Exactly.

This was my realisation when I was 20. Growing up and working just gave me the examples as to HOW it was corrupt.

“Everything” isn’t corrupt… but capitalism rewards corruption, so almost everything that embraces capitalism either starts out corrupt or eventually ends up corrupted.

@@kierenmacmillan4854 Since the 80s, market fundamentalism has taken over society, so lots more things are corrupt now.

@@kierenmacmillan4854 capitalism and monopolies are the exact opposite. What we are experiencing is the merger or state and corporate power from a philosophical sense. Everything seems corrupt because we’ve slipped into a fascist world not a free market world.

Well said man, well said !

Yeah we like Rick but just because somebody has followers and subscribers doesn't mean jack s***. Look around social media there are more weasels than decent people

That statement made me laugh. There's only one other channel that is as honest and forthright as Rick's when it comes to the wisdom from experience of music, Rock music, instruments, production, recording and "the business" - you name it Rick covers it. And you hit it on the head with his number of KZfaq subscribers. That speaks louder than words! Good comment. Or maybe the "Team" sucks, and nobody with any sense would want to be a part of it. lol

Jeah, but the other guys are richer so they are obviously better and know more than him. $=inteligence and quality. Accountants rule dude! :-)

The two have nothing to do with each other...

They're too lazy to think of new ideas.

It's all computer no live instruments

Mainstream songs are usually about sex and love. I miss being in California in the 80s when bands like Metallica were singing about war, religion, social issues. The powers that be don't want us thinking about society's problems.

You can switch "music sounds" for many other things and the answer will always be the same.

Just as the book: ' Food Inc.,' which tells the beginning of GMO foods (Monsanto and Roundup resistant soybeans) and the ability to "patent life", Bill Clinton adds another notch to his belt with the Telecommunication Act. Both have a far-reaching negative effects on American Life and culture. It's true, Democrats ruin everything!

Coming out of the late 70’s into the mid 80’s, nothing was more exciting than waiting for the new Rush albums. You knew it was gonna be different than the last one but never expected what they came up with. Yes, devouring everything written on the sleeve and cover. Used to know the address of Mercury Records in Chicago by heart! Magic days today’s kids will never know. SAD

As a Judas Priest fan I have not been disappointed this year! Though I'm too poor for the record, all I have is Spotify but I did see them live last week, so the poor fellas make some money with me. Plus I did buy every record before the last 3. Hell of a show. Uriah Heep opened for them. Great night, I love both bands. UH have some new tunes as well, enjoyed the album a lot. Some songs came on in shuffle and I actually thought it was an oldie.

you can still do all of this, except be a kid again

Yes in particular With headphone on Steve Miller Band- Book of Dreams..wow.. fare out.

It was last week. And it turns out that Taylor Swift dropped a DOUBLE album. Plus, there has always been ample excitement and anticipation for Beyonce albums. And others that you might not know about because you're not in the target audience. Most of this post, and most of the comments, just reveal some old farts sitting around bemoaning the fact that "today's music is not as good as it was in my Golden Age". Yes, Rick, there are LOTS of kids and young adults who have never heard a note of the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. Especially from the 2nd-tier bands and below. The kids have their own stuff, just like we did, and when I try to get my daughter to listen to Dylan and Hendrix and Barry McGuire, she responds like I did when I was 13 and my dad tried to turn me on to Benny Goodman, Dean Martin, Perry Como and Satchmo. Same as it ever was.

Everything wasn't done for making the most money out of something back before 30 years ago. I could see this country going to hell artistically in the late 80's and then through the 90's with this awful grunge garbage and mostly annoying Rap. Through the sixties,seventies and first half of the 80's there was a tremendous amount of great Soul,Rock and Pop constantly on, and people took it for granted. Now that a generation has been raised on the aforementioned. Almost all of it is completely disposable.

It's neoliberasim, baby. The regulations were ment to prevent big money to buy off all the small entreprenours and rise prices. It's been the same in my country too since mid-nineties. Two or three big companies rule the market in every sector that used to be regulated or publicly owned.

Private equity firms…

Marxism, Progressivism, Wokism whatever you callitism is the cause but I agree about greed. @@treignsinblood

"This corruption" in everything else is very different, and did not all happen for the same reasons. Corporatization is a huge part of much of it, but not all.

The very reason why Rap music has turned into Crap music. 😢😢

it's always been like that. People just age out of being the target demographic.

Real music isn't dead at all. It's just completely ignored by the mainstream corporate gate keepers.

That violates the law of top 40.

I’ve had conversations with program directors in the radio market I live in, a top 15 radio market by size. They all had this attitude. Somehow it’s just desserts that they’ve orchestrated their own irrelevance: hardly anyone I know listens to radio and it’s roundly mocked for its lameness.

Wow crazy. Out of curiousity, what year did you quit?

I remember going into our local radio station when I was kid in Cub Scouts in the 80's. Small city. Kokomo, Indiana. They were so happy about a new computer they got that they showed us that picked the songs for them, instead of a DJ doing it. Even at the age of 10, I hated what they were telling me. Years later, I became a musician and was in a band that was being looked at by Geffen, Immortal, and Maverick. The band that was helping us to get noticed was called Transmatic, and they told us insider horror stories I will NEVER FORGET!! They address some of what they told us in this video. I am so glad these guys have the balls to lay it all out on the table. The things they are saying were the exact things I told other people but was laughed at because of. This video is TOTAL vindication for me!! Lol

So here's my question, if this is the case then what is the point of having a DJ at all? why do they have any humans working at the radio station if it's all computerized now?

Radio personalities were a big thing. Not so much anymore, since the internet There are many stations that don't use on-air personalities.@@trophyscene5015

​@@trophyscene5015 they've got very few, most of the commercials are national too. The only reason for a DJ now is for local add reads & to make sure the equipment doesn't break down

KBCO introduced me to tons of great music back in the day! This breaks my heart.

@@kivahunter6959 Well now you have to hunt for it yourself. Spotify will attempt to learn your habits and there's a bunch of options to find similar stuff. It's not the same but it's quicker than going row by row in a record store until you find something good.

Clear Channel, now I Hate Radio, I mean "Heart" was the end of the end for variety on FM radio.. It's incredible because these assholes got greedy they decided its to hard to try to be creative and find creative acts, actual talent, to satisfy the public. So they bough t up everything, increased Payola on a grand scale, and gave a big FU to the public or anyone who wanted to make actual legitimate music!

This is so heartbreaking. What a waste.

Sorry but if you were creating value for the customer, then why would the customer go to the competition? I think satellite radio and eventually streaming put a big dent into local music radio. The people wanted songs or personalities, not 3 songs followed by 7 minutes of commercials.

@@forgetaboutit1069one size fits all I guess. Once clear channels came in they brought out everything

​@@forgetaboutit1069When the market is controlled by a monopoly there is no competition.

@@forgetaboutit1069wouldn’t his argument have been long before the aforementioned?

But these days artists can get their own studios, do their own productions, distribution. KZfaq is one way to distribute.

@@robertewalt7789 This is true, but it's not quite the same. As Bruce Sterling pointed out, what's really scarce is *attention*, not distribution.

worse yet, how much awful music have we endured because they COULD afford a studio session.

Yep, or because no label they approached were interested in helping to promote them. Jamiróquai are a great example of how it used to be: at the start, only the singer Jay Kay was contracted, he had no steady band, few finished songs of his own and he had limited technical skills (reading/writing notated music, playing any instruments etc) - he was a brilliant potential frontman and a good singer, but how to launch him? No major label today would have made the efforts that Sony and Jay's manager expended during the making of Jamiroquai's superb debut album in 1992-93: recruiting a live band and a writing partner who was able to sight read music (Toby Smith), long studio sessions, videos, live brass and strings for the album - for a band where almost no one had been heard on records before. That level of backing for a new and unknown band just doesn't happen today (unless they're heavily styled and hyped to fit some thought-out "project" from the label). If Jay Kay had turned up today, the label would have treated him as just a clothes-hanger for external songwriters, producers, remixers and stylists.

Imagine that across every field, capitalism truly devours the human soul.

I love that!

Yea of the bald type was corrupt but toothless was pretty fair

The only time I got through to a radio show to request a song, the person who answered the phone told me what song I had to request. Huge disappointment. That was in the early 80s.

My gf and I caught ourselves singing every line to a cheesy Taylor Dane from the 80’s…. We had this shared experience of that song…. Ans no one today will have that

I remember this here in the 90s in London, England, calling and texting radio stations to play our favourite Reggae and R&B songs. I could cry nowadays... I remember when they started phasing out specialist DJs after my favourite station was bought out by Global Radio which now owns 70% of all of the FM stations in the UK. EMAP owns 20% and the national BBC network owns 10%...

Bingo

I was one of them.

They’re still out there, plugging away. Unfortunately, we lack the curators like a John Peel or a Giles Peterson to help us sift through the mountain of good new artists out there now. Program directors just phone it in-like they’ve been doing the last three decades.

I played music for 15 years. Quit because I wasn’t making money. Waste of time

​@@johnolmos8670You really need to do it for the true love of it!😀

The music business? Every business has its sociopaths in control.

One of my favorite quotes.

And usually, they're men. Corruption and greed has led to the downfall of so many ........makes me sick.

Great quote. And so true.

unnecessarily specific

What it hasn't destroyed , it will .

But in the end, the rich get richer. So it's all good, right? That's the end point of capitalism and the purpose of many politicians.

Almost everything is kinda bland these days, like movies and shows, nothing new,

Corruption and greed has always been with us since the beginning of time. What's different now is our modern technology is a force multiplier that vastly increases the corruption and greed for the tiny few who hold the power and money.

That’s why we need a government of the people to push back against the Apple/Googles of the world.

Thats a fact.... "they're" reshaping our culture and society by design by force feeding the masses with crap and controlling or attempting to shut down our "Artistic output"... kinda like force feeding GMO foods on everyone.

It's a vicious cycle. Consultants and marketers notice trends from more independent artists, find a malleable artist and make them play music that conforms to those trends, the public hears that music and buy it, and that funds more airplay for the malleable artist.

It really is sickening how the stations pretty much control what we not only listen to, but what we think we like. If a song is played over and over again, it becomes catchy to everyone having to hear it. Even if you didn't like it when it first came out. And that's how music becomes "popular" to the masses.

The corporate media masters control not only what we see and hear, but who and how, thereby influencing how we think and feel. @@keymaster430

Similar to art galleries where my professional interest lies.

💯percent.

Wait! Are you talking about the Civil War? Just sayin, cuz the root of this thing where masses are attached and affected by some kind of centralized word is likely ancient. And if so, the solution also. We don't have to be manipulated so, or at agreement with institutions that wreak anathema.

Good point. It increased corporate profits and consolidation, while downsizing and automation decreased diversity and creativity. Same impact on local media - very negative impact on local communities that tend to be held together by locally produced news. Instead the rise of Fox etc.

Yeah, it's called Fascism.

Good point. Diversity is best for everything/ in biology and environmental science- diversity strengthens and enriches all participants.

I worked at West LA Music for a few years. What studio did you work at?

Same with video game industry 1996-2000, and youtube 2015-2021.

@@bigneiltoo I remember the collapse of the video game industry very well..... back in 1983.

@@Peter_S_ Any time a new technology or medium comes out there is a 5 year "glory days" period before it becomes pasteurized and homogenized by the powers that be.

@NolanVoid-dr1ch ? Look it up; there's even a Wikipedia page on it, LOL. The Video Game Crash of 1983 was a thing and lots of people have made videos about it. By mid-1983, Atari had lost $356 million and laid off 3,000 of its 10,000 workers. Atari also moved all manufacturing to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Lots of companies went bust and lots of amazing scrap also hit the surplus stores in Silicon Valley. The industry didn't start growing again until 1985. There have been crashes before and there will be more in the future.

Music industry is so greedy that they would hire the non-talent.

Radio is dead now. It's all Spotify now.

every atom of our existence is monitized and anything profitable at all is scooped up by the corporate slime machine and ruined, nothing new here

@@Fearzero spot on comment 👍 or should i say Spot ify 🙄

@@Fearzero I think that is very sad. How are you supposed to hear new music if you’re not exposed to it? As you can probably tell, I’m strictly old school.

He was implying that the corruption was a good thing...

​@@prod.SonicGems-ii3glNo, you obviously are unaware of HST's work - some of which are one of the best literary work of the 20th century. The implication of that quote is that the music business is even worse.

@@prod.SonicGems-ii3gl no that is not what he was implying. Look up irony in the dictionary, please

a long plastic hallway and a glass staircase

All ran by the usual suspects: your Epsteins and Weinsteins

Congratulations! Now fetch my soy latte, boy.

​@@Paul-mx8sfyou drink soy?

@@dickstrykerLol😂

I remember the odd couple Feingold (my senator) and John McCain fighting against that. Of course that act passed easily as only 18 voted Nay, but those two scored some cool points with me

I'm old enough to have noticed that it was going downhill even beforehand, because Clear Channel antics. The Telecommunications Act just made it much MUCH worse. I stopped listening to Radio in the late 90s due to frustration and disgust.

And name names. Why not?

Might not be too very healthy. LedHed Pb 207.20 🎶 🎸 🎹

This isn't corruption but racketeering.

He should add more people with more examples. And then how autotune took over. etc etc

@@DannyOKC and when turns out that most of the names come from single ethnic group, that would be the end of rick beato.

Yes same here. :)

I was a bit young but wasn't it the mythical age of the Walkman? I had a couple from parents that eventually got discarded for Discmans and a box of cassettes. That's how I found Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd. Why not that? Didn't use the last good years of radio to pirate everything onto cassettes? And us kids steal music... says the one with 2000 hand labeled cassettes from borrowed records... FBI open up!

Rick Beato is indeed a team player! For the teams of: listeners, creators, music, truth, and justice. Just not for the so-called "owners," who got no skin in the game, and put no heart or soul into what they do. Who sell death, not life. They took a living thing and killed it by indifference. How many reminders do we need that idolatry of money is a sin? More, evidently. Thank you, Rick!

How about it as a new episode of "This Is Pop."

@@TranscendentBen Modern pop music, especially that of female artists, is basically an extension of porn industry.

Netflix would raceswap Rick lol

No gay content so no, it wouldn't happen.

Quit obsessing over Netflix. You a a part of the problem. Support other outlets/media.

They were annoyed that they didn't get to rip you off enough

Not a team player, eh ;)

For me 70’s and 80’s. We can’t forget unique DJ’s like Wolfman Jack,either.👍👍

It was the public that allowed their Govt to become an Oligarchy ….. corrupt Govt produces corrupt systems and institutions

80's was the best decade for music, awesome variety, labels and studio DJ's took chances on new sounds

I remember the 70's, and I'm going to say it was better than the 80's. There was more diversification on the type of music you'd hear on many stations. By the 80's the stations had pretty locked-in genres, so the diversity was lessened. Still, until the mid-90's I would listened to rock radio to hear new stuff, and revisit old favorites.

@@kelleyfamily2636 Everybody up until the 2000s thought that their decade of music was the best. I’ve lived nearly 7 decades. I remember pre FM and post FM. I remember Free-Form, I remember ClearChannel buy outs etc. I thought that we had lost the art of music making around the end of the 90s. But there are many extremely talented musicians right now who hopefully grow beyond KZfaq fame. They deserve a break!

From some of the stuff I have read, alternative kind of killed itself. Too many drugs and not enough focus.

​@@cvr527But there have been other bands and scenes with new sounds that could have been the next Nirvana, Tool, or Primus but there was zero radio play for new bands with new sounds so they never get the chance to reach the national audience like NIN and Janes Addiction did. The fact that radio stopped taking chances on new musical ideas is what killed alternative rock.

@@cvr527they oversaturated the “alternative” scene with all these poser bands that “looked” the part but sounded the exact same. Than the industry went back to the bubble gum boy band crap and the gangsta rap thing post 2pac……

@@americanbadass88 Sure, but the point made in the video is that that happened because there were a small group of corporate radio guys that took over everything. When they got control all the unique stuff just dried up. We didn't hear Don Cabellero or Steve Albini's bands because the squares took over. So we got cheap knock off copies of Nirvana for 10 years ...

@@Napalm6b Agreed. I saw two Bands and one Solo Artist make their way to the national stage from Mid-Michigan in the early and mid-nineties before The Telecommunications Act shut that down, and I'm sure others can remember THEIR scenes sprouting bands that stormed the nation before THAT Law.

"...someone still loves you!" - Freddie Mercury

Payola. I've often wondered how much exactly a top plugger for say Sire records, or CBS records lays out annually. I gather their is a large amount of gratuities cash, merchandise, working girls, powder etc

Yes, and is know as payola - aka bribery.

it's not entirely gone in a way, the local radio station broke out oliver anthony. they heard about him, sent some recording people to him and posted it on their youtube channel.

Too much power for the monopolists and market consolidators to handle. The repeal of the media ownership rules at the FCC was probably one of the most destructive things that happened in 1996. Pharma was deregulated in 1996 and the Sacklers and their Purdue Pharma started their opioid cartel with help from Congress, after Congress was paid off. Now, 5 huge media monopolies run 99% of our media. You see how the media drives public opinion, controls the narrative, creates fear, and controls what people think and do. Many Americans fall victim to the destructive media narrative of people like Steve Bannon and Alex Jones. The satellite radio stations are riddled with political fear mongering. So people are paying for their own indoctrination. Truck drivers are a great example. They are probably the most hate mongered group in the nation. I can tell that the big satellite radio station monopolies are forcing the old AM/FM stations out of business. Eventually it will all be pay radio. Sad Sad. Not a word about it anywhere. Why? Because all of media belongs to a larger media monopoly. You should check out Nexstar Media Group. They run the destructive narrative of the ACU/CPAC political racketeers. They push private prisons, privatization of public schools very efficiently in several states. They do this by collaborating with fully funded ACU/CPAC elected state official people. People like Governors Noem, Abbott, Huckabee-Sanders, and DeSantis.

find what precisely

Do to think rock music would have lost popularity had things stayed the same as they were in the 70s

Because other types of music did not lose popularity

Interesting question. Really the whole business changed as Rick and Jim noted. Really only Country music seems fairly healthy now. Much of that comes from strong tours and listening to Country radio outside of the top east and west coast big cities.

@@davelange4039 yeah it changed but why did rock music become unpopular

As was explained in the video, Producer/Managers wanted every band to sound the same, severely limiting the sounds of bands who got airplay, thus killing musical diversity and appeal to the vast majority of the audience. Rock music itself is still popular, but that simply isn't reflected radio stations that play new acts anymore. @@infintyplus

I agree.......but I also think that you could show your respect for Mr Beato by spelling his name correctly.

@@chrisfromnoosa1905 True. My bad.

😊@@SmokDiplodoq

Actually... Spotify is the head of that mafia... they want us to listen to reggaeton and mexican stuff...

You are totally right except the correct title to this video should be "Yet another example of how the Corruption and Greed of Neoliberal Economics ruined an Industry." I'm an aerospace engineer with 30+ years working in industrial control systems and automation. I have mostly worked in manufacturing and mining with stints in oil & gas, water treatment, waste processing, dairy and a few other odd jobs. This mentality is so rampant across every business sector I have worked in. You might not think that the current disaster that's Boeing is related to this but it is. Boeing used to have Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas as competitors in jets for airlines. BUT according to Neoliberals that's not efficient so they let Boeing swallow up their competitors. Once you get monopolised control of a market there's no other way to increase profits but to cut costs or raise prices and ECONOMISTS are obsessed with cutting costs and management are obsessed with finding new costs to add to consumers. Economists and Business Managers brag about efficiency but have NO IDEA what efficiency actually is or what it means in any given industry. All of the sorts of activities I am hearing here about costs and practices I can give similar examples in all of the industries I have worked. I can even use it to explain why we haven't been back to the moon for over 50 years.

And this is the way everything is going. Gross!

corpos can ruin anything

Some of the writers were in radio previously. Bill Dial, who wrote the Turkey drop episode, was one. They probably had input from other radio people as well.. such as production consultant DJs.

Yep. there was that one episode where Mrs. Carlson wanted to bring in that national program director to basically replace Andy. That was such a great show.

What’s even more sadly ironic about that is that Disney owns that show now through a series of corporate mergers that put its production company’s library of shows in their hands.

We still can do this mate, we just need to know how to promote via social media. World needs another „Smells Like Teen Spirit”

It MIGHT also have something to do with the fact that you have no talent! :) (Which is the same reason that I never became a rock star.)

me too

as a kid in my teens I agree

Fantastic insite to that side of the business. Wish there was more

@chip... There is. Just watch Congress.

Not finding the Bob Neil you're referring to.

A lot of the radio stations over here in the UK, may have different names but they all sound the same. And here's the reason: they're all owned by one company called Global Radio. It's not a new thing, it's been happening for years. I do listen to the radio but that's at work, I never listen at home like I used to.

That makes me think of this story: Mope-Itty Mope" would probably have fallen into complete obscurity except for fact that Mexican border blaster XEAK decided to play it in 1961 -- in fact, they played it over and over for 72 straight hours, stunting its new format: "Extra News", the first 24-hour all-news station in Southern California."

I've heard from an indie band that Sirius is still the money maker.

Care to share your bands name and is it on spotify?

Stay Indie y'all

What’s your band called?

My band is The Klitz

I remember that...

I can't tell you how much I cherish listening to an entire album start to finish and anticipating that next song and knowing that next song and just knowing that the whole record was a complete work of art, it was a piece of creativity that was kind of Halo dropped into your life at a certain point .. making records to sell off the singles really really decrease the quality of a whole record

@@Say_When ...and now lots of new artists produce nothing but one-off singles to get their .00001 cents per play on Spotify. Jesus wept.

I had the same experience playing Revolver for the first time. I still remember manually placing the stylus of my desktop record player on the record and hearing that weirdly wonderful count-in to "Taxman." I was twelve and it was a transformative experience. I feel sorry for the generations who have no idea what I'm talking about.

Kids today have no idea what it's like everyone in your school anticipating a new album. That experience was incredible

I try to tell people that rock died in the early 90s when bands like Damn Yankees were paid millions to not make new music!

@@johnnyjohnson1326 Rock didn't die, it's just been in hiding. They don't play it on the radio.

​@@johnnyjohnson1326rock is alive and well in my house

Web3 fixes this

"So friggin ORGANIC!!" And the antonym of _organic_ is _corporate_ !

Didn't he also say that all the artistic freedom and experimentation occured when the cigar chomping executive "suits" were in charge of the record companies, and it all went belly up when the young hip guys took over?

@@SuperNevileYep, there's a vid of Zappa where he says that. The suits were willing to take a risk to make some money. The hipsters weren't, because of their own prejudiced tastes.

BA-Zingo! The record industry killed itself, along with a corrupt monopoly-enabling FCC.

Humans and their greed will eventually ruin everything. There is always a line crossed as somebody thinks they can push it just a little bit farther.

People establish governments to protect themselves from other people. It is a failure of government when their agencies get captured by corporate agendas that undermine their protective purpose, and instead promote corporate interest. That is the definition of corruption.@@christopherweise438

And that gd autotune 😮

don't forget the ad's. all those millions of ad's $'s just waiting to be enticed by the radio sales team. Fk the music, just get the $'s

It's about and always was about social engineering buddy. They do it in the schools too

Some of the same people who would complain about this will get angry if you point out capitalism’s role in this outcome.

@@Ues2DCbut if thats the system then you or we need to develop consistent methods of implementing capitalism in fairer and better ways. Guitar is a good analogy because it too has limitations but within those limitations are so many possibilities. To me, many things are split off to be in the public domain and management of that public domain, the work of government needs much more robust integration with the people. When you erode that connection then that "democracy" becomes simply tyranny.

Corporations are inherently destructive of creativity. They exist only to make money… they are soulless…😢

yea same here, I wouldnt have minded even an hour or so of them discussing this, I would listen to the whole thing

25 minutes is a long video for you? When i saw the video title, i thought it wasn't nearly enough time for the topic. It wasn't.

The problem with music right now is there is nothing very original happening. I'm not suggesting there isn't anything good getting released but nothing really original. The 50's to the 80’s was the era for rock, from then on rock music has mostly been a variation of what has been done before. A major problem for popular music in my opinion is nothing new has happened in well over 20 years. Hip hop is still popular but there's nothing original coming out either & the genre is over 40yrs old. It's as if popular music has become stuck in time, nothing groundbreaking is happening.

Plenty of artists will

@@tsurek Give us some names

@@tsurek No, they won't. Have you been listening? The industry will just make up a new "recording artist" that recycles the same sounds you're thinking of, and no one at all will remember the originals.

I think after around 2000 or so, almost no bands/artists have had the kind of wide cross-genre breakthroughs that were a typical thing in the seventies and eighties: a band gaining attention and interest for their music far outside of the particular genre they are in. Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Prince, The Who, Bob Marley, Talking Heads, Pearl Jam are all examples of that, and so are many soul stars (Aretha Franklin, Isaac Hayes, Rod Stewart, Lauryn Hill etc). Radiohead were among the last bands to achieve that, and a musically innovative band too, like the rest I cited - during the last twenty years almost no new acts have managed to do it, and this is a sign of a more and more shut-in music business.

Not need for paying investigative reporters, just get all the news "that matters" off the Internet with ai. Sure a lot of things will be missed, but the corporation will still make more money & that's what matters.

Yes! There is no local news when something of vital importance occurs. It's very scary, especially with the increase i n wildfires and floods here. There's also no indepth reporting nor follow-up to things that are happening or happened. The "local news" is a joke.

I'm thinking back now .... I was busy doing other things my parents were really ill. OK I take back what i wrote back earlier it was mid-90s now that I pin down the chronology. ok you guys nailed it.

A perfect storm... telecommunications act nukes local flavor [which really is necessary for a music scene of any flavor], massively top heavy recording industry [too big to succeed] and the consolidation of certain non-band operators and the spark was lost.

Same here... In the mid 90s, almost all of the music sucked or sounded the same!

Spot on! Boring, boring, boring..... at that point.

country music has the same problem, if it comes from Nashville, I'm out

Read Geezer Butler’s new Biography- stunning the amount of coke! Same with Glenn Hughes’ biography

Yep sure was. People joked about it where I worked as an assistant engineer. Our studio had a “drug guy”, a runner (they ran errands) who could get artists whatever they wanted.

One thing is that you could never get this shown on the TV channels or Netflix or Amazon Prime as they are too corporate and afraid of their media owners who own the labels...

It's so awesome what you're doing. Kudos!!

Well done. In the Bay Area, Live 105 [KITS] has returned, a station long known for giving the first break to bands that went national. Aaron Axelsen features local new bands every Sunday night 8-10 PM.

That's awesome. Keep pushing

Great idea!

Bad luck if people don't like the record...

Man, I do feel for you. I was hitting the radio market in 86 after four years of constructive freedom.

Anytime a "consultant" comes in, the business will be broke in a year.

WKRP in Cincinnati basically predicted that!

They do this everywhere they go

Yup by the 80s it was starting to be replaced by computers. The 50-70s AM radio giants like WABC, WLS, KHJ were the golden years.

Now days i dont know if its so much the same producers than it is just everyone doing copycat work using popular formulas running things through the same plugins etc.

As a musician, I've always been amazed at how bad the average persons ears are. Hearing comments about how "this song sounds exactly like that song', when the songs sounded entirely differently were not uncommon to come across from "average listeners" in my experience. No matter how much you might point out the different instrumentation between the songs, the different chord progressions, the different melody, the different chorus, etc. they couldn't hear it, and in their opinion that the songs sounded "the same" for no other reason than because their ears were so undeveloped, that they simply could not hear what was obviously very different to someone who's ears were more "developed" (which refers to the part of the brain that is used to focus and concentrate upon the sound coming in through the ears, who are able to hear the distinctions in tone and timbre, who are able to hear the different instruments as distinct individual sounds throughout the frequency spectrum, etc.). One example that comes to mind was people claiming Ritchie Blackmore's "Catch the Rainbow" was the same as Hendrix's "Little Wing". They would be willing to get into arguments, insisting they were the same song, and how Blackmore had "ripped off" Jimi. The similarity in tempo, and instrumentation alone was enough to make them associate one song to another in their mind, and to claim they were, essentially, the "same song", despite that not being the case at all. It has never been unusual for me to have someone listen to a song they think they know well and point out certain parts, asking them to listen to certain words repeated in the background or the part a certain instrument plays, and have their eyes open wide and tell me "I've never heard that before". This is quite common, simply because the ears of an average person are undeveloped, and they've never focused their attention on listening for certain sounds or keeping the music in the forefront of their minds as someone who has disciplined themselves to practice, listen to, and study music such as when learning an instrument or learning the art of mixing music on a multi-track recorder has done. So, I stopped putting any credence in people claiming "all these songs sound the same" a long time ago, since everyone I've ever heard make that claim couldn't tell the difference between a beautiful violin soloist or an Appalachian fiddler; or tell you how many instruments were actually on any given recording, whether there are 3 or 7 instruments present, since they have no ability to pick them out. It's quite doubtful that Rick's explanation of all of the "cross-collateralization" of music business expenses coming out of advances made upon the artists royalties explains so many people not being able to hear quite distinctive differences between bands and songs. Even the "production qualities" of the final product became known as "

@@GlennMarshallRocks that’s very long.

Yep!! ...and this was why I stopped listening to the radio and revisited all my albums, tapes😱 and CDs... And added to my collection by purchasing CDs from bands I liked at gigs 💪👍

​@@GlennMarshallRocksCatch the Rainbow does sound like Little Wings in the same way as the movie scene where Mozart improves Salieri's music by adding flourish and extra notes.

Good points. New wave ruled the 80s

I don't know, I kind of love the fact it's easier than ever to find and listen to the music you love, not just what you can hear on the radio.

The problem is that garbage corporation music is what people are hearing on the radio, UNJUSTLY promoting crappier stuff, while quality acts have to take a back seat

@@annna6553 Agreed, I cant even believe people still listen to radio.

So many of them don't even sing live. Jumping all over the stage without being out of breath? They're lip-syncing. The SB was an absolute joke. People pay hundreds of $ to see that? Posers.

Love that song

The Last DJ was inspired by long time LA maverick DJ Jim Ladd who unfortunately past just before the holidays this year.

I know what I'm willing to pay for what I used to get for free, which is why I have satellite radio. There I listen to the Spectrum (plays new rock records that can't get airplay on the few rock radio stations left), Deep Tracks (plays obscure songs from bands, plays obscure bands), the Beatles Channel (not just the Beatles but 1950s-early 1960s hits that inspired the Beatles but are never played on radio anymore), and Classic Vinyl (all your favorite classic-rock tunes without the commercials). Sat is a necessity now; terrestrial radio is all rap, hair-band rock, and electronic pop.

I don't pay for any music and listen to whatever I want, this is the beauty of KZfaq. The downside is that I don't know one group that has made a record in the past 10 years. When I accidentally turn on the radio my ears are assaulted by the awful sounds I tend to hear

Deep tracks was DJ Jim Ladd’s last gig before he recently joined the great gig in the sky.

I COMPLETELY agree with you on Taylor Swift. Her face is everywhere but are her songs noteworthy (no pun intended)? Bought an album of hers recently but couldn't get through it feeling my IQ was going down. Love here personally Roxette, Depeche Mode, A-Ha, ABBA, The Beatles, Queen, etc. These are bands that produced memorable melodies and lyrics with raw musical talent.

Not only that, but many Album Oriented Rock stations would play an album every night, which everyone at home could record for themselves on tape!

And people would actually sit down and listen to the full album after it was recommended. I liked having a tangible piece from the artist and the experience of the music. I loved reading the stuff they put inside cassettes and CDs, the photos and lyrics - it was incredible. I'm sad about not having that these days and it is so unfortunate that the this and next gen will never experience it.

On the other side, we were still fed what the radio stations played to a large extent and we didn't have the diversity in music that exists today because of the internet. Basically anyone can make any kind of music and make it available to everyone around the world.

@@JamesG1126How could you have possibly listened to every single piece of music that exists on the internet?

​@@JamesG1126and that's where I'd ask for stats. There's great music out there, if you go look for it. Some of the most innovative things have been happening in the underground metal scene lately. The thing we miss is not great music, it's the human element in the music. We miss what music stood for, a universal human experience. You are correct, 95% of popular music is crap. So that experience is...bye-bye. We miss that, we need that back. How, we as a race must find a way. Music has always been an important social force. We can't let corporates destroy millenias of connection for their profit

It‘s the most common sign of greed and model used by greedy people.

@@GiancarloBenzina the most?

If you don’t mind me asking, what was the name of your band? (I used to really like Ross Robinson’s production, especially on the early Korn and Limp Bizkit albums and the Sepultura “Roots” album).

@@Yup712 Choking Ghost... We had shared bills with Incubus, Fight, No Doubt, Static-X, Hoobastank, Digital Underground, Fishbone, Nazareth, SOAD, Dio, King's X etc... the live scene in LA 95-2005 was loaded and ended up with some international heavyweights who continue to sell loads of tickets all over the world.