An Excellent New Read: "A Brief History Of Why Artists Are No Longer Making A Living..."

Offhand, the only city in that video that played a significant role in the pop music scene was Detroit. Motown moved to the West Coast by 1972 and in its wake were a lot of seasoned players left without work. One of them, Wendell Harrison, formed Tribe Records, which tapped into a vein of so-called "spiritual jazz"- a mix of post bop/modal jazz that mixed soul and funk. Wendell is alive and well, and that scene is still thriving. The Grande Ballroom, a major venue for hard rock, closed in the early ’70s.
Other cities, like Pittsburgh, had a notable local jazz scene, but that was true of many US cities. Jazz started a decline by the ’70s as a form of popular music. Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland had great symphonies, but I don’t attribute the decline in classical music to the economy, then or now. The audience has aged out and sadly, there is little interest among younger generations. Almost all of those cities, and many more, had local rock bands that typically moved to NY or LA at the time to get a break. That’s changed, since the industry changed. Blame it on Pro Tools.
Youngstown was famous for studio wrestling. I don’t know why that isn’t popular any more.

@n80 - I mean, my great aunt and uncle were the founders of Angel Records, and the latter was the Chair of the Met. They spearheaded classical recording, classical fidelity, and identification of and signing of classical artists. This was, of course, in that "golden age" the author mentioned - the 40's-60's, when there WAS no other rival for consumer audio: no Xbox; no Youtube; no cable or satellite; no Netflix.

@orpheus10 : Let me clarify. You said the following.


"First and foremost, this forum should stick to all things concerning turntable set up, or similar subject, because people here have no idea of what's going on outside of their on little "ballywick" meaning the big world outside of audio."

I said that is unsupportable since there are people here who do have experience in the music industry AND that you have no idea what other member's experiences are. Economic or otherwise.

You also said:

""Has anyone noticed that almost all of the major cities in this country that were thriving metropolises not long ago are now urban slums."  

To support it you link to a video about 10 cities. Ten. That's not all of the major cities. It isn't even "almost all" of the major cities. And for each one of those ten that are in decline I can show you two that are thriving. My point was that you generalized a problem to include "almost all" of the major cities and it is simply incorrect. I never said there was no urban decay, but it is not a problem everywhere.

@simao : I get it. We have a tendency to look back at other times and possibly glorify them more than we should. I'm bad about that myself. And I would assert that as in all things, certain time periods are often truly better in some respect or another. And I do, in general, see western culture and society in a state of decline in many respects.

But I don't see success in music as any different from success in professional sports, literature, movie and TV, motor racing, etc. The fact is that extraordinarily few of the people who try it are going to make it big and very very few are going to make a good living at it. That is the nature of talent for hire.

I've read the stories of many many bands that got big, all the way back to the 60's. It has never been easy or fair. The best talent doesn't always get the gig. And I think that suggesting that it was somehow easier back then than now is a bridge too far.

But, as orpheus suggests, I'm not in the business and have no experience with the economy (rolls eyes)....so what do I know?

Just what I see.