Music of the Fractals

Somewhere, beneath the shiny fake veneer of the music biz, there is an equation, and it goes something like this;

If a band had a fan base equal to or above the age of 18, circa the year 2000ad, then they can, have or will achieve super band status.

This is because pre 2000, for the main part, all we had was a clattery outdated Q magazine, Meta Hammer, an increasingly childish Kerrang! and the NME as our musical periodicals. We had limited exposure to what was going on in the musical world, we had, in essence, a very biased, tailored view, coloured by what was en vogue that current week/month.

Post 2000 everything changed, the Internet came into its own, and in one fell swoop, allowed anyone access to anything whenever they wanted. This one singular event fractured the music industry and changed it forever. Im not talking about the labels and their takings, I'm talking about how people listen to music, there will never again be a Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Oasis.. the Internet has broken everything down into infinite fractal niches, if you want to listen to ambient-speedcore-tech-house then I'm pretty sure its out there somewhere.

Because of this fractalisation, its going to be pretty hard for a band or artist to really last longer than a few albums, to gather the following bands used to do in the 90's, the record buying public, or the ones who matter (r&b licks vol 987 doe not count here) are spread much more thinly over a much wider spectrum of sounds.

Even toady's "big" bands, the globe spanning artists like Razorlight & Snow Patrol are on their way out just a few albums into their career, and its going to get worse, its not uncommon for bands to release one album then disappear into obscurity as peoples attention spans wane, this too is a result of the Internet.

The times they have a-changed and god only knows whats next, but being a muso, to quote another Manc gobshite circa 1995, I'm one excited young man ..