Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
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Also, radio used to be a local thing. So you'd get local DJs supporting local talent. Regional differences made for much variety in what eventually made it to the top 100.
Music has pretty much become a global thing, especially in English speaking countries. People listening the same stuff making the same sounds using the same tools. A reflection of globalism in the internet era.
All of which is enforced by corporations. This is what we want to sell you, take it or leave it.
Sure, we have the tools to make something different, and the ability to place this where anyone can see it. But without the marketing machine, getting the word out and building a fan base is incredibly difficult. Even for the very few who manage to get that ball rolling up hill, a deal with a big distributor is often required to achieve serious commercial success.
Interesting thread and interesting points also this globalisation point. A lot of musicians and bands in non English speaking countries did English lyrics long before globalisation became an issue. I think they did this to widen their commericial market and/or to get their (idealist) message true. So on the positive side the internet could be used as a means to get a larger fanbase. On the downside because of globalism we get more or less the same crap everywhere, which is the opposite of diversity. Even in the smallest Swedish towns there are McDonalds but also you can have these awfull cheap Turkish pizzeria's/ fastood things, which especially lead to the downfall of local recepies. What you in fact see through globalism is things converging into the same mediocre culture everywhere, from popmusic to art to food, etc.
Whike we are talking about globalisation another point pops up: political correctness. Or beter the power of political correctness with and that is become more important in pop music: virtue signaling done by musicians and record companies. But also here long before this became a standard you had this type of behaviour. People burning Beatles records because played backwards they contained devilish messages or more recent gays burning Donna Summer records because she said AIDS was the wrath of god. Later came the explicit lyric messages on records and nowadays you have people who call for radio bans on musicians that support Trump (ie Kanye West) or even worst people that not speak out loud against Trump. Of course the big record companies want to keep their image clean so they go along with this political correctness and even worse YouTube bans other voices. My opinion is popmusic is also made interesting by of controversial artists with different opinions (although you don't have to agree with them) because it is so much more dynamic than everybody bringing the same message over and over again.
John Peel's radio show was never about "serious commercial success". Yes, he helped scores of bands to achieve a break but the joy of his broadcasting was that it mixed in everyone, pretty much. It could be be completely uninspiring some nights but then that one gem would surface that would have you racing to get a copy of that single if indeed it was possible. Other night's the music would be non-stop joy. No-hopers and bizarre noise experiments added to the mix alongside bands that went on to fo great things. Oh, and the stories of course.
As for The Fall, have lost count of the number of times I have seen them, double figures at least. Have some mates who think I'm a lightweight in that respect as they have seen them 30+ times at least. Every performance has been worth it. "Always different, always the same". Love 'em.
My track of the year so far, Mildenhall by The Shins:
Sub Pop have been awesome as a label for ever. I discovered Mudhoney by accident in my local record shop in 1989, and then by extension Nirvana. Over the years they've released The Shins, Iron & Wine, Low, The Postal Service, Grand Archives, Fleet Foxes, Fruit Bats, and Father John Misty.
Also hailing from Seattle, one of my favourite bands of this decade, Motopony:
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Yes. Peel was allowed to play whatever took his fancy. So it was actually possible for bands such as The Undertones to send in a cassette and find themselves getting air play.
Nowadays, even those presenters on stations such as BBC 6 Music who claim to be championing new music aren't being entirely honest. Any music they play comes from within the system, and therefore from acts already signed. So there is zero chance of getting a track played unless someone somewhere has already invested in your work.
It's a closed loop, and cuts off so many people who can easily demonstrate their worth....except no one with the power to grant air play will listen.
I'm not in the UK, but how many listeners have stations like BBC 6 nowadays? Most people I know have Spotify or Apple Music and just let the algorithm determine what they hear (sometimes also algorithms based on their lists). I think the whole music experience has changed through the internet and services like Spotify.
I believe BBC 6 Music has listeners in the low millions range.
Spotify and Apple Music obviously have a global base, but are they also closed loops? In other words, you and I cannot get music onto their systems?
Big money will always go after a safe bet. When I was a kid I loved The Wombles, they were everywhere in the UK for while, posters, tours, Top of the Pops.. doesn't mean I grew up to only listen to mainstream music.
And most people don't search for music outside the mainstream, or whichever genres, subcultures they've been exposed to either locally by their peers or via the big media. They don't have the time and/or inclination to go digging deeper.
What we do, as fanatics of music, is pretty niche and happens for most media/art forms.
But to say there is zero chance of getting a track played isn't actually true. There are so many alternative outlets, some paid, some free that a musician can take advantage of, there are networks that enable you to reach people in ways that were impossible twenty years ago.
It's not perfect by a long stretch but neither is it impossible to get a following for your music.
Not true, a while ago there was a thread about this on this forum it explained how you can get on Spotify. CAn't find it back so fast. But sure you and I can get our music on Spotify through what I recall a sort of agent like record companies.
There's far more outlets now than national radio stations. You can follow blogs and Twitter feeds from the genres that interest you. I follow a bunch of Indie blogs and there's a constant stream of new music on them.
This is a track posted 3 days ago that I really like, not even 1k views on YT yet:
The sad truth is that the people 'in charge' are not at all interested in art, all they are interested in is making money, and making money easily...without making risky investment in something that may not work. This is true from the top bosses down to the promoters / managers
In the 'old' days before the internet when in a band you had to get off your arse and do the legwork, play gigs, lots of gigs, unpaid but fun, build a following, not only in your local area, but also the surrounding area too, then if you were lucky you might catch the interest of a money maker.
Nothing is any different nowadays....seems like Youtube/twitter followers has replaced the gig following, but pretty much everything else is the same...this is not a new phenomenon, the 'old' days were no better, there is just a different gauge for measuring whether people are into (and will therefore buy) what we are doing.
My memory of being young is that good music always had to be tracked down. Via the record shop, recommendations from friends, and of course the music press. Music mags, particularly the NME, were as frustrating as they were useful though. I bought NME and Melody Maker every week for years, and the amount of crap they used to hype was maddening, but they had to fill a magazine every week.
Hanging out in record shops you discovered weirder but more interesting stuff. Shimmy Disc was a favourite thing of mine when I was in my twenties, and it wasn't covered even in the music mags. But that's part of the pleasure, something that's yours, that you share with a very small handful of music nerds that you meet in real life. I've never taken the time to really dig into The Fall or Captain Beefheart, but I'm sure that's a similar thing: music that you have to take the time to appreciate, that you share with a very small handful of people who share your taste. It belongs to you.
The music is still out there, but it takes a little effort to track it down. More importantly though, and this is the hard thing when you get older (and likely less open to new things), you have to take the time to actually listen to it, and that's the hardest part - even though it's freely available to hear in ways we could only dream of when we were young.
Unless it's changed since I left the UK that's not true of all the presenters. It probably comes down to time of day. One reason Peel was given leeway was because he had the graveyard shift. The daytime/drivetime presenters have to mostly stick to the playlist, but that's always been true.
I'd be interested to learn of UK (and US) radio presenters who are genuinely interested in new music, and have the authority to play unsigned acts.
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Indeed, it was in just such an emporium that I 'discovered' the music of Bobby Bland. Prior to that, I'd heard the Whitesnake version of 'Ain't No Love In The Heart of the City' and assumed they wrote it. Finding the original, by sheer chance in a bargain bin, opened up a whole new world for me,
A great song (and what a voice!), but at the risk of sounding narrow-minded I think I'll give the Whitesnake version a pass...
Except scale. In the past, we had to put in the effort as you describe. It took both guts and determination. Now, anyone with an iPad and Garage Band can knock up a few tunes, hurl them at SoundCloud and join god alone knows how many doing stuff that is not really much different.
How to get noticed and stand out from a horde that could be millions strong? Would you say more difficult than making a great tape and sending it to John Peel?
A wise choice. Coverdale always sounded like he was singing "Anal love, in the heart of the city."
He probably was...
I don't listen to a lot of radio but I think Marc Riley plays a mixture of playlist and his own tastes, regularly gets people in to do sessions, not sure what percentage, if any, are unsigned. Some of the other later night Radio 6 DJs play some more off the wall stuff too.
true, scale is larger but is the proportion the same ? there are many more big selling artists around now than there were in ye olde times.
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No..do not follow the crowd...believe in what you do, stick to your guns when people say, what the hell is this ? and keep going..keep pushing your stuff..same deal as before...YouTube/SC/FB/Snapchat whatever and the general public are the new John Peel.
To do a little remix of your post I would say...
The truth is that the people 'in charge' are not at all interested in art, this is true from the top bosses down to the promoters / managers...and down to the average consumer.
Yes indeed, this is a very good point...most are not interested in anything that is not 'the big thing'....
And to even use the word art elicits a 'you think yer somethin' special?' raised eyebrow.
Peel did Saturday daytimes for a while. I used to love walking past stalls in Basildon market, and hearing Beefheart blaring out of some costermongers portable.
Yes indeed, i used the word loosely, what I meant was that they don't care what it sounds like, it is whether it will easily make them money that they care about.....this is where the money people and the consumer do differ....if a consumer hears something they like they will get interested....it is getting them to find it that's difficult as they have no real desire to seek it out, it needs to be forced in front of them, which for an independent means getting it trending on one of the social media platforms, or standing in front of them and playing it to them (if you can get them to stand/sit still long enough)
God help us all.
Indeed, the man is irreplaceable