Originally Posted by
Charlieshafer
Ah, but it isn't. It's just different, like pretty much everything else in this new century. Music has simply gone to the internet for the young who are just starting out. The days where a band would play a local club, build a following, and hope to make a demo, get some local airplay, and go big are long gone. That's ok with me as a presenter.
You can say that the younger audience now has their heads buried in their phones, and yeah, it's too much for my taste, but when I hear them talk about what they're looking at, at least musically, it's far more broad in taste and genres than we ever had it. I've got high school kids in the fiddle club who are always showing me videos of the "next big thing" that a friend that they met on vacation, who may live in California, is sending to them. So I'm getting high-def video of a young string band just starting out, in he middle of nowhere, 3000 miles away. And they're good. And I hope they stick with it long enough that I can bring them east.
So what's happened is that the younger generation aren't hanging out in a bar just to listen to music, they're going for the social interaction, swapping stories. Open mics are fun for them because they're part of the action, not just a beer swigging spectator. If a venue does have a live band they go to see, once they see it, great, no need to see them again. I find an interesting demographic trend occurring in that if I have a band come through the first time, it'll be a mix of young and old. If I bring them back a second time, when one would think attendance would increase as I'm "building their brand" and word of mouth spreads, the opposite actually happens. Older folks will return, but the number of 20-somethings and younger drops precipitously. They've been there, done that.
I'm thinking this is, in part, what the bars that cater to local bands are changing. The young demographic, which is the money-spending set, isn't into the same thing over and over, it's all about discovery. There are only so many local bands that can play a bar, and once they've been around the block, it's time to move on.
Like everything else, it's always changing, time to adapt yet again. But depressing? No way, there's more great stuff out there than I've ever seen. And doors are opening to them in ways that never happened before. Yes, you can make some money playing acoustic music, but you have to travel, and play unconventional venues.
Bookmarks