When we started The Tip Sheet in the 1990s, most of the global music industry subscribed and many contributed. The most recent post on this forum got a mere 120 views and no comments.

Whereas the Your Views board gets thousands of views on most threads and hundreds of comments.

Is it just that gossip, interest, involvement in behind-the-scenes has faded? Are there music industry (not fan) forums elsewhere now that we don't know about? I can't find any.

Is music simply less important now? Do people care less? Have all the interesting characters retired or died or been promoted to corporate jobs?

Good question, but I feel the Music Industry is a very different place to where it was even 10 years ago.

Where are today's Obies, Rob Dickins, Paul Conroys, John Kennedys, etc?

I remember so many wonderful industry people at the Triumph Awards at LWT centre. (In fact somewhere I've got at least one post-event Tip-Sheet photo supplement - I'll have to dig it out).

Those were the days when it was very exciting, great fun and quite profitable to be in the music industry. I miss them. But then, old age makes many things bearable.

JK2006 wrote:
When we started The Tip Sheet in the 1990s, most of the global music industry subscribed and many contributed. The most recent post on this forum got a mere 120 views and no comments.

Whereas the Your Views board gets thousands of views on most threads and hundreds of comments.

Is it just that gossip, interest, involvement in behind-the-scenes has faded? Are there music industry (not fan) forums elsewhere now that we don't know about? I can't find any.

Is music simply less important now? Do people care less? Have all the interesting characters retired or died or been promoted to corporate jobs?


I have gone right off it. The repetition, the swiping of melodies which turns the Top Forty chart show into "name that tune", the grace notes all over the place, the unnecessary electronic fiddling that hurts my ears, T and most of all... the bloody rappers that have to muscle in on every song.

There is plenty of new music around, but the mainstream still seems to be control by a few elite. The secret is getting Joe Public to listen to new stuff, without waiting for the likes of Simon Cowell to give a blessing.

FAB Chart gets 500 unique visits per week, according their FB, but there must be sites with more.

Maybe the music world is just going through a rather long slump.

Sadly, I blame myself. When I invented "assisting" my records to achieve high chart placings they did not, in reality, deserve; the huge corporations then took over and turned the charts into lists of their top priorities (mainly rubbish); viewers stopped watching Top of the Pops and listening to the Charts shows; specialist, individual tastes took over - liking and buying the best of certain genres with no appeal to the majority and no cross over appeal; ratings slumped and the shows were cancelled; decent executives grew old, retired, left the industry; new arrivals were dull, anoraks, uninspired and uninspiring and then they got older too. Stars faded; new minor celebrities had no charisma just instant appeal; and even the few like myself, genuinely inspired by great music, lost interest as we aged (and some of us got wrongly locked up). That, I reckon, explains the current dire situation where music means less to teenagers than smart phones, games, and whatever they spend their time and energy on in 2016. For those of us who remember growing up in the 60s, it is sad. But in the greater scheme of things, where thousands are dying and millions are superficial imbeciles, it is unimportant.

I stopped listening to radio a few years ago and since have got right back into current music. Whether that's because radio simply isn't playing the best music coming through or that my listening habits coincided with music turning a well needed corner, I don't know.

What I do know is that music has changed, it's moved on, and IMO that's a good thing.

I listen to Spotify, mainly new music and in particular the "New Music Friday UK" playlist.

Here are just a handful of tracks that come to mind which I have loved recently:

All In My Head (Flex) - 5th Harmony
Capsize - Frenship
Cheap Thrills - Sia & Sean Pual
Hurts - Emile Sande
I Took A Pill In Ibiza - Mike Posner (NOT the Seeb remix)
This Is What You Came For - Calvin Harris & Rhianna
Tears - Clean Bandit & Louisa Johnson
All My Friends - Snakehips ft. Tinashe

IMO, the music industry is in extremely rude health and if there really is nothing for you in this list at all then maybe music has moved on and left you behind?

K wrote:
I stopped listening to radio a few years ago and since have got right back into current music. Whether that's because radio simply isn't playing the best music coming through or that my listening habits coincided with music turning a well needed corner, I don't know.

What I do know is that music has changed, it's moved on, and IMO that's a good thing.

I listen to Spotify, mainly new music and in particular the "New Music Friday UK" playlist.

Here are just a handful of tracks that come to mind which I have loved recently:

All In My Head (Flex) - 5th Harmony
Capsize – Frenship
Cheap Thrills – Sia & Sean Pual
Hurts – Emile Sande
I Took A Pill In Ibiza – Mike Posner (NOT the Seeb remix)
This Is What You Came For – Calvin Harris & Rhianna
Tears – Clean Bandit & Louisa Johnson
All My Friends - Snakehips ft. Tinashe

IMO, the music industry is in extremely rude health and if there really is nothing for you in this list at all then maybe music has moved on and left you behind?


I listened to all the tracks on this list and, while most of them are not bad, none are memorable. A bit too manufactured IMHO. Not my scene. Thankfully, there is much better new original music in the world; most of it still unsigned.
I wouldn't say that music has left me behind. It's more of a case that the business has left both me and music behind.

Another which has been a recent favourite. Great little vocal riffs throughout, loaded with hooks. I absolutely love the understated production, listen to the way it's completely underplayed during the chorus and how it builds so beautifully throughout... oh and if you're of a certain age the last few seconds will make you think of The Who LOL.

really like it.

I hate fatalism, and it seems as rife in the music biz as it is in TV. All it takes in TV is a seminar at Edinburgh saying, for example, that multi-channel tv spells the end of a mass audience, and for years after executives won't bother commissioning shows that aim for a mass audience. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. That happened twenty years or so ago, and terrestrial Saturday night TV was dire as a result, until, by accident, Strictly and X Factor took off and suddenly the execs realised that a mass audience can still be formed if you actually bother to aim something at them. If you build it they will come. I suspect it's similar in the music industry - demographics rule, and vast sections of the public aren't sought out, great singles and albums aren't promoted and only a lucrative niche is exploited. The motto in both industries should be: aim for the broad audience. If it falls short, then accept it's niche, but don't pre-judge it, and never succumb to fatalism.

You have a good point Pru; and God forbid we all become grumpy old men and women, moaning "it's not as good as it was when we were young". It is significant that, every now and then, something rushes through, conquering all. Who would have thought that baking could have been a massive appeal TV show? Or ballroom dancing? Again, it tends to be the odd specific ingredient that jells everything (Andrew, Ed Balls, Nadiya) and boosts the mass appeal. Even today a music hit will emerge (When I Was 7 Years Old) that captures the majority.

Released today, future hit IMO