folks at WKRP in Cincinnati were talking about the future of radio being the corporate overlords and the resulting death of rock. The writers saw this coming pretty early!
Some of the writers were in radio previously. Bill Dial, who wrote the Turkey drop episode, was one. They probably had input from other radio people as well.. such as production consultant DJs.
Yep. there was that one episode where Mrs. Carlson wanted to bring in that national program director to basically replace Andy. That was such a great show.
What’s even more sadly ironic about that is that Disney owns that show now through a series of corporate mergers that put its production company’s library of shows in their hands.
Man, this was an episode that easily could have been an hour longer! What a great insight. I think this info is highly valuable for kids who are in their teens and twenties now. You're really creating a legacy here, Rick!
as a kid in my teens I agree
Fantastic insite to that side of the business. Wish there was more
@chip... There is. Just watch Congress.
Been playing guitar since I was 11 , now I'm 64 and been in bands since I was 16 , had tourettes syndrome since and I was very young and everytime I picked up the guitar my tics would stop gave me relief from my anxiety and depression , since covid came in it wiped out all my gigs so it's back to mowing lawns , , but alot of people all over the world has been affected, it has so upset me , now I cannot be bothered or even look at the guitar or pick it up , so I think can't let all that practice go for nothing , so sometimes I have to force myself to pick it up , easier when I'm drunk , I hope things change for the better , not just me but for everyone who has been affected , Rick , been along time fan of your channel , love your spirit , dedication , knowledge , musicianship and brilliant guitar playing you have shared with us , Thankyou !! Frank from Australia
1968 Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bookends' album came out. We had just gotten a new record player, from Sears I think, where the turntable would fold down and the speakers detached so you could place them strategically in the living room. My two older sisters and me, plus a couple friends cut the shrink wrap on the new record, placed it on the turntable and listened to both sides, basking in the sound and creativity. It's almost hard to write this. What a rich and satisfying experience that was.
I remember that...
I can't tell you how much I cherish listening to an entire album start to finish and anticipating that next song and knowing that next song and just knowing that the whole record was a complete work of art, it was a piece of creativity that was kind of Halo dropped into your life at a certain point .. making records to sell off the singles really really decrease the quality of a whole record
@@Say_When ...and now lots of new artists produce nothing but one-off singles to get their .00001 cents per play on Spotify. Jesus wept.
I had the same experience playing Revolver for the first time. I still remember manually placing the stylus of my desktop record player on the record and hearing that weirdly wonderful count-in to "Taxman." I was twelve and it was a transformative experience. I feel sorry for the generations who have no idea what I'm talking about.
Kids today have no idea what it's like everyone in your school anticipating a new album. That experience was incredible
I worked at Clear Channel and Cox Media Group in the mid to late 90’s and watched the radio business get destroyed first hand. From voice tracking, to set liners you were forced to read, to playing the newest “so called” hits ever 90 minutes it was painful to be a part of and watch happen. All personality was just thrown out the window. Just do what the computer says to do. America, you can thank Bob Neil for a lot of that mess. I bet he ruined a lot of radio stations in Atlanta as well didn’t he Rick? Format consultants, gotta love ‘em!
Not finding the Bob Neil you're referring to.
A lot of the radio stations over here in the UK, may have different names but they all sound the same. And here's the reason: they're all owned by one company called Global Radio. It's not a new thing, it's been happening for years. I do listen to the radio but that's at work, I never listen at home like I used to.
I still don't know who Nickleback is.
Both sports and music started going down the tubes when it became “entertainment”. Music is now “music entertainment”. Sports has become “sports entertainment”. It’s all about adding more “value” around the craft so they can charge more.
Awesome vid! I’ve said this for so long now. The industry always screamed about things they said were destroying their industry through theft (tape duplicating, minidiscs, Napster) when really… what destroyed their industry was their own greed. 😢
BA-Zingo! The record industry killed itself, along with a corrupt monopoly-enabling FCC.
Humans and their greed will eventually ruin everything. There is always a line crossed as somebody thinks they can push it just a little bit farther.
People establish governments to protect themselves from other people. It is a failure of government when their agencies get captured by corporate agendas that undermine their protective purpose, and instead promote corporate interest. That is the definition of corruption.@@christopherweise438
And that gd autotune 😮
The fact that you only had a handful or producers and mixers really explains why we're all saying "all these song sound the same" when we turn on the radio!.... They really do! Really insightful video here.... I just had no idea this was going on for all of these years... Thank you Rick!
Now days i dont know if its so much the same producers than it is just everyone doing copycat work using popular formulas running things through the same plugins etc.
As a musician, I've always been amazed at how bad the average persons ears are. Hearing comments about how "this song sounds exactly like that song', when the songs sounded entirely differently were not uncommon to come across from "average listeners" in my experience. No matter how much you might point out the different instrumentation between the songs, the different chord progressions, the different melody, the different chorus, etc. they couldn't hear it, and in their opinion that the songs sounded "the same" for no other reason than because their ears were so undeveloped, that they simply could not hear what was obviously very different to someone who's ears were more "developed" (which refers to the part of the brain that is used to focus and concentrate upon the sound coming in through the ears, who are able to hear the distinctions in tone and timbre, who are able to hear the different instruments as distinct individual sounds throughout the frequency spectrum, etc.). One example that comes to mind was people claiming Ritchie Blackmore's "Catch the Rainbow" was the same as Hendrix's "Little Wing". They would be willing to get into arguments, insisting they were the same song, and how Blackmore had "ripped off" Jimi. The similarity in tempo, and instrumentation alone was enough to make them associate one song to another in their mind, and to claim they were, essentially, the "same song", despite that not being the case at all. It has never been unusual for me to have someone listen to a song they think they know well and point out certain parts, asking them to listen to certain words repeated in the background or the part a certain instrument plays, and have their eyes open wide and tell me "I've never heard that before". This is quite common, simply because the ears of an average person are undeveloped, and they've never focused their attention on listening for certain sounds or keeping the music in the forefront of their minds as someone who has disciplined themselves to practice, listen to, and study music such as when learning an instrument or learning the art of mixing music on a multi-track recorder has done. So, I stopped putting any credence in people claiming "all these songs sound the same" a long time ago, since everyone I've ever heard make that claim couldn't tell the difference between a beautiful violin soloist or an Appalachian fiddler; or tell you how many instruments were actually on any given recording, whether there are 3 or 7 instruments present, since they have no ability to pick them out. It's quite doubtful that Rick's explanation of all of the "cross-collateralization" of music business expenses coming out of advances made upon the artists royalties explains so many people not being able to hear quite distinctive differences between bands and songs. Even the "production qualities" of the final product became known as "
@@GlennMarshallRocks that’s very long.
Yep!! ...and this was why I stopped listening to the radio and revisited all my albums, tapes😱 and CDs... And added to my collection by purchasing CDs from bands I liked at gigs 💪👍
@@GlennMarshallRocksCatch the Rainbow does sound like Little Wings in the same way as the movie scene where Mozart improves Salieri's music by adding flourish and extra notes.
I love how they say that now is a great time to listen to music. Music now is better than it has been in a while You just have to know how to find it. There are so many indie artists with varied styles and creativity. With artists having access to much more variety.
find what precisely
Fabulous video! Thank you so much.
Thank you Rick that was a great conversation between you and Jim… As a former manager of A&R for CBS records on the West Coast, everything these guys said is true, ladies and gentlemen… The thing they left out though, is the drugs during the 80/90s in the music business… It was prevalent. It drove the industry and it came crashing down around a lot of people… Think of all the great artists we lost From the 80s and 90s… Anyway, keep up the great work love what you do Rick!!!!❤️🎸🎼
Read Geezer Butler’s new Biography- stunning the amount of coke! Same with Glenn Hughes’ biography
Yep sure was. People joked about it where I worked as an assistant engineer. Our studio had a “drug guy”, a runner (they ran errands) who could get artists whatever they wanted.
At first I was thinking, dang this is 25 minutes. Now I'm begging for more. I support a more detailed series on the topic if you two would we be willing to do it. Super interesting and enlightening - thank you for all you do.
yea same here, I wouldnt have minded even an hour or so of them discussing this, I would listen to the whole thing
25 minutes is a long video for you? When i saw the video title, i thought it wasn't nearly enough time for the topic. It wasn't.
Enlightening video, Rick - Thank you! These comments, observations, and thoughts hold true not only in the world of music, but also in the world of politics. Centralized control by only a few determines what you hear on the news every day. KZhead and others like it (?) are the best places to get your music AND your news.
You could make a full lenght documentary on this subject based on your knowledge and the interviews you make. Thank you for bringing this topic up, I've been playing drums for more than 20 years and just learned about how the industry worked back in the day.
One thing is that you could never get this shown on the TV channels or Netflix or Amazon Prime as they are too corporate and afraid of their media owners who own the labels...
I would also like to mention how this change to corporate radio changed the Emergency Broadcast System, and has lead to several incidents where small and medium size towns have gotten hurt by not having local radio information about things like derailments, toxic chemical leaks. There were several pieces of legislation in the 90’s that have had devastating effects on the film, radio, music and TV industry because of greed, and many people got hurt
Not need for paying investigative reporters, just get all the news "that matters" off the Internet with ai. Sure a lot of things will be missed, but the corporation will still make more money & that's what matters.
Yes! There is no local news when something of vital importance occurs. It's very scary, especially with the increase i n wildfires and floods here. There's also no indepth reporting nor follow-up to things that are happening or happened. The "local news" is a joke.
I remember listening to the Top 40 on FM radio back in the 80's. You had so many styles : New Wave, Synth, Rock, Synth Rock, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Country, R&B, Soul, Rap. And everybody in the city would know all the hits. Like Rick said, I know Taylor Swift but I don't know a single full verse of any of her songs. With the internet, everybody is in their little corner of the house listening to only their type of music (Movies, TV shows also apply) in virtual isolation. I miss the community of music we had before 2000.
Good points. New wave ruled the 80s
I don't know, I kind of love the fact it's easier than ever to find and listen to the music you love, not just what you can hear on the radio.
The problem is that garbage corporation music is what people are hearing on the radio, UNJUSTLY promoting crappier stuff, while quality acts have to take a back seat
@@annna6553 Agreed, I cant even believe people still listen to radio.
So many of them don't even sing live. Jumping all over the stage without being out of breath? They're lip-syncing. The SB was an absolute joke. People pay hundreds of $ to see that? Posers.
I am hyper engaged by Music and have been since I was a little kid. My mom died when I was 6 and I remember hearing the Supreme’s I’m Livin In Shame, primarily for the line Mama I Miss You. It was played on the radio and I remember it kind of creeped me out at the same time.
Fantastic interview. Thank you guys. Long live rock.
Imagine the music we have been robbed of because of this. I was becoming a young adult by the time Napster came out. I'm also one of those people who couldn't hum a tune from Taylor Swift even though her face is everywhere.
I COMPLETELY agree with you on Taylor Swift. Her face is everywhere but are her songs noteworthy (no pun intended)? Bought an album of hers recently but couldn't get through it feeling my IQ was going down. Love here personally Roxette, Depeche Mode, A-Ha, ABBA, The Beatles, Queen, etc. These are bands that produced memorable melodies and lyrics with raw musical talent.
This is fascinating and should be an ongoing series. The music business has always been corrupt and these practices need to be called out.
Fascinating; very interesting topic & conversation.
There's a lot of truth to what you guys talked about. For me, I, for the most part, stopped listening to radio in the late 1990's. It was so frustrating switching from one station to the next trying to find something that didn't sound the same. Your conversation shed some light on why things sounded the same. I started burning CD's with the songs I liked to hear and later, as technology advanced, made my own play lists on a thumb drive or my phone. Anyway, great post and thank you both for the info.
I never allowed any control or charging of any equipment when I did recording. In fact, Max Norman produced our first EP at his studio pro bono with the agreement that when a deal is secured, we would use him and pay him accordingly and fairly for the major label release. We were never offered anything that was beneficial for the band though Ross Robinson was interested in us and Nickelback. He chose the latter and based on their success, it was a good call. We ended up creating our own label to release our full length. Thought I would share since they discussed how bands would amass huge debts with bad business decisions.
If you don’t mind me asking, what was the name of your band? (I used to really like Ross Robinson’s production, especially on the early Korn and Limp Bizkit albums and the Sepultura “Roots” album).
@@genius2012 Choking Ghost... We had shared bills with Incubus, Fight, No Doubt, Static-X, Hoobastank, Digital Underground, Fishbone, Nazareth, SOAD, Dio, King's X etc... the live scene in LA 95-2005 was loaded and ended up with some international heavyweights who continue to sell loads of tickets all over the world.
As an ordinary music fan from the 80’s, I did notice this incestuous trend in the music industry. I didn’t have the back story or an understanding of the causes and intricacies (which is very interesting to finally learn about, thank you) but I noticed how homogenous not just the music had become, but the whole radio landscape. I stopped listening to the radio and stuck to music I loved. That is what I love so much about the music landscape now, no corporate radio station hand feeding me music I don’t even like. I love exploring the abundant and colorful tapestry of music organically, sharing new finds with friends, family and coworkers… and them reciprocating. What pisses me off the most is when I find some incredible band from back in the late 90’s/2000’s that I never heard of. How much great music did I miss out on because of that system? Grrrr. I’m making up for lost time now… finding both old and new music, the sky is the limit.
But at least you are actively looking for music, that is great! Because i am so tired of hearing how there are no good bands/no good music any more, but they just listen to the radio or watch TV, you know? I can't tell you how much that bothers me, not only because i am a musician, but also a live sound guy and have worked with and for hundreds and hundreds of incredibly creative and good musicians, but they played in front of 5 to 50 people. Usually the very best concerts happened in front of a handful of people, including me and the bar staff =( Loved reading your comment!
Radio has become a dead zone of the same 200 songs.
Yes! I was born in 75 and I'm still scouring spotify for new music
It saddens me where we are in music... I was born in 73 so really did not start diving into my own tastes until the mid-80s through the mid-90s and this was for me the best time to be a music fan simply because of the rush of waiting outside the music store on a Tuesday to grab that new disc. Yes, the pricing model was not sustainable but I believe that could have been worked on. I miss the days of getting a cassette (or disc) putting into my player and just hitting play and listening. The full album experience is something that the newer generation just will not understand. The release of a single here every other week on digital services is just not the same.
Our A&R guy was “looking for the next Black Crows”. Thank god no one ever found it.
Truth! I'm 61 and witnessed this first hand. Thank you for making this video. I remember when the "Suits" started showing up at the recording studio. We knew something was up and boy were we right. One day you're recording music and the next day you're recording audio books and commercials and the day after that you're looking for a job. OK, it didn't happen that fast, but it was pretty quick. This is what turned the music industry into a bunch of cookie cutter bands and artists producing generic rubbish. Don't get me wrong, the creative, innovative and talented folks are still out there. You just need to know where to look and it's not on the radio stations. This is why I love the local music scenes. I encourage folks to treat themselves and go see some local bands.
Is it possible that the industry only promoted lousy heavy metal bands and ignored the good ones in order to trick the public into thinking heavy metal in general sucks, based on the crappy bands that were given exposure?
SO ACCURATE. I remember all of this, and I wish there was someone to call it out at the time. People say Hip Hop killed rock music, but the Rock Industrial Complex did that all by itself.
@JB_Eckl……..I’m wondering whether or HOW complicit an East Coast Radio DJ like Howard Stern was in all of this?! Please, anyone, enlighten me!r
Hip hop most certainly didn't kill rock, they lived in harmony and collaborated quite a bit in the 90s
Fascinating interview. never saw the behind the scenes like this. Very Candid expose'.
I was waiting for this video for such a long time because I had always wondered how the music business really declined
I started off at rock radio in 1986. Even then the DJ couldn't randomly just play a song or even a request by a listener. The management would lose their minds. That was also when we started seeing the out of town consultants come in. The kiss of death right there I'll tell you.
Man, I do feel for you. I was hitting the radio market in 86 after four years of constructive freedom.
Anytime a "consultant" comes in, the business will be broke in a year.
WKRP in Cincinnati basically predicted that!
They do this everywhere they go
Yup by the 80s it was starting to be replaced by computers. The 50-70s AM radio giants like WABC, WLS, KHJ were the golden years.
I grew up in the time that people would come over and see your record collection and ask you to play them something you really liked. We sought out music from people whose opinion we admired and sometimes you would turn out to be the influencer ( to use a present day term). There were also radio stations that were cool because they played albums that you wanted to go out and buy. For people who grew up with great music, be happy that you got to experience that. We may bemoan the state of music and radio now, but we can remember the good times (and pull out our old albums and listen again).
Not only that, but many Album Oriented Rock stations would play an album every night, which everyone at home could record for themselves on tape!
And people would actually sit down and listen to the full album after it was recommended. I liked having a tangible piece from the artist and the experience of the music. I loved reading the stuff they put inside cassettes and CDs, the photos and lyrics - it was incredible. I'm sad about not having that these days and it is so unfortunate that the this and next gen will never experience it.
On the other side, we were still fed what the radio stations played to a large extent and we didn't have the diversity in music that exists today because of the internet. Basically anyone can make any kind of music and make it available to everyone around the world.
@@JamesG1126How could you have possibly listened to every single piece of music that exists on the internet?
@@JamesG1126and that's where I'd ask for stats. There's great music out there, if you go look for it. Some of the most innovative things have been happening in the underground metal scene lately. The thing we miss is not great music, it's the human element in the music. We miss what music stood for, a universal human experience. You are correct, 95% of popular music is crap. So that experience is...bye-bye. We miss that, we need that back. How, we as a race must find a way. Music has always been an important social force. We can't let corporates destroy millenias of connection for their profit
This video was extremely eye opening and very interesting. It sheds light on how the overall machine is ran, and even stretches as far as to influence the mixing and mastering according to so and so's taste, which is SO SO SO niche, and narrow if it's only 1-2 guys in control of 150 stations and the programming of those playlists.... wow. The lack of freedom in the creative world due to the root of all evil.
Good to see someone putting the time into this topic, thank you. I’m curious on the metal music stats as well but I’ll assume that’d be under the “rock music” category? 🤘😎🤘
This maybe the most important video you have ever made. We need to get the music business back into the hands of the people who really want to help artists and share music with everyone.
😂😂😂 keep dreaming that Fantasy
@@joco2826 Why so negative?
@@jmsjms296 facts
I worked as DJ at two different small stations in Illinois - and a BIG part of the job was choosing what music we wanted to play for our shift. It was all driven by a passion for the music and making our listeners love the music. I did a stint at a recording studio, played in a few bands (We all thought we would get discovered and be ROCK stars), but then it just evaporated.
It's quite sad to think how disconnected we've become from these experiences
Thank you for adding us to this conversation. Not only do you expose monopolistic corporate music ownership not being a place where competition is viewed as something desired. Corporate America despises free market competition among individual owners. Corporate America will buy your business or put you in position to go out of business because you cannot compete against multinational American corporations. They will drown you in their financial war chest. I love the beard, by the way.
Love this interview, Rick. I've been in this crazy biz since the early 70s. Yeah, they killed the rock charts, among other things ....what a mess. I haven't been a part of this craziness since 2012. I still produce and play out of love of music, that's it. Thank you, brother.
I just wanted to let you know that you inspired me in this video. You were discussing the days of sitting around and listening to records with your friends. I play in a couple local bands and the scene here has died. No place to play and only a handful of bands. I decided to host a Local Band CD Listening party every month. 2 hours 2 bands. They bring their CD and play it for the rest of the group and discuss recording, song meanings etc. The first one is coming up in 2 weeks and i already have over 20 people talking about it. Hopefully this can help revive the music scene here in Canton OH. Very informative video btw!
It's so awesome what you're doing. Kudos!!
Well done. In the Bay Area, Live 105 [KITS] has returned, a station long known for giving the first break to bands that went national. Aaron Axelsen features local new bands every Sunday night 8-10 PM.
That's awesome. Keep pushing
Great idea!
Bad luck if people don't like the record...