trent said:
Number 1 positions mean nothing. Christina Aguilera and Britney have been number 1 in charts many times. Music isn't sports. It has nothing to do with charts and how much money someone makes.
Many of today's kids are like sheep. They buy whatever the MTV bosses force feed them. The fact that someone like Limp Bizkit sells millions tells everything about the sad state of things.
People have always been sheep. This is unrelated to the era. Hippies were the sheep of the 60s. Reaganite capitalists were the sheep of the 80s. Gen Xers were the sheep of the 90s. Nowadays, it's the pseudo-punk, emo-whiner, neo-goth types that are the sheep.
Human nature doesn't change, but culture does. What matters in regards to music is that enough talent is marketed into the industry. It's hard to find talented bands on the radio these days because so few people control so many outlets. Instead of the people deciding what sells now, the market is basically formed from corporate decisions. Why else would Ashlee Simpson still have a career? It's because her sister has connections. People buy schlock like Jessica Simpson and Hilary Duff because it's heavily marketed.
Back in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, the music industry was less corporate. Radio programmers were less constrained by corporate interests, and a variance in ownership of stations led to a variance in broadcasted material. Essentially, the market was more capitalistic but less corporate -- competition was fierce, but options were more varied.
The 80s were the onset of the conglomeration of media. By the time the 90s came along, there were still some homegrown markets producing some unique material (Seattle in particular), but by the turn of the millenium, the damage had been done. Now, so much music is derivative due to the corporate nature of the industry. It's hard for talented bands to get their material heard without some corporate moron dumbing it down.
