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Express One of the byproducts of doing a show like this for as long as I've been doing it is that it's really hard to shut off your brain. I'm always thinking about topic ideas, ways to link facts and trivia together, reading a lot of books, talking to lots of people, and otherwise trying to come up with a constant stream of things that we can talk about. The result of all this researching and thinking and writing are some ideas and perspective on music, music history, how music is made, how it's consumed, how it's distributed, and how seemingly small things have led to big changes. So that's one thing. Another is the opinions formed by observing the opinions of others. You know, why do people like some things and hate others? And another is a list of ideas that aren't quite fully formed yet. It seems like I've almost grasped a concept, but it doesn't quite feel right yet. I feel that there's a germ of truth in there somewhere, but it's just, you know, not there yet. I've also learned that when you're not sure about something, source the crowd. You might not like the answers, but it's better than living in your own head. So let me bounce a few of these things off you and you can tell me if I'm onto something or if I'm off base or if I've completely lost the plot. I call this episode Theories, Thoughts and Half Baked Ideas. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. There's Edwin, best known for his work with I Mother Earth, but that's from his solo album Another Spin around the Sun. He's singing about testing out theories, which is exactly what we're about to do. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and I'm hoping this will turn out to be an interactive program. I'm going to present some theories that I've been working on. Some are complete and I think rock solid. Others still need how should we describe this? Peer review and a few others are on, if I'm honest, on pretty shaky ground. I'll present these ideas and hopefully you'll tell me if I'm onto something or if I'm headed in the wrong direction. And I'm always looking for your input. Alanacross CA okay, here we go. The first theory I'd like to present is the idea that grunge ruined alternative rock. Now, my career in alt rock radio began in 1986, and up until then my exposure to alternative music had been pretty limited. So frankly, I was rather lucky to have been hired in the first place. But within minutes of arriving, though, I kept thinking, where has all this music been all my life? The 80s were a fascinating time for alt rock. People involved in the scene, from the bands and the managers to the labels and the DJs to the record stores and fans, reveled in their outsiderness. We wanted nothing to do with the mainstream, which was fine because they wanted nothing to do with us. It was all very, very tribal, and we liked it that way. The few commercial alt rock radio stations that existed back then were connected only by anecdotes. You see, none of the radio industry magazines published alternative charts or tracked airplay. Each station simply served up the music it thought its local audience would like. And that's why my station, CFNY in Toronto, sounded so much different than, say, WFNX in Boston or KROQ in Los Angeles. Consequently, a staggering breadth of music made the playlists. There was technopomp and industrial, every conceivable flavor of punk, early rap and hip hop, goth, British indie remixes that made you want to dance like Venus from Bananarama. There was ethereal dream pop, and yes, there was a smattering of guitar rock. If you go through the radio playlists for, say, late 1986, you'll find Peter Gabriel, the Smiths, R.E.M. new Order, Depeche Mode, Paul Simon's Graceland album, the Cure, Steve Winwood. There was also reggae from UB40, alt pop funk from Level 42, along with a ton of remixes of their songs. There was mainstream stuff like Invisible Touch from Genesis and modern folky stuff from people like Bruce Coburn. This kind of variety was typical for alt rock stations all across North America. No two stations were exactly the same. Each had its own local flavor. This was one of the first songs I played during my first shift at my new radio job, and the preference among the staff was to play this extended mix. The psychedelic first and heartbreak beats the extended mix. Back then, the announcers had a tremendous amount of leeway in choosing the music that we played. And many of us found these extended mixes to be better than the album or the single mix that they were longer too helped. It gave us time to file records, answer the request line, and think about the next record we were going to play. But as artistically fulfilling as this may sound, it really wasn't all that great. For ratings. To get big ratings, you need to appeal to the greatest number of people and to get them to listen as often as possible and for as long as possible. And as much as we still wanted to believe that the world craves good music like this, it doesn't. You see, while there may be millions of us hardcore music fans, there are billions of people who just want songs they can sing along to in the car. And since a radio station's revenues depend on ratings, higher ratings equals more revenues. Commercial alt rock stations struggled along from month to month, always with the specter of a format change looming overhead. Salaries were low to the point of poverty, trust me, but these places were staffed by hardcore music fans, people who were on a mission to deliver good music to the masses. I know it kind of sounds naive and stupid to say this, but it really was all about the music, man. And in retrospect, some consider this to be the golden age of commercial alt rock radio. But then came grunge. Hints that the world was ready for a change came in March 1990, when 25,000 people rioted outside a record store in Los Angeles as Depeche Mode prepared for an autograph session around the release of their Violator album. Wait a second. A riot for an alternative band? Okay, what was going on here? Then the next summer came the first lollapalooza. This is 1991. Along with founding band Jane's Addiction, the lineup included Susie and the Banshees, Living Color, Ice T and Body Count, Butthole Surfers, Rollins band, and some weirdo group that was never gonna go anywhere called Nine Inch Nails. The tour was a modest success, despite many, many, many unsold tickets. I was given a big stack by the promoter, told to hand them out. I had a hard time getting rid of them. But the fact that upwards of 20,000 people paid to see all these decidedly non mainstream bands convince promoters to do it again, so they did. By the time the 1990 tour started, exactly one year later, alternative was no longer an alternative to anything. It was well on its way to supplanting the mainstream. And the thing that did it was grunge. Thanks to riff ready songs from Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and especially Nirvana, alt rock began to coalesce around hard guitar rock. Okay, sure, there was still room for the odd electronic bass band and ballad loving Chantus. But as the record labels piled on and as record sales went through the roof, the focus of all of alternative music settled on guitar rock. Okay, so it wasn't all grunge. There were other left leaning bands that didn't use drop detuning. And there were plenty of women on the playlist too. But the overwhelming majority of acts were guitar rockers, with most of them being grunge, or at least grunge ish guitar based. Alt rock. Bands led by the Grungers continued to sell records and concert tickets in ever increasing amounts. Everybody piled on. Alt rock stations proliferated across the continent as broadcasting companies jumped into serving this new, growing and very hungry alternative nation. This resulted in industry magazines starting to compile charts and monitoring airplay. Now, when a program director in say, Des Moines, Iowa, wondered what songs he or she should add to the playlist, the very first thought was, I wonder what the big stations are doing? They would look at a place like KROQ in Los Angeles, a quick check of the charts, and suddenly Des Moines was following la. Instead of trying to come up with something that would work in Des Moines. The result was an unstoppable march towards a homogeneity in sound. Grunge was so big and so popular that it effectively became alt rock. And those varied sounds that were so big in the 80s largely squeezed out in favor of big guitars and screaming vocalists. Yes, there were still acts like the Beastie Boys and the Chili Peppers in Ministry and Alanis Morissette, but the primary focus remained guitar music. Now please do not get me wrong, grunge was great. I cannot imagine a universe without Nirvana or cousins like the Pumpkins. Not only did they make great music, but this was alt rock with training wheels. Not only did they make great music, but consider this, it was also alt rock with training wheels that lured people in with its different yet familiar approach to traditional guitar rock. Once somebody bought a Nirvana record, they were sucked inside the alternative nation. Millions were inspired to go deeper into alt rock and beyond and found their lives richer for it. When it came to commercial alt rock radio, well, grunge became the foundation of its sound for many, many, many years. Instead of taking a chance on something truly new and truly different, it was safer from a ratings point of view, to play something grunge or grunge ish, that is guitar based, preferably with drop tuning. And as listeners empowered themselves with iPods and MP3s and torrents and eventually streaming stations tightened their playlists more and more each year to keep those ratings and revenues up. Nationally and internationally published charts and airplane monitors only served to reinforce this circle the wagons mentality. For a while it actually looked kind of grim. The original grunge bands died off and and we were left with drek. Like new metal. The grunge well basically went dry. And for a while in the late 90s there was nothing concrete to replace it. Happily, things have loosened up and indie rock has exploded. Alt rock radio has weaned itself at least a little bit from grunge guitars. The variety of sounds is much greater than it's been in quite some time. In fact, you might make the argument that things have swung too far in the opposite direction. There are too few big guitar bands in alt rock today. Will we ever go back to this kind of alt rock radio that we heard in the pre grunch days? Probably not. The demands and listening habits of the public have changed irrevocably in the last 40 years. We cannot and we should not go back. Commercial alt rock radio of the 80s was an era in media whose time has passed. If you were around then, remember it fondly. If you weren't, then maybe go back and search out what alt rock radio was like back then. Above all, try not to say dumb things like in my day, music was so much better. We all need to remember that every generation has the right to believe that the music of their youth is the greatest music of all time. This is an argument that you will never win. Even though we've heard the same complaints about the music of young people since, and I'm serious about this, since the days of Aristotle, who was always complaining about the music the youth of ancient Greece seemed to enjoy. Soundgarden my way from 1994's Super Unknown album. When we return, I want to float an idea of how we've done a terrible job of developing superstar acts in the 21st century. Hang tight. I call this program Theories, Thoughts and Half Baked Ideas. It's a short summary of some of the things that have occupied my mind when it comes to our music. And one of the concepts that's vexed me greatly is how badly we've done when it comes to creating new superstar acts in the 21st century. We still have superstars, but they aren't anywhere as big as they used to be. Let me run a few ideas past you, starting with alternative's addiction to grunge and 90s music in general. That music in that decade was so good and so popular that audiences kept demanding to hear it. And so many of the acts from that era never went away. Green day, blink 182, chili peppers, pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, even bands that ceased to exist. Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Beastie Boys, for example, continued to be extremely popular with fans. That made it very hard for new artists with new sounds to break through. All these older bands were still sucking up much oxygen and a lot of airplay. Meanwhile, the industry changed. Selling pieces of plastic went by the wayside. Record stores started to close. And when streaming took hold in the 2000s, all the power swung away from the star making machinery behind the popular song to the individual. The old cultural gatekeepers, record labels, radio stations, record stores, music magazines and video channels saw their powers of persuasion greatly diminished. They could no longer create consensus among the public about what was good music and what was worth buying and listening to and promoting to the upper reaches of superstardom. Instead, each of us became our own music directors. With just a few pokes at our phones, we have instant access to more than 70 million songs. That has spread everyone's interests and tastes and influences wider than ever before in human history. Which is a good thing. In fact, it's a great thing. But it's been hard on both the recorded music industry and artists. And here's what I mean by current acts now have to compete with the entire musical history of the human race. That makes it much, much harder to break through. And it's harder than ever to get big big. Not just because of increased competition, but because it's impossible to achieve the same kind of consensus about good music that we used to have in the pre streaming days. Try to make a list of acts that have emerged this century capable of filling an arena. There aren't that many. Those who can still draw arena or stadium sized crowds first appeared in the 1990s or the 80s or the 70s, or if we look at the Rolling stones and Paul McCartney, the 1960s. So there's some homework for you and your friends. Create a list of rock bands who have appeared since 2000 that are capable of drawing tens of thousands of fans to a single gig. And I'll start. Here's Arcade Fire. Moving on to my next theory. Streaming is ruining music. I've actually done some talks on this, including at a conference in Poland. It goes like this. Thanks to streaming, recorded music has been Liberated from all its physical limitations, the whole of human musical history exists as pure data, accessible by anyone with an Internet connection. And this is great, right? Absolutely, yes, but not entirely. The size and nature of the physical containers we used to construct to hold our music. And here I'm Talking about records. CDs and tapes created certain patterns of behavior. For example, we had to work for a reasonably long time to earn enough money to buy these pieces of plastic. When we bought music, we created a financial relationship with it. We'd listen to these albums over and over and over again until we absorbed all the music, even the songs that we might not have liked at first otherwise, a feeling developed that we had wasted our money. It was, damn it, I spent $15 or $20 on this CD. I'm gonna learn to like the whole thing. When we listen to music from a physical format, we also have additional resources. Album artwork, lyric sheets, liner notes, and all those came with a container. Not so much in the digital world. And there was always this scarcity when it came to physical music. You could only afford to buy so much. That was one thing. And even the biggest record stores might have 100,000 albums in stock. Compare that to the 70 million songs available on the streaming music services today. Streaming is not about possession. It's about access and convenience. And this has resulted in some very different interactions with music. Technology is not only changing the way we listen to music and how we value it, but it's also warping the very nature of the music itself. To explain what I mean, we need to look at some numbers. Data analysis shows that 24% of streaming listeners will skip to the next song if they don't like it or don't recognize it within the first five seconds. 24% of them. Another 29% will bail after 10 seconds. And another 35% will be gone by the time the song is 30 seconds old. This is important, that 30 second number, because a streaming service does not pay out for a song until 30 seconds have passed. In other words, you have to listen to the first 30 or 31 seconds before anybody gets paid. People skipping a song drives down its appeal with the algorithms, thereby preventing from songs bubbling up on playlists. See where we're going with this? This means that producers and songwriters now throw everything they can at the first 30 seconds of a song in order to hold our attention. All right, how are they doing that? Well, shorter intros, putting the choruses up front, adding as many sugar high hooks as possible before the song is half a minute old. Anything to Drag us to that 32nd mark. And to prevent us from hitting that skip button so everybody can get paid, Songs are getting shorter. Spotify's algorithms are increasingly favoring shorter songs due to the fact that more people stick with them longer. In 2000, the average length of a song on The Billboard Hot 100 was four minutes and none were under two and a half minutes. Today, the average song on the Same chart is 3 minutes and 30 seconds. So a decrease of half a minute and the number of songs under two and a half minutes has increased year after year after year. If you're an artist, you are thinking about writing shorter songs because the chances of listeners cycling through more of your songs is greater. More listens equals more money. You can even take it to the extreme. A British band called the Pocket Gods released an album in 2020 called 300x30. It featured 298 songs, none of which were longer than 40 seconds. I mean, why bother writing anything longer if you only get paid for the first 30 seconds, right? And so much for the 10 minute rock epic. Why spend all that time writing and recording such a long song when you're going to get paid the same as someone who wrote a song lasting 40 seconds? Or in the case of, let's say Lil Nas X and old Town Road, 1 minute and 57 seconds. Here's another analogy. Remember that Cinerama shot in Lawrence of Arabia that begins with a dot off in the distance which then grows and grows into a camel train? What a fantastically powerful way to start a movie. But what's the point of creating a shot like that if people are just watching on a phone? With streaming, it's all about individual songs, specifically singles, album tracks. They don't get much love at all. So why bother recording albums? Hold that thought, because I want to expand on that in just a bit. Here are the aforementioned Pocket gods with this 32 second diddy.