By Dan Birch
Before we go to the future, we can look back on a decade that has brought music as a new meaning.
If you ask the teenagers and children of today, on how they first got into music, you can no longer just expect a CD, TV show or even Gig as their answer. The value of sharing music through media files, with the increasing impact of the internet has changed the way we listen to music.
The majority of my listening to dubstep for instance has been frequently through rapid share on social networking sites. That’s right – social networking sites. The fact that music has now converged so much with other people over a screen is something that has made music more accessible more than ever. Click on other people’s links and there are ‘tune’ downloads. This is something that was talked about back in 2000 as MP3, a way of uploading files into MP3 players, a new better version than a Walkman. In terms of social networking, even MSN was still basic, and as soon as we hit 12 and 13, its messaging chat and its way of sharing things (pictures, games etc.) became a real purpose for using the internet.
Now it is all about Facebook. Social networking has never been a bigger part of our lives. But even before Facebook, it was Myspace who was responsible for kick starting the most important British band of this decade.
The Arctic Monkeys are king of the Myspace trend, and the first mainstream band to benefit through file-sharing. When we now think back to 2005, we think about their great debut album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ and the phenomenon that saw the album shared from bedrooms to festival fields in less than a year.
2004 was also the year of the iPod. Who can forget the multi coloured adverts on television with U2’s ‘Vertigo’ blasting out in the background? People might have thought this was nothing more than an MP3 player- just the same collection of tunes but in nicer packaging. Indeed, its colour helped secure it as an accessible fashion trend amongst all ages, much like the mobile phone had done. However, its purpose was far greater than people could have imagined.
The iPod became the focal point of personalities. People gladly showing off the infamous white headphones, the iPod helped express how they felt and the music contained could tell you whether they were an indie-kid, an R&B devotee or even worse, a Hoosiers fan. The ability of its kind to bring ‘communities’ together, as well, always helped a house party experience.
One of the biggest changes for the industry to deal with has been the huge increase in illegal downloading. In the last eighteen months for instance, bands have become more and more dependent on gigs, funnily enough. Conversely the numbers of people going to gigs have decreased due to the Internet and the recession. Rising prices of gigs too have gone up with the economy, with the Led Zeppelin reunion at the 02 Arena costing £150. Unbelievable?
But what of the actual music itself? Famous music columnists such as Miranda Sawyer have highlighted the fact that the decade has been a revival of many past musical sounds. The disappointing thing however is that there has not been a significant movement as such, like Rave, Britpop or Punk. Though there have been slight trends such as ‘new rave’, these have fizzled out and are unlikely to be blessed into history. The current wave of Indie bands have followed their predecessors and have generally suffered from ‘Difficult Second Album Syndrome’ in true Britpop fashion, Hard-Fi and The Kooks being just some of the latest examples.
Simon Cowell is the man who has been recently labelled as the person killing music. But can he be stopped?
His artists from the X-Factor are more like money-making schemes. They are killing the concept of underground genres of music in favour of X-Factor cover artists gracing dance floors.
However we have already witnessed the beginning of a rebellion with Rage Against the Machine propelled to Number One in the Christmas charts over Joe McElderry.
However over the next decade, it will be interesting to see if there is such a reaction to the commercial/mainstream music industry in general. It rules our television, our dance floors and music has gone to the money makers. This isn’t helped by the convergence of the media.
Social characters such as Susan Boyle and Jedward are now supposedly global icons, but will people say Susan Boyle was put through the mire?
Can someone fight against this? Well that could be the new movement in the ‘Teenies’.
