Imagine Dragons has ten songs with over a billion plays on Spotify and KZfaq... and I can't name a single one of them.

I won't go to stadium shows anymore. Disappointing when the music is out of sync with the giant screen because I'm miles away. If I'm miles away I might as well watch KZfaq. Give me smaller venues with great bands.

A little off topic, but here's a thought. Back in the monoculture day there were huge bands and artists that didn't even reach the top 10, Led Zeppelin for example, but they were real musicians focused on making music. We can all name every member of that band, but... and here's the point- we did not know anything about those musicians beyond interviews and rumors. I knew who Robert Plant was, but I didn't know about his private life and didn't really think about it, just enjoyed the music. These days artists are posting what thet had for breakfast and their favorite shoe company etc. Young artists post all day with music as peice of a larger portfolio of their talents. Social media has forced artists to "engage" and the music is secondary.

She was having a concert in a stadium 20 minutes walk from my home and I had no idea who was singing over there 😂. But now I know her for all the fuss.

Bigger and smaller is a good term. I've heard of Taylor Swift, but I never heard Taylor Swift. Back in the day I would have definitely heard her on the radio whether I wanted to or not.

I'm in a post rock band that doesn't draw too big a crowd in the United States, but last fall we went on an 8 show headlining tour in China and sold a couple hundred tickets a night. It was mind boggling to us to have fans coming out to every show on the other side of the planet, but in our home country we're barely getting by. It opened my eyes to the different markets and the way different music reaches different cultures in a really palpable way.

This is so interesting…. It seems that Monoculture birthed the Superstar. I always wondered what made artists like Queen, Michael Jackson, Prince so prolific, and why that style of Superstar doesn’t exist today. It really is interesting to see how the musical landscape has evolved.

I feel the same way about movies. I miss the blockbuster era of the 80's and 90's when a movie was a summer long event with commercials and fast-food tie ins and one or more songs in heavy rotation for two months or so. Movies now are one-time experiences. I miss that magic of experiencing the movie all summer long. The internet has caused an exponential explosion of pop culture such that it is impossible to experience it all or little pieces of it for long periods of time. Back to music, I see a lot of people my age act superior when a younger person doesn't know who Elvis, The Monkees, or George Jones are, but they have 1000 times (10,000 times) more music to dig through than we did. Us older folks had time to explore our pop culture plus the pop culture of the previous several decades. Kids these days don't have the time to do that.

Music has become what TV shows are now. No one is watching the same show. So it’s hard to bond with strangers at the bar per se, when you make a reference and they are like ??? Then you are left with the “ You should really check this band/movie/TV show out, which no one ever does. My 2c

Here’s the problem with potential Super Bowl halftime performers. It’s not a concert anymore it’s an event. The choreography the props the lighting the effects you can’t just get up there and be a great band and play a bunch of songs. So that narrows down the field tremendously.

LiveNation is a huge part of the problem - they make going to shows so damn expensive for people that they don't have the funds to go see smaller acts, especially when tours are 'farewell tours', and you feel such an obligation to see the dinosaurs one last time.

I remember wanting to watch the Grammys to watch my favorite artists perform. I couldnt name 5 artists on the top 40 now.

"Artists are bigger and smaller than they've ever been" - that about sums up the state of popular music nowadays. Thanks guys for this informative and intelligent discussion

One of my favorite things as being a dad was seeing my kids coming to me excited about sharing an old song like Toto or Neil Young asking me if I ever heard this song...then there were stories.

The phenomena you are describing isn't limited to entertainment. It permeates our world today in all aspects of our lives. We have become balkanized as a country; I'm speaking of America but I suspect there are other countries experiencing something similar.

Technology changed the way we consume music. Back in the day the media distributing music was limited to radios, terrestrial tv and entertainment spots. So everyone was consuming similar content and that created the monoculture. Now people customise their own content they want to consume

I love how Rich takes the piss out of Rick 😂 Only very good old friends can do that to each other

“This stratification where people are getting deeper and deeper into the smaller silos.” Speaks volumes to the ability to turn on only music you like because you don’t have to communicate w/ anyone when you hide behind the phone or computer. This is why dating culture, work culture, music culture, film culture, and life perspective is so different than even 10 years ago. Amazing conversations Rick!

A big difference is that in the 80s, for instance, bands played instruments and actually sang songs. That is exhausting and requires time out. Now far fewer stars play in a band and the stadium experience is full of audio assistance, pyrotechnics and entertainment that is much less pressure on the voices of the stars.

Man! Ricks interviews are getting better and better. Pat Metheny, George Benson . Michael McDonald,Sting,Seal, Peter Frampton, Andy, Summers, Stewart Copeland, Brian May and so many others I can’t name right now. Are despite all the thousands of videos about technique and theory this is the most inspirational educational music channel on KZfaq.

This is not just music. The breaking down into smaller and smaller, isolated, silos. It's across the spectrum of culture, and politics, and the economy. Siloed cultures, within the culture, is the new culture. Interconnectivity, at the scale of the internet, creates forms of dis-connectivity, which, in turn, as tipping point thresholds are met, create more interconnectivity. The pendulum swings faster and faster.

Remember that time when you knew if you were gonna like someone because of the music they listened to?

Listened to AM radio as a kid. On one station I would hear Rock (a multitude), Pop (Sugar Sugar), Country (Cash, Camble), Classical (Beethoven), Novelty (Guitarzan) and more variety. Though there were specialized AM stations for Christian Radio or Country, the city stations I listened to had a somewhat diverse background. When FM came about, with its better fidelity and catering to a more sophisticated audience, I switched over to FM rock. But I still knew about some of the other music going on because you could hear it on other people's radio.

The Monoculture dying started when Jean-Michel Jarre and Kraftwerk started doing music without lyrics or in German/French. We Europeans usually got songs translated in the 1950-1960 into our mother tongue so huge amounts of songs known in English is known to us in our native language Anni-Frid Lyngstad did What Now My Love in Swedish. Now we fast forward and Rammstein is huge in the world singing in German. We have had an almost No 1 hit on the Billboard list in Finnish language with Käärijä singing Cha Cha Cha. We see the "KZfaqr react to ........" era where songs in other languages are a huge part of that field. The way a 20 or something old song from Herbert Grönemeyer (he who played Leutnat Werner in Das Boot) goes viral in those channels (his song is called Der Weg about his wife dying of cancer) is wonderful to see. And the way that people start to listen to music in other languages and really learning those languages are wonderful. Singing in English and doing lyrics in that language when it's not your native language is hard. Grönemeyer tried that, but still his songs are better in German. And then we have the big Spanish wave in the 1990-2000 still doing it big. I know people learning languages just after hearing favorite songs in the Eurovision Song Contest. And this is wonderful. When I was a teenager in the 1990s finding music in other languages to aid you in learning that language was super hard. Now we have Spotify and KZfaq without barriers. Wohoo!

I was born in 65. Still love all the music I grew up with. It helped I had older brothers so I had many albums to choose from and many radio stations to listen to. But sometime in the 2000's radio stations just started to be stale. Now I listen to a local independent station that plays local artists and artists I would never hear on the regular stations around me

You heard "Rosanna" everywhere back then because the labels paid intermediaries to get songs like that on the radio.

This explains so much that I wasn't getting. I watch a few reaction videos on KZfaq. Often it is folks that predominantly listen to HipHop and I am floored they have never heard of a particular song or a particular artist....When I know that song had been around for decades. That artist is, or at least was, world famous. It always floored me. How do they not know this song? How do they, at least, not have a remote familiarization with a certain song. This interview explains so much.

This really goes beyond music, movies and TV. The death of the monoculture is really the end of a cohesive, high trust society and sadly is a harbinger of a lot of really bad things to come.

A new phenomena: may half people who knows who Taylor Swift is haven’t hear or mane any song. In the past you hear the song first and the artist name was linked to the song later.

Rick's videos really explain a lot to us, and confirm many of our suspicions about the music business.

The part that everyone misses is that it used to cost thousands of dollars to record one song and if you wanted a quality record, you had to pay for studio time, session musicians, a mix engineer, a mastering engineer etc or be among a select few very talented or very well connected acts that get signed. These days, anyone with a good enough laptop can make an acceptable or at least passable record by following a couple of tutorials. We've had music made by some prodigious kids in their bedrooms become massive hits and get nominated for prestigious awards. While this has unshackled great musicians who the mainstream record labels would've never looked twice at, it has also flooded the music market with a lot of mediocre music that is neither horrible nor anything to write home about driving down the value of each individual piece of music. The more music we create, the less valuable each individual piece of music becomes.

I'm glad he mentioned the Toto example. I always think of my mom and I walking to the car in the mall parking lot and I heard "We Are The World" from another car. I immediately turned the radio on and knew which station to switch to to hear the same broadcast of the song. There were only a few options in our area, just like TV.

I have discovered all kinds of new artists because of KZfaq. It's not from listening to music, but listening to people TALK about music.

Wow. Thanks for stopping by, Rich. That was the densest, most concentrated 15 minutes of take on how the music biz has changed. This was the opposite of filler, BS and wordiness, it's so good im gonna have to watch it again to soak it all up. Most refreshing.

The music was so ubiquitous, that you find yourself singing or humming a song you absolutely hated back in the day ❤

Rick this discussion is fantastic and can be extrapolated to all forms of creative media. The algorithms have connected, divided, organized, and compartmentalized all of us!

I think what has exacerbated the issue in my country, is the closure of all of the music stores (record, tape, CD). Many people are still “touch and feel”, turn it over in your hands, read the cover and get excited about it. Flip through the selection to see what’s available and new. I love rock and 80’s metal, but I am left to KZfaq algorithms to suggest groups to me. One can’t search/google for a band you don’t know about. My iTunes collection consists of bands for who I already own the CD’s. So I have paid twice for the same albums. With the exception of Extreme 8.

Another very important variable is that bands are not touring to as many cities, they are doing long residencies in one city and having the fans come to THEM.

Today is easier to track and anticipate attendance because ticket sales are mainly online. That allows producers and artists to make quick decisions about doing additional shows in a city or venue. In the past this information was not readily available and having a second or third show in a venue was a risky proposition.

I have said it before, but I will say it again. I love your channel. I love the interviews, the content, the honesty and the transparency. It means a lot to people/musicians like me that wonder how it all works. Thank you for all that you do Rick in pulling back the curtain on the wizard.

It seems to me, the change happened when albums stopped being a thing. When artists used to put out albums, they'd do the concerts to promote the album, and everyone would buy the album, and artists got rich that way. Now....the internet means you can find the album online for free. Everything shifted, when artists couldn't make it by selling a ton of albums. Now, they've got to do live concerts, and sell a lot of t-shirts.

Suggestion…. There is this band called “The Warning.” They have been a band since they were kids. Now grown up. Partly through circumstances of being 3 sisters from Mexico and partly from intentionality they bypassed the normal path to a record company deal and all that. They actually turned down deals. They were successfully independent now signed with Lava. Hard rock. The point might be to talk about how they did it using the modern internet/social media. They are young (although they’ve been a working band for 10 years) and just delightful people. They speak perfect English. I’m sure they’d be happy to talk. They grew up on the internet and they are the definition of a rabbit hole.

As a musician myself who plays local bars, i got no problem with megastar artists playing stadiums. Whatever floats your boat, theres always an audience out there no worries! I'm pretty sure Rick Beato, Taylor or any other major artist for that matter aint losin' sleep over your opinions.

Monoculture fading away into oblivion is so sad honestly. I’m very young compared to a lot of y’all here but growing up in the early 2000s and up to my teenage years in the 2010s, monoculture was still there globally. Today, a lot of the popular songs don’t have the same reach in the general public

Think of VH1's.......I LOVE THE 80s, I LOVE THE 90s, and they did a 70's version. At least there were plenty of cultural touchstones in movies, and tv and music. Now, maybe only sports is a monoculture event. I don't know if this current or next generations will have enough commonality for a shared, life experience. Because of ALGORITHMS. Only the APP of TikTok is MONO-CULTURE, but not the experience of it. Saying that, I FREAKING LOVED THE 80s, and 90s. Respect for your channel Rick. MASSIVE, respect.

I recently heard RUSH in Wegman's!! Years ago I heard Jeff Beck, Hammerhead at my old supermarket.

Best news ever! Back to the studio to make new songs, then back to the socials to pimp them to the world, Superbowl here I come!

This is one of Rick's most informative videos (imho), in that they're illuminating us on how things in the "digital age" (smartphones, etc.) have brought the world closer together, but, in contrast, we are more "siloed" (choosing our own programming) than ever. On top of all this, I"m just (very) happy that the sound from KZfaq, Facebook, etc., sounds pretty clean to my ears. The FM stations in my city have went to sludge in the last 2 decades, making the songs nearly unlistenable--talk about "regression' ! As long as the content providers include good sound, it will make the (personal) choices much more enjoyable to listen to and experience !

We do have a monoculture now. It’s the “bzzzzz” feeling of looking at our phones which robs us of focused attention and drives us further apart from one another. The interesting thing about the fact that our previous monoculture was MTV/radio is that there was still a healthy underground subculture that existed outside of it. We don’t really have that anymore. We just have everyone in a constant zombie like “bzzzz” state. Our thoughts, habits, emotions, and the way we relate to others and create culture together now all exist peripheral and subservient to the almighty “bzzzz.” A paradigm shift has occurred and this is actually the new concept of human “culture.”

Great guest. I am a bit older than Rick. Notice how “radio” comes up? I was listening to someone, I forget, on Tidal. After the artist I was listening to was finished, before I could change to another favorite artist, the AI or whatever, at Tidal played a “suggested” artist. I sat up and wondered what I was listening to. Loved it. The artist was someone called “Mitski” never heard of her. I ended up play a few of her many albums. A few? Liked the music so much I discovered she is just starting a world tour. Looked for tickets…never got out of my dang chair! Appearing in NYC, great venue, the Beacon Theater. For four nights! Who other than the Allman Brothers does four nights at this great venue? Ok great, over to Ticket Master. NY four nights at the Beacon theater plus two nights in Brooklyn…SOLD OUT. Looked at some of the other venues she was playing…around the world! Yup. Sold out. I was stunned. I realized I have spent too much time listening to re masters of Jethro Tull and lamenting the demise of my faves from the sixties and seventies and decrying the weird stuff on POP these days. There’s some amazing stuff out there. Streaming, opens the world up and can open our ears to all of it. I have found some great music from Germany and the Netherlands. And a huge amount of music from the past I somehow missed. The Jayhawks catalog is large and still growing! Larkin Poe are just wonderful. Focusing on the pop charts and griping about hip hop and lamenting the fading heroes of hard rock… Don’t waste the time. Open your ears. Get your IPad out and start looking around. Things aren’t so bad.

My daughter is a big Mitski fan at age 11. I took her to a show down here in Miami and was blown away by the artistry and the beautiful melodies. Mostly no one knows who Mitski is. I love how good music is now the "alternative" to the popular music. You are a rebel if you like good melodies and deeper lyrics.

I think there is a key factor that has contributed to this change. Nowadays each artist is actually maximizing their potential by reaching every possible person who might be interested in their stuff throughout the world. And the others don't care or haven't heard of them. Thus creating a fairly large niche and engaged fanbase. Hence "bigger" and "smaller" at the same time. Earlier, the music didn't reach all the audiences who maybe interested and only circulated around a few countries, where everyone heard them because they couldn't be avoided, but they were not necessarily interested in them. Hence creating a mega listening audience but with lower levels of engagement.

Some of it comes to context. Here in the UK we have Glastonbury festival that has in the past been about bands or artists with real instruments- guitars, drums, bass, piano, horns. They don’t have to be rock, but there is a need for ‘live music’ where people can sing along to the hits with a real band. Within the past 5 years there has been an attempt to introduce Rap acts, Pop Divas and teen bands that perform to a backing track with dancers behind and it’s always fallen flat. And I think it’s just not the sort of music that works in the context of a festival where people are standing in a foot of mud and rain.

So glad David Draiman could come share his wealth of knowledge with us today.

She isn't as popular as she seems to be. She's magnified by mainstream to be this monstrously popular person when in fact that not entirely accurate. Same goes for a lot of things currently going on that's on public display.

I saw Marky Ramone and his band a few months ago. Small club, some 200 people I guess. I was standing right in front of the bassist. Pure, raw and honest music. I will never go to the big stadium shows and pay 100 dollars for an artist that I can’t even see.

When Rich noted the statistic about ten Imagine Dragons songs garnering a billion plays each on Spotify, my question was "how many of those plays came from people who deliberately looked up those songs and chose to play them, and how many of those plays came from Spotify randomly selecting songs for the listener's queue on their behalf?" I ask because I wonder whether awareness of an artist's music actually translates to popularity of said artist.

The way Rich is talking to either/and/or the camera or/either/and/with/to Rick is fascinating.

Great interview. Just such a great conversation...a good back and forth. Its not all just "things used to be better!!" which i appreciate

I've watched many old documentaries and books about people traveling and discovering new types of music. I guess I didn't realize how big Monoculture has become with the internet. 10 years ago on a tour we got invited to play horn parts with a local band in Indonesia. I was very excited at first to lean new foreign music. Only to find out it was the same 90s bar band set that i was playing in NYC during college back in 2008 haha Even the most cheesy songs were being performed over 10,000 miles away. Crazy! There are way more local asian groups posting on youtube now tho vs 2015. And now with tiktok all those old 80-90s songs came back even harder. The space is always changing!

Remember that the ability to track music listening is a relatively new technology. Prior to that, they could only track sales and plays that were reported. I use to record songs off the radio with my boombox and play them over and over hundreds of times. Not to mention that the ability to listen to any song at any time is also relatively new. It's so hard to compare things from different eras, when the "rules" are constantly evolving. Popular longevity is the best measuring stick. What music of today will still be popular 20, 30, 40, etc. years from now.

In the seventies when we were hearing the mainstream music (as part of "mono-culture") we still were not necessarily locked into that. When music became more and more a part of what I wanted in my life I began to look outside of mainstream offerings. I would test albums to check out lesser know artists. I would go to a show to see what was up with a new band. Start tuning into a new radio station with a different angle on music. Whatever. The hunger for more just made me push past what the mono-culture offering had. I still do that now. If all you do is follow the feeds that pop up you have to know you are going to miss a lot of great stuff. You have to look outside of feeds and mainstream offerings or the customized offerings the algorithms send to you. There is no end to how amazed I am regularly in surfing through music channels and finding some incredibly talented artist doing something very cool.

Without a doubt this is the best era of music bc a guy in a NY office can't tell me what to listen to. I discover more bands in a day than a music fan in the 80's did in a year

Stevie Nicks thankyou you are a true rock legend...Heart your vocals are unrivaled....Pat Benatar thank you for giving your heart...

Love how Rick lets his guests talk.

I love this kind of stuff! I find it fascinating to see the sociology aspect of music in a historical context. Thank you for doing this, Rick!

Fascinating discussion. I love these new terms to my ears “mono-culture,” and “silos.” As a fledgling artist myself, it’s helpful to find terms that work to navigate me in this streaming-era after growing up with the MTV-era. In one sense, philosophically, a “silo” is just a subjective “mono-culture,” while “mono-culture” was a universal “silo” across the globe. So for fledgling artists trying to navigate success in the streaming-era with subjective “silos”, we have to expand our compatibility to multiple “silos” more than expanding the access of our music (because everything is already accessible virtually). Yet the pitfall with molding our artistic compatibility to multiple “silos” for our music’s success runs the danger of creating generic music - robbing artists of the freedom to create music with unconventional traits. We would have to keep writing I, IV, vi, V progressions, 4/4 beats, lyrics about love or partying, and never stretch our wings with non-diatonic music or unconventional rhythms, or lyrics with much needed subject matter for our society to progress like folk music used to do. That becomes the next challenge of artists under the streaming-era - how to be creatively-free in a multi-siloed culture. 🤔

I do believe late 60s but certainly 70s live shows had more imagination than today. From Bowie's Ziggy Stardust to Elton John across America to EWF to ELO and the out of the blue megathon tour to Led Zeppelin. Could go on, but surely these acts aren't diminished by the passage of time and how we consume music. Certainly agree though, the way we consume music is far more fragmented. Let's not forget Elvis's satellite concert of 73 was a milestone pre 80s etc.

I predict Rick Beato hits 5 million subs by the end of this year. He's reached a tipping point where it becomes exponential in growth. Rick created his own niche. There's literally nobody who can do what Rick does. Rick is the 'Bill Nye The Science Guy' of music.

Each generation, each person mostly, has their story of “Where were you...”. For me, it was the day I heard of the invention of the MP3 codec.

Never heard any of her songs, just snippets. That's enough for my ears lol.

This great discussion could be applied to almost everything in the future.

Love this guy, great, dry sense of humor! Loved it when he mentioned Rick's Apple rant as the reason for Shazam not working on his iPhone 😅

I'm unconvinced of his analogy. Artists play shows to earn a living comparable to a rockstar in the 80s. I've seen many legacy acts reach far-flung parts of the world when back in the day, you'd be lucky if they get to tour your non-first world non-english country. No one wants to tour South East Asia in the 90s because they don't monetarily have to. This can't be said today. They have to do it to earn their much deserved money. And it's exactly why shows are so expensive because it has become the artists' main source of income. Back in the day, you could get a million dollar record deal, never have to tour, and be fine with it.

A really awesome chat and so true. Regarding smaller bands, Spotify's "song radio" feature has led me to discover so many new bands I never had heard of otherwise. Artists like Beach House, Marissa Nadler, Noah and the Whale, Richard Hawley and Interpol were all found on song radios, and led to buying vinyl from them. Also it used to be you'd scour record stores for months, even years looking for a particular album. Like Veruca Salt's ep with Steve Albini was legendary and impossible to find. Its so great now there's no barrier to distribution and you see younger audiences listening to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden along side whatever is new. Its all there and accessible for everyone. It does feel like an exciting time for music.

back in the 70s there was a huge variety on a "rock and roll" radio station. anything from hip hop ( Curtis Mayfield ) to heavy metal ( Black Sabbath or AC/DC ) to disco ( Bee Gees ) to folk ( John Denver ) to country rock ( Eagles ) to soul ( Commodores ) to punk to techno ( Devo ).

In Australia Livenation has come to dominate the entire festival and live music scene, many smaller businesses displaced / out of business / bought up.

Thanks for bringing this subject up! I Have told friends for YEARS, Super stars of music today have a harder time making the music long lasting.

I'm only familiar with her earliest work and I can't say I'm a fan but I do admire her marketing savvy.

I feel so lucky to have grown up when computers were not part of making music. Synthesizers began to be used in the late 60s, but most bands were still making live music on live instruments. I don't envy people who only have loops, sampling and other gimmicks as the foundation of their music experience

on the cusp of 4M rick! Ticket buying was quite different back in the day. Taking cash to the ticketron window on the second floor of jordan marsh. Now it's one click on your phone.

Rick, I'm about a year and a half younger than you and we just have to face it, the radio and the powers that be just won't play all the wonderful new music that a lot of young bands/artists have coming out. It's sad but, that's just how it is. Oh well....

Live Nation is a monopoly that has to be dismantled

She did that Shake It Off song a while ago. I can't identify any of her other songs and I'm totally cool with that.

I think that the Grateful Dead did things differently than most bands back in the 70s and 80s. I wish Rick would discuss that one day.

3.99M subs, let me be the first to congratulate you on your upcoming 4 M subscribers!!! Big fan Rick.

Journey played four straight nights in Worcester Massachusetts, 1983. This came after 3 straight nights in Hartford Connecticut. So they did 7 straight nights in that run. Oh, to be young.

It seems like fewer artists have longevity and real catalogues like bands of old, like the Stones. So it seems really unlikely that generic bands like Imagine Dragons will play the Super Bowl in the future. For the last 40 years, it's been, "Let's celebrate this singer or this band, and then get out of here so we can sell you someone younger"... There is no perenniality to anything anymore.

Since joining KZfaq Music in 2020, my music tastes have definitely diverged from current popular music because it opened me up to songs I never would have heard before. Back is the 2000s and 2010s, if I wanted to listen to the entire back catalogue of Paul McCartney, Elton John, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone or The Who, it would've cost so much money to buy the albums, and even then I may have only liked 2 or 3 tracks. I wouldn't have been worth it. I freaking ❤❤ KZfaq Music!

Act's ARE bigger today not because music is bigger today but because the number of acts that break through are far fewer. Also, acts that are mostly driven by serious music tend to be ignored over acts that present well on a big stage. This is particularly true in an era where the majority of the money made by artists that make serious money is from preforming in live shows versus album sales, given file sharing/ripping. Any act with serious musicians that might have made a good or even great living in the 70's would be largely unknown today as the flashier acts drown them out for mindshare.

Awesome conversation, love the discussions that touch on social/cultural cross-over in music.

I know of three songs when she sang country because they were on the radio at work. That's all I got when it comes to her.

I never, ever, listened to one single song from this Taylor Swift. I've seen pictures of her while browsing, but absolutely don't know even the sound of her voice. Music today is not bigger, its compartmented.

Related topic or maybe not. I’m about Rick’s age. Grew up with the rock star as myth, unattainable, untouchable, living a rock star dream life. Limos and chicks and sex and drugs, and trashing hotel rooms. Seems to me that the corporatization of the industry and social media have de-mythologized the rock star. Maybe I’m being nostalgic. But my kids aren’t living with that sense of idolization of the artist.

Back in the day the population was smaller and the main stream took a bigger % of total population, the rest was obscure niches. Today there is more people and the mainstream takes up a smaller % because there of emergence of 2ndary streams that aren't the mainstream but aren't obscure niches either. And there's plenty of them. And they're well isolated bubbles

The saddest part is exactly that, no one shares music or music culture. I was only born in the 90s but I remember running to my friends to talk about the new this or that, I remember even after pirating there was still shared experiences of "burn this CD for me" or "I gotta play you this". Even for the kids today those things are done. Its not only "everyone listens to their own music" but they don't even bother trying to find people who like their music or put their friends onto it, the only sharing of music "culture" happens on the internet which I'm sorry but just is not a real replacement.

I'm kind of surprised that concerts still manage to exist. I can understand when it's more a multimedia spectacle like with Taylor of Beyonce, but rock concerts? Back in my youth, if I wanted to see Van Halen, my ONLY chance was to attend their concert ($17 for 10th row), or hope they'd show up on a late night show or SNL and play one or two songs. But now, I can find a live performance from just about anybody right here on KZfaq, and going to a concert requires taking out a second mortgage.

Please have Rich on more often - he's awesome!

"...I don't even know where you hear music anymore." Exactly...

Rammstein begun before the internet era as we know it today, well during the very early part of it. The only sing in German and despite that became incredibly popular around the world and in the US in particular, in the confines of the metal genre that is. However yes they're basically the only ones, at least from the tip of my head, that managed to do it before the modern internet era, or more precisely the social media era.