That's why we get so few comments or thoughts on this forum now. Years gone by - hundreds posted thoughts about promotion people, pluggers, sales persons, managing directors and chairmen… graphics, campaigns… A&R, songs, publishers, writers… now - nothing!

One of my friends says they now do it on Facebook or Twitter. Bollocks; they don't.

Let alone tip great tracks here, to help spread the word.

They don't give a shit. Music is way down the list of their priorities, below mortgages, affairs, children, school, food, house, pensions, holidays, promotion in their companies…

Where are the managers of artistes, the trainers of writers, the brains working out new methods of breaking hits…??

A million excuses ("oh, we're building careers". What fucking careers? Zero sales, zero interest, zero talent).

Don't help that George Osborne pretends to like Keane.

Its true.
I only liked three new records last year.
I loathe the current vocal style, the electronic effects make me want to rip my ears off, and I find the "chummy" method of promotion where artists have to pretend to like and befriend every Tom Dick and Harry that tweets them and reveal every passing thought quite depressing.

A few hundred views but comments only from regulars. Is Lucian Grainge doing a good job? Where is Ged Doherty? Has Mike Batt any power at the BPI? What goes on at Warners? Which publishers are any good? Who is competent managing music acts these days? Who is the finest concert promoter? Which radio presenters have any influence? Are Amazon beating iTunes in downloads? Which TV company is developing a terrific new TV series?

Nothing. Nada. No fucking interest. Nobody cares.

From the top to the bottom in our British music interest, there is zero bother.

Let alone tips for great new sounds. Apart from the odd tipster here, or in Manchester or trying to get people interested - no new kids loving bands, no middle aged old Blur/Oasis fans, no elderly 60s teens loving Brian Matthew commenting on the best weekly radio show in Britain… nothing.

No wonder Record of the Day folded its forum and The Velvet Rope dried up and Paul Kramer went back into furniture (does The Hit Sheet still exist?)… nobody cares.

How ghastly it must be working for a label these days. Release something. Let it die. Release something else.

Fuck me!

JK2006 wrote:
A few hundred views but comments only from regulars. Is Lucian Grainge doing a good job? Where is Ged Doherty? Has Mike Batt any power at the BPI? What goes on at Warners? Which publishers are any good? Who is competent managing music acts these days? Who is the finest concert promoter? Which radio presenters have any influence? Are Amazon beating iTunes in downloads? Which TV company is developing a terrific new TV series?

Nothing. Nada. No fucking interest. Nobody cares.

From the top to the bottom in our British music interest, there is zero bother.

Let alone tips for great new sounds. Apart from the odd tipster here, or in Manchester or trying to get people interested - no new kids loving bands, no middle aged old Blur/Oasis fans, no elderly 60s teens loving Brian Matthew commenting on the best weekly radio show in Britain… nothing.

No wonder Record of the Day folded its forum and The Velvet Rope dried up and Paul Kramer went back into furniture (does The Hit Sheet still exist?)… nobody cares.

How ghastly it must be working for a label these days. Release something. Let it die. Release something else.

Fuck me!

Surely only a minority of readers are in the music industry? And for those who are not, why on earth would they be interested in it?

When we started The Tip Sheet in the 90s, Honey, it was ONLY aimed at those in or attached to music. A subscription only weekly industry magazine aimed at spreading the word about good music. Then we added gossip. Which took over.

Executives tipped us off about impending changes. Promotions, firings, hirings. Even hints about DJs moving shows, new commercial stations opening, TV shows in Japan, Australian publishing chat…

It became a huge global music tip sheet. We started our online version - King Of Hits .com - in the late 90s and it grew and grew too. We had an Attitudes and Opinions area, and a Your Views Forum for thoughts on non musical matters.

Others started up similar sheets - our former Editor, Paul Scaife and Joe Taylor started Record of the Day. Our former Ad manager Paul Kramer started The Hit Sheet.

But 15 years later - here we are without that music interest anymore. Times change but it makes me sad.

Most people I know couldn't tell you more than two or three artists this year who've been number one. There's no real connection between the business and the public at large. And as you say, most of the players these days don't care much about anything except themselves - even the mildest criticism of them on here leads to torch burning witchhunts and urgent 'catch-up' lunches to discover identities and plan recriminations. That tells you something. Like they're so up themselves they might as well be estate agents.

Correct Pru; the frightening thing is… most people working in the music industry couldn't name any artiste who's been No1 this year either. I know I couldn't.

Well, that means the chart has lost all significance. It only ever had any because of Top of the Pops, Radio One etc.

Funnily enough, nowhere else in the world did the chart mean anything, even back in the 60s. Billboard, Cashbox, Australia, Japan… without a TV and Radio show getting huge ratings, the chart meant nothing (even in the 60s) and press/media only carried stories because of British charts reflecting popularity.

And let's not forget Pirate Radio. In my teens, they were not just essential but the most important thing in the world. Because of Pirate Radio, music was not a luxury. It was a vital basic element of our lives.

Sorry JK but the simple fact is the music industry has committed suicide.
Dull boring music.
Pretentious idiots that think discovering new artists is something special, it's not, it's your job!
Inability to change. After years of ripping off customers, anyone with half a brain could see how to move forward except the industry.
No innovation. We still recommend artists do the same things they did 20 years ago: gig, promote to radio, have a hit record etc.
You know you're finished when YouTube creates more stars than the music industry.
Music's domination is over, we are flying on fumes at the moment.
Like Man Utd we have to get used to a new paradigm.

For once J&B I agree with almost everything you say except, being an optimist, I don't think it's suicide. I think the Princess is in a coma waiting for the handsome Prince (it used to be a King) to kiss her awake.

All good points.

As always it'll take an indie to shake it all up for the majors to awaken. The problem is the majors have it all sewn-up, you can't get radio, TV or decent press without them. YouTube stars are stuck in YT land unless they get into bed with the majors, so effectively the majors are silencing the indie who will potentially save them.

FRIDAY got millions of views because the video was (accidentally) so ghastly. The song - though catchy in a Tiffany type way - simply wasn't good enough. So it didn't really sell.

Gangnam Style broke through the (naff) video catching on.

How did Get Lucky break? I think it was mainstream radio, wasn't it?

Still different ways to break if the track is commercial enough.

Amazing if a song sells only several hundred it's a hit, not several thousand in the old days.

andrew wrote:
Amazing if a song sells only several hundred it's a hit, not several thousand in the old days.

I had to laugh (all right, and cry a bit) when Katy Perry was on Graham Norton's show with McCartney, and Norton pointed out how many number ones The Beatles had, and she went, 'Is that all?' She wasn't even trying to be sarcastic, she's just from a generation that assumes that going straight in at number one several times a year is the least one can expect. There's no struggle, and no real achievement. The same in TV - the biggest stars in the 70s spent whole careers trying to get a single BAFTA - now the likes of Gervais and Co expect one for every project. I wonder where they find their excitement. In the loos, I guess, snorting up the powder.

Want an interesting fact? Adele has just become the biggest selling album in Australia, knocking 'Dark side of the moon' off the number one spot. She has never set foot in the country.

The music business is no country for old men

Funnily enough I don't like either album but at least the Adele one has a couple of real hits on it (and a lot of second rate stuffing). No - this illustrates that there are a few good people still working in our beloved industry and Richard is one of them (Simon is another). We don't have to like the music to admire and appreciate the success.

I don't want only MY taste in music to sell. I want music to sell - and the stuff I love to be a part of that. Indeed many of my own hits were not to my taste but I thought would appeal to others (Leap Up And Down, Wave Your Knickers In The Air).

Music is still important. In fact it's still vital in people's lives. That's the starting point. The need hasn't gone. So the problem is the industry.

It's largely ignoring the more mature part of the population whilst boring the younger part. It favours safe bets over prudent gambles (always has, of course, but never before to this extent). It encourages imitation over innovation, stereotypes over individuals. Most of all, it forgets that people want and need to be surprised, not distracted.

Maybe part of it is down to the passing of the guard. The music biz seems full of young people whose parents were in the business, but whereas the parents went in because of a passion for music, many of their kids seem to go in because that's what their parents did (and their parents could get them in). There's an aimlessness there, as if they're waiting for something else to turn up.

As in TV, there's also a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you abandon trying to engage the nation and settle instead for indulging a tiny niche, you'll only engage a tiny niche. You haven't proven your thesis. You've just given up trying to test it and disprove it.

I suppose there's also what literary critics used to call the anxiety of influence. People are so swamped now with past productions, played over and over again via various means, that it's harder than ever to find the space and the mood to be different. Nothing ever came out of nothing, of course, but it's gone from drawing on influences to merely tracing around them.

But music is still important. It just needs people who genuinely want to find it or create it, and communicate it to as many people as possible. It's not such a complicated task, it's just the industry that makes it so.

Very good post Pru; so the answer seems to be… we need to find a way to encourage genuine music loving kids (they all THINK they love music but most don't really care that much) to enter the industry. We need to persuade TV and radio people - including the Online brigade - to cater to broad music lovers and to put together formats that are entertaining and populist formats (don't you just hate the ZOO?) and get huge ratings - and allow people who CARE about music to programme them.

Example - when I took over the British search for a Eurovision entry, ratings were tiny and the BBC (Yentob) wanted to drop out of it. After finding real hits (Love City Groove and Just A Little Bit) ratings soared and then we won (Katrina) and all ratings went through the roof (and have started drooping ever since).

George Osbourne nodding completely out of time, obviously attempting to kid voters that he's into music.