See, I have to take issue with your apparent assumption that what's being produced locally by the home musician is any different from the dreck being produced in Hollywood studios. One both sides of this line you see a clear collapse of theory and virtuosity. It's nothing but two vapid kingdoms fighting over who can be the most self indulgent. From both sides a gem rarely emerges, but both sides suffer not from the excesses of their technology but the lack of character and self respect to do better. I would sooner hitch my cart to the home made indy scene than the hollywood vamparism that has for so long defined the mode of business of major publishers. But I would not be quick to come to the defense of home grown music in an age where objective parameters are not showing up on the charts. You can say you like a sound or not. you can like a style or not. But theory is mathematical in nature and one of the only truely objective measures of whether a song is "good" or not. It's incomplete as a metric on its own, but you take what you can get. And the fact remains that most home grown music simply lacks any of the depth, complexity or understanding of even basic harmonics found in "crappy" bands from yesteryear. 90% of all home grown music is some jerk pounding away on an instrument over saturated with effects in a flimsy attempt to give character to mundane lines that are mundane because they lack a foundation in good music theory. It's vanity incarnate, it's selfish and it's profoundly uninteresting. Just like everything on the radio.

Well I think it sets up a false dichotomy really. And I admit I play into it routinely. The real issue at hand isn't that McDonald's sells pressed "beef" slabs unfit for processed dry dog food any more than there is a slovenly glut of talentless talent out there making "music". Not all burgers need be premium cuts of ground steak and there is no sin in enjoying the fun of "slumming it". Not all music need be a Bach-esque mathematical phantasmagoria of structured sound and complex patterns as there is no sin in enjoying a simple 4/4 beat with a cookie cutter hook. The problem at hand is that we've taken this to gross excess. The problem is that there is an ever dwindling supply of genuinely virtuosic music in easily accessible spaces. Pop songs are fine. A working man simply can't down bottles of fine Italian wine and imported figs on a daily basis. But that we have glorified the lack of effort necessary to produce genuinely virtuosic music, and refused to accept responsibility for the fact that such works require the support of the community, is plain damning on a cultural level. Our culture has grown toxic with the by products of uncontrolled self indulgence, lack of personal responsibility and failure to cultivate a deep interest in the frivolities that matter to us. I mean, honestly, pick two, because you just can't have all three of these things together without the bottom dropping out. This is an issue of balance and maturity, two things we are lacking in these modern times and very much to our own detriment. If you think it's tragic to see what this cultural toxicity has done to the noble art of music making, wait until you see the ultimate consequences this has on things that matter. Believe me, it can get worse than the "tea party". Just ask Rome.

Scavengers will fall over dead before they stop circling a corpse. Don't hold your breath. So long as there are thirteen year old human beings who lack cultivation and experiential exposure to the buffet of complexity possible in ANYTHING AT ALL (hint hint: The teenage brain is by definition under developed so this is a garauntee for as long as our species is in fact human), then there will ALWAYS be companies pandering to the lowest common denominator. Casting a deep net for the bottom feeders pays. One of the worst things that ever happened to American society was for children to have a command of money.

John Lennon once said in an interview in the mid 70's that "modern" music is all vanity. It's about being SEEN listening to the music. People listen to music with the same vapid self interest as they indulge in when they wear designer clothes. I don't know if I wish he lived to see how true his words really became or if I'm glad he was spared the sight of it all.

"Live with it" is why you are no longer in business. This is a toxic attitude for consumers and producers alike. All society wins when we hold ourselves to higher standards. Unfortunately this has to be a choice. No trend can manufacture it. It has to come from the heart of the person. DOn't gloss over willful mud wallowing. We are capable of better and DESERVE both the labor necessary to produce it and the results.

I would accept this as a partial measure to explain the current trend in behaviors. I too agree that musicians, and pretty much no other form of performing artist, are genuinely worth millions. However, the costs associated with putting on a certain level of performance absolutely ARE. A million dollar performance is a whole other experience. Going to see The Wall at the height of its production values during Pink Floyd's original run and going to see four guys play at a county fair stage...there's simply no comparison. It also comes down to the way we culturally chose to value out arts. And yes, it is a choice. We have collectively decided, in what I would describe as being the most selfish terms possible, that music should be FREE. This is not semantics. It is not splitting hairs to say there is a difference between thinking music should not command the sums it once did and to say it should be provided as a public utility. To further salt the wound, people will blatantly take what they are not given. They will steal anything that is not nailed down and don't give me that piracy isn't theft crap. Yes, it doesn't remove the original but it DOES remove liquidity in concept. When you are selling music, you are inherently selling a concept to a brain that desires it. If you feed that desire for free, it will be satiated and spend no money on the craft. It is theft of an intellectual commodity, and I'm not referring to the actual song here. You cannot blame Google, or the internet or even the ease of use and relative cost-permissiveness of the equipment available to modern musicians. The fact that we as a culture have chosen to pander to the lowest common denominator is not a consequence of the technology. It's a consequence of our limp minded behaviors and our lack of self respect.Cell phones are not responsible for the way their owners talk and drive, or interrupt present company to tend to a text message of "LoL Butternut squashxorz". And neither is google responsible for the fact that we behave selfishly concerning the arts.

Well you've hit the nail on the head Soulskill. There is a knee jerk, populist reactionary trend towards blaming corporate publishers for the sorry state of American music. I reject this, however, at least in part. It is of use to realise that corporate controls and guidelines were once fashioned to actually nurture the best traits of the musicians they employed. Three album deals with proctored sessions and world class mastering were just a given with more on the back end if the musicians showed growth. But then, you go back to the 1980's and beyond and you actually had to have unusual talent to be a professional white collar musician. This is because, culturally, we expected more. We appreciated the effort and craftmanship it took to make an album's worth of pallatable sounds. The "indy" scene is the worst modern offender, even worse than hip hop in my little opinion. Just file after file of droll pounding away on single lines with entirely too much FX saturation to disguise how mundane the technique is, how utterly limp their grasp of theory. But I also have hope, too. Remember, it was from similar mundane, cookie cutter stock that complex forms of rock music were born. That 50's do-wop, greaser rock that all used the same damn blues chord progression lasted a long time, but it paved the way for more interesting acts like the Beatles, who's signature sound became the signature sound of a generation and itself birthed heavy metal, punk, prog rock, jazz influences in rock, later on funk. Music is organic that way. From humble bacterial roots can evolve a sound that can stand upright. Give it time and educate any who will listen. Encourage them to explore what theory has to offer. Open their minds to the vast array of sounds from human past and do what you can to knock some of that infantile "irony" out of them. In some ways, it's more important what you do with your heart and mind than what you do with your hands, hence Bob Dylans and Kurt Cobains. This snide culture of self obsessed irony is toxic on many levels and pollutes everything it touches. Slap a pair of thick rimmed glasses off a moron today! And while you wait for the next creative well-spring to break free, don't forget that just under the surface is a world where good music does still exist. It's not in the mainstream, and maybe that's a good thing. Marcus Miller. Victor Wooten. Les Claypool. (Obviously I'm a bassist) Good music isn't gone, it's just not as readily accessible as it once was, and until this tide of hip selfishness has discovered how tragic it really is, I think it's a good thing to keep these world separate.