https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8529105/young-top-charting-music-stars-streaming-analysis

Hmm - this is an interesting article. I wasn't even cognisant of this at all but I suppose it's a real thing. This makes for an interesting read - thanks for sharing

This validates what Roger has been saying on the Songwriting forum. A label won't even listen to your music no matter how good you are, no matter what an awesome performer you or how great looking you are. They want a complete list of all your social media followers first and if that doesn't meet their minimum criteria they won't even talk. This article isn't talking about labels so much, it's about young artists making it without labels but it's the same thing. It's all about social media and nothing else. So, who basically lives on social media 18 hours a day? The further up the demographic age scale you go, the less social media activity there is.

Bob

Please know I don't mean this as disrespect; but I'm sort of surprised that there is an article explaining this. lol.

What Roger and Bob have said seems like it would be common sense. I'm glad they've said it. We all know that common sense isn't all that common. Very cliche', yet very true.

What I see missing from just about every discussion though is how social media isn't just an artist thing. There are MANY fan groups that on there own become influencers. I have one daughter who is 22 and another who is just 14 that have a fan account that they started, got hacked, and had to restart. The newly made account already has a fairly impressive following. It's to the point where they have record companies approach THEM. They don't sing. They don't play instruments. They have a following about a band. When they give shout outs to other bands, that band get's noticed. Most people have NO clue how to work social media. Some kids do, obviously, and there is an advantage there. It's much more than being ON social media. It's growing a personal brand. Most people are on. Some are noticed...not by accident.

I say this because new artists can quickly build a following by reaching out to influencer accounts. In a relatively short period of time, they have people marketing FOR them. THAT is what the record companies like to see, obviously.

It's not about "how can we market this kid?" It's "how well is this kid marketed?" It's not a job interview on what you could maybe do; it's what you bring to the table already. Some kids have figured this out and hustle hard to build their brand. The record companies don't have to wonder WHO is willing to work. They know.

So, it doesn't surprise me in the least that with so many kids so active on social media; that the age might be slightly lower than in the last 20 years.

And let's not forget, parents, grand-parents, and family all follow these "kids" now as well. The get very involved. It's pretty cool actually.

The numbers don't tell the entire story, unfortunately. Labels have sold their souls into the streaming market, because that's what the current generation is using to listen/procure music now. The key word there being "now".

How many of us remember when MySpace was THE thing. Facebook, for all its power & users, has lost a lot of its luster because of their unwillingness or inability to self-police their own service to eliminate spam, trolling, hackers, fake news/profiles/posts, etc. Just think about what music technology looked like 10 years ago. In 10 years it will be as different from now as 10 years ago is.

I take exception to the interpretation of the numbers they always trot out. I think a fair argument can be made that part of the reason for the spike in the young demographic streaming & such is because, and let's be honest here, a lot of us old fogies don't adapt or accept change as quickly as the youngsters do. I still don't use spotify, although I have a free account that I signed up for. I don't use Twitter, don't really use Instagram or Snapchat, and am a pretty moderate Facebook user.
I also don't buy/stream/procure a whole lot of music, for two reasons: 1) listening to music is a bit like work to me given my profession, and 2) very little music is being released that appeals to my musical tastes. I'll bet there's a lot of people out there like me on the latter point.

It's always been a young persons' business, but I call BS on the idea that consumers over the age of 25 aren't interested in music - they're just not interested in the juvenile-targeting crap that's hogging the airwaves and filling up the spotify playlists. I wonder if a label will come along and test my theory - it gets discussed a lot in the publishing companies/music business related offices I frequent.

Agreed. I'm 47. I know two of my friends that aren't on some sort of music streaming service.

They have their personal playlists.

They also have playlists that contain some of their music, AND their kids music as well. You can't find a station like that.

Anyway, as I said, most of my friends, and my brothers friends (he's 5 years older then me) are using streaming services. I'm not sure why we would be called "middle farts?"

My kids, however, use streaming services AND buy physical media.

That is a different discussion for a different thread.

Back to the young ones.

I found some points raised in the article really interesting. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but it does definitely make you think.

That's an interesting point Roger. You started at 25. If you made it say 25-40 yes, if it was new versions of rap/hip hop it might work. It presupposes there is enough people who would actually buy older styles of music to make it worth it for a label to be formed to create and push those older styles.

If you go any further than that then those older styles are REALLY OLD. Like 35-45 years old. A few years ago I was scanning FM radio stations in my car just to see what was out there. This is in LA so there's a whole lot out there. I stopped at one because I heard a DJ saying this is (whatever the station was) your home for classic hip hop, the way it was back in the day, and then they started playing the usual crap hip hop stuff (to our ears anyway). I can't tell what the difference is between 30 year old hip hop and modern hip hop. It was like a wet slap in the face, hip hop is 30 flippin years old??

We don't realize how huge hip hop was and still is because we never followed it and can't stand it. It's a whole huge era of music that to us doesn't exist. But considering Jay Z is now an iconic mainstream billionaire should tell you something. Consider this. How long was the era of classic rock? Basically mid 60's through the mid 80's. That's when all of our iconic bands were at their peak. Hip hop and rap completely eclipsed that by double. We didn't see it and didn't acknowledge it because to us rap/hip hop was some kind of fringe thing, not real music. We still thought we were and are the big deal in music, it's all about us. Well, forget that.

Switching gears another tell is keyboard sales. I frequent the Keyboard Corner forum and this subject gets discussed there all the time too because most guys are about the same ages as this forum is. Lots of classic rock players going up to the 80's. Very little talk about music newer than that because thats when the computerized highly automated "music producer" thing completely took over with DJ's more than live bands. There's no need for pro keyboard players joining or forming bands to do covers of 90's into the 2000's era hits.

The big talk on that forum right now is the new Roland $4,000 high end workstation keyboard, the Fantom. This is the first new flagship keyboard from Roland in about 6 years. All the older guys on that forum are talking about it but what they're all talking about is it good for doing classic cover songs. Well it probably is but all the video demos of it that were just released last week do not show any of that. Not one I've seen so far. It's all about integration with your home studio DAW system and music "production". And what kind of production is that? A big deal is the OS closely emulates Ableton Live. They hired some of the best keyboard players to demo this and there is zero piano playing in some of these vids. It's all EDM, synth pads, electronic movie soundtrack sort of stuff.

Another thing is organ. We all know how huge the B3 is in classic music. Well, there has been not even a mention of organ in this new Fantom. Not a peep, not a sound in any demo. There's speculation on the KC forum does this thing even have any organ in it? Every other demo I've ever seen of a flagship keyboard has been all about the keyboards. Acoustic pianos, EP's including all the different models of Rhodes, Wurlies, Dx7's and of course organs. Hammond,s, Farfisa's, Vox, all the classic sounds going back to the 60's. Absolute silence in these new Fantom demos about that.

The modern definition of fusion music is not jazz/rock/Afro Cuban latin no, it's EDM, hip hop, dubstep and drops. And the thing us old farts can't get our heads around is even that stuff is 10, 15 even 20 years old! It's the modern classic music, it's not cutting edge today stuff. One guy who is a great player spent 13 minutes on that before he finally demo'd what the Rhodes sounded like for about 30 seconds before going back to the electronic stuff. Daniel Fisher of Sweetwater is a very good keyboard player and he never mentioned anything about how great this new Fantom would be at doing classic covers. Not once.

It's obvious these companies don't care about us any more, we talk a lot, complain a lot but we're not the ones actually buying. I see things like that and just feel our time has come and gone and these companies and labels know it and there will never be any targeted marketing of music to reflect our tastes again.

Bob

It becomes a bit of a "chicken or egg" conversation. The demographic with the most disposable income statistically is aged 35+ .... and yet they don't spend as much money on music as the younger audience.

Is that because A) they just aren't interested in music, or B) there isn't any music that they are interested in spending that disposable income on?

I'm of the opinion that it's the latter. What musicians buy re: keyboards, guitars & such is a sidebar conversation to my point - I'm speaking of consumers, of fans .. not creators. Companies like Roland follow trends just like every other company. I still believe it's less of an issue of there not being interest in music with an "older" appeal, it's that there is such a lack of it available that the older demographic doesn't waste their money on music they won't like - which skews the statistics.

BTW, I'm not talking about classic rock vs. EDM, or anything like that. I think modern styles of music could appeal to older audiences as well. It's SUBJECT MATTER that is the problem. As an example, a man my age (or even 10-20 years younger) doesn't have much interest in hearing Taylor Swift sing a song about writing a note to her boyfriend and leaving it in his locker in high school.

Release music with intelligent lyrics, that deal with real life, adult experiences....it will sell to an older audience even if its rap, hip-hop, metal, alternative, country, etc. That's my opinion, and what I would love to see a record label take a chance on.

Talk about an insightful and timely point. Look at this:

New York Phil taps "Influencers" to lure millennials

I read your post a few hours ago and then I see this. Can't get any better than that!

I sincerely hope this works and the Phil gets a decent number of younger subscribers. I for one don't believe millennials are single minded in their musical tastes any more than we are. But the music scene as a whole is heavily tilted in one direction though. Which is why you could also be right Roger about good writing and lyrics could attract some of them too.

I somewhat disagree with your comment about musicians and their equipment though. We play for audiences so what the crowd wants to hear has a direct influence as to what equipment manufacturers put out and I made this exact comment when I got back from the NAMM show a few years ago. Roland had a big booth and it was all stuff to create what I just said. They had zero full size keyboard introductions or even current ones set up for display, it was all mini controllers and synths for computer based producers.

To be fair Roland had already put out the FA series which is lower end but still decent keyboards for cover players but it doesn't seem to be their main focus any more and this new Fantom seems to validate that. For 30 years Roland was all about live performers doing all of our favorite classics. Well, it's still live performers but they're not doing anything we're at all familiar with.

Bob

Bob really good points. However, I’m just a little bit younger than you, high school in the 80’s and so I did pay attention to rap and hip hop and then lost interest in the mainstream and only paid attention to fringe stuff; which is what I did with all music that was interesting to me. Unlike what I read in this forum, I acknowledge that there is skill and talent in hip hop. No it’s not everyone. But it is there.

Oh yes, there is a ton of talent in EDM/hip hop and modern pop. I decided to hold my nose and watch several hour long vids showing exactly how big name producers work. Youtube is full of stuff like that and I mean seriously big names, people who are on the Forbes top 100 biggest money makers in music list. Once my ears got used to various noises that don't make musical sense to me and just focused on what they're really doing, it's fascinating. I really do appreciate what they're doing, it's very creative and technical.

There's whole huge moneymaking world out there that us older players have no clue about.

Bob

Thing is, music is the perfect art form for niche targeted content. We are stuck with "identity" driven media. Television and movies were not bad; but, any deficiency there has been more than made up for by the internet. The question streaming artists must ask is, "How many identities can I reasonably hope to reach with this material?" It is not as easy as 1-2-3, though. We contend with identity sub sets, and overlaps, or crossovers. Heaven help the performer who somehow manages to offend one or more identity. No one in his right mind would do that on purpose and risk a music war. (We've been through enough of those from time to time.)

Why Are Today's Top-Charting Music Stars So Young?

Wrong question! The right question is why am I so old!