> Doug, you keep missing the point I made earlier that is not supply of
> music
> that is limited, but demand. There might be gazillions of new bands,
> alright, but by your own admission, "no one has ever heard of" them.
> And no
> one has ever heard of those bands, because most people resources
> devoted to
> music (money and time) are finite and they are being absorbed, for the
> most
> part, by the Britney-like crap. In other words, the supply side of
> music
> business is doing fine - but it is the demand side that is getting,
> uhm,
> more and more monochromatic.
I don't understand why all the anti-capitalists on this list are so hung up on the $$ criterion for "success." Music, like literature, sports, and other "entertainment" fields, has always been a very tough way to make a lot of dough. Most bands, like most athletes and novelists, "fail" in this sense; only a few make the big time. But that doesn't mean that their efforts are wasted, if they love what they do. (Well, maybe the novelists.)
My older son was in a band in high school that fell apart; then he started out on his own as a singer-songwriter. Now he's teaching English in the Czech Republic and hasn't touched a guitar for some time. But he'll probably go back to it again, but not with the aim of making it big. Two of my wife's sons are or have been in bands that haven't "made it." Her son-in-law is in the same position. Ask them if they are "failures," though, and all of them would vigorously deny it. (Well, I'm not so sure about the son-in-law.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ In all ... philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. -- G. E. Moore