Rock & roll will never die...

In all seriousness though, there's still some great Rock music coming out, especially new sounds in Metal, but I think the most interesting music coming out now is in the Electronic field, and yeah Hip-Hop. They certainly are becoming more popular now than ever, and you can just see it. It's just with technology now, you can do so much more now - infinite possibilities, for better or for worse. That's why I listen to guys like Burial, James Blake, Boards Of Canada, because those guys are really pushing boundaries, in all aspects. In ways Rock music couldn't even achieve.

There's a fascinating article by Richard Florida on The Atlantic Monthly website. It's entitled "The Geography of America's Pop Music/Entertainment Complex."

While this study is only concerned with music in the US, it pretty much backs up what Dean had posted, that rock and roll is far and away the biggest genre.

What I find most interesting is that Los Angeles is the cultural and economic hegemon for music in the US, far outdistancing NYC or Chicago or any other city. "The digital shift in the music and entertainment industry — and the tremendous decline in sales — has only reinforced L.A.'s dominance in the pop music and pop culture complex. Instead of spreading out and flattening the geography of popular music industry places, the digital revolution has heightened L.A.'s hegemony."

Even more interesting is his theory:

"L.A.'s dominance reflects the rise of popular music as a critical component of the broader nexus of celebrity culture. As University of Southern California's Elizabeth Currid-Halkett painstakingly documents in her book Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity, L.A. has evolved beyond a film and television production complex into the center for the production of celebrity. A large and growing fraction of these celebrities — Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Rihanna and the like — have a platform in popular music, and L.A. is their dominant location. As such, it has evolved a broad infrastructure devoted to the production and dissemination of celebrity culture, spanning websites, social media, talk shows, gossip, and paparazzi-driven television fare like TMZ and E! as well as reality talent shows.

"New York is a distant second in this pop music and pop culture landscape. It tops only one genre, jazz, which attracts a narrower, older, and more highly educated audience, while placing second behind L.A. in six categories — Rock, Pop, Electronic, Latin-Caribbean, Folk, and Experimental — and third in Urban. This is despite the fact that New York is considerably bigger economically than L.A., has many major network news broadcasts and talk shows such as Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report, has an ongoing role in rap and hip-hop, and is also home to Brooklyn, a leading center for upscale Indie music."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/05/geography-americas-pop-musicentertainment-complex/5219/#slide1


Edited by jude111 - May 28 2013 at 13:37

CPicard wrote: Ah, thanks to this article, I think having understood what the "Urban" term means: it's just Hip-Hop & Rap watered down.

I think Urban in this case means "black music," and refers to hip-hop, soul, and R&B.

mister nobody wrote: darkshade wrote: That's why I try hard not to over-listen to anything, to keep it fresh, no matter how much I like it. I've taken this to extremes: I haven't listened to King Crimson for 3 months.