Ninetales

This is my favorite conversation. "Oh wow popular music doesn't exactly align with the music I listen to so it's **** and here's why: popular music doesn't exactly align with the music I listen to..."

If you think it's easier to be a pop star now you're really dumb ok bye now

Janszoon

Pop gas giants? Pop white dwarf stars?

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Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

wedoitfortheloveofmusic

Ok I mispoke, no barrier of entry is not what I intended, what I intended was the barrier of entry is not as high as it once was. A "high number of entrants," sure is a barrier, but it's a weak one. You can overcome this barrier, without having to spend on dime of your hard earned money. Just by reading some books, performing some research online, and you can develop a marketing plan that would easily get you past a lot of the bs. Now whether or not you were talented...that's another story.

Zack

...If you were in business to make money, and you had to choose between snapping up a few ready-made products to market, which were already known and which were already popular and nearly guaranteed success, or picking out a ton of hard-to-sell fixer-uppers, which would you choose?

Put another way, if you could acquire 51% of the stock for either Pepsi or Moxi, which one would you go for?

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Black Francis

idk, Fad idols? transitional stars? Cash cows?
Neither i don't like Pepsi and idk what the hell Moxy is so i would sell my stocks for RC cola ones.. they're due for a comeback.

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wedoitfortheloveofmusic

No you're right, radio was definitely more dominant in the past then it is now. Although don't take that for granted. Radio is still the #1 way that artist, "blow" and is still extremely influential.

I'll try to clarify my point here. The initial question is, Why does the mainstream industry only want a select few to be popular?

At the end of the day it's a business. They'll do whatever makes them the most money. This trickles down from top to the bottom, each doing whatever makes them the most money. Personally its distasteful to only do things for money, maybe I'm a bit naive and that's another rabbit hole we can discuss later, but even with saying that you can't fault them for doing this. A company/industry is in the business to make money otherwise why else would they exist? A company/industry is driven by what their consumers want or believe they need. If you buy, subscribe, and listen to the bs then you're going to continue to receive that bs. The company/industry will continue to streamline their product in order to increase their profits. Thus, if we as consumers, show that we are content with listening to the same 3-4 artists on the radio, guess what they'll comply and they'll continue to streamline this process to make it more efficient. I mean think about maybe 10 years ago, you could listen to the radio and hear a myriad of different artists from different record labels albeit it would be those same artists over and over again. That has not changed for the reasons spoken above but at least you had variety. That has now diminished to 3-4 artists on repeat across all radio stations. I hadn't realized how bad this was until I took a road trip about a year ago from Miami to Kansas and literally heard the same 3-4 artists and 3-4 songs the whole trip back and forth.
So this is why I believe the consumer has gotten lazy. A company/industry would not do something if it didn't make them money. If a company/industry did not receive positive results when only pushing the same 3-4 artists and songs then they would not do it, plain and simple. If there were more people like us, who actively took a stance against this, then things would change but it starts with us the consumer.

Janszoon

Moxie is an old soft drink that's really only found in northern New England these days. I only know it because I grew up in that area. It has an awesome logo though:

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Black Francis

@wedoitfortheloveofmusic

I agree with you to an extent especially the part when you said we use to have more variety but not all radio stations play the same hits so you can't really say all the mainstream media is just recycling the same stuff.

Beyond good or bad taste i think the main influence that drives the mainstream is simply popularity and you can't decide for ppl what should be popular so boycotting popular music is a bit elitist and besides, what are you gonna replace it with? won't their replacement continue the same cycle?

It seems no matter what genre or group that becomes part of the mainstream is gonna be opposed by somebody so i think even if you got what you desire out of mainstream music another person would make another thread just like this one.

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GD

(etc.)

I'm a bit curious as to why it seems to matter to you so much that Janelle is not promoted/advertised as heavily as the most popular mainstream acts on the charts (I've noticed this is a recurring sentiment expressed by you in quite a few other threads as well), because in the end, isn't your personal enjoyment of her music what matters the most? As many here have mentioned, the fact remains that her music just isn't as marketable as the music that's topping the charts. You're using Adele as an example of "not pop-friendly" music that became very popular, but as mentioned by Urban, that's mostly because it appeals heavily to another (also large) demographic than your typical pop hits.
When you go on to say that Janelle Monae would surely top the charts if her music was marketed as much as the music that do, in fact, top the charts, using the assertion that her music is more interesting as proof, you have to remember that the majority of consumers doesn't want "interesting", they want something that's catchy and easy to digest.
Clearly you don't enjoy most of the artists that's being marketed the most heavily so why would you even want people to associate Monae with these? (Since you seem to care so much about others perception, that is)
Is she perhaps suffering severe economical hardships because of her current level of popularity?
I think it's entirely possible that the mainstream music industry was not any more daring or un-conventional in who they chose to promote in the 80s and 90s (since you used those decades as examples) than now, just that those artists resonated more with your musical preferences.

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Soulflower

Well typically mainstream acts are Top 40 acts which means they typically chart above 40 on Billboard and it is a pop chart. Most acts that top above that criteria are the main acts that are constantly played on the radio or marketed heavily.

Janelle Monae has never topped that chart or has been on that chart so I don't think it is appropriate to call her a "pop star" when she hasn't really had any pop star singles or success. She also is not marketed as a pop star or is backed by the industry.

I personally would simply call her an artist but I wouldn't call her a pop singer or a mainstream singer because she is not.