Years gone by this was a great way to break an obscure track; I used it to break The Cuban Boys and also helped Alex Day; but now it takes a few mere streams and a handful of sales. Sadly it reflects the entire music industry; now dominated by specialist minority sounds instead of mass appeal hits. LadBaby gets another No1 and nobody really cares or notices. Sad.

JK2006 wrote:
dominated by specialist minority sounds instead of mass appeal hits

Is that really true?

Billie Eilish is going strong, Rag n Bone Man is doing well, Camila Cabello is being pushed very hard and you don't have to wait very long before you hear Ed Sheeran or Ariana Grande. Playlists are shorter than ever, and turn over quicker than ever, or so it seems.

Pop radio stations, department stores, fast food places and TV adverts are all pumping out commercial pop. Four chord turnaround, a hook and a turn from the latest novelty rapper. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. It doesn't seem very specialist minority to me. What am I missing?

It's not the sound so much as the level of mass appeal quality in the hits; yes people like Sheeran and Justin have cracked it but the majority of big hits these days are simply good examples of a specialist area of sound but not cracking over into the mass appeal area.

JK2006 wrote:
It's not the sound so much as the level of mass appeal quality in the hits; yes people like Sheeran and Justin have cracked it but the majority of big hits these days are simply good examples of a specialist area of sound but not cracking over into the mass appeal area.

Justin Trousersnake or Justin Beaver?

Radio pop hits now follow a very distilled/refined formula. You must have seen the 4 chords video from Axis Of Awesome? Hilarious. But if the songs are so interchangeable there's not much there to give them any longevity. It's already hard to tell one Ed Sheeran song from another. I liked it better when it was just him and his guitar, doing clever stuff with the looper.