Thursday, July 21, 2011

What Killed Alt. Rock? Record Labels

The following is a reply to Alan Cross's post, "Grunge Nearly Ruined Alt. Rock".
http://tinyurl.com/3t7s57a

My theory on what killed Alt Rock is this: I blame everything on the big record labels. The only reason the kind of music that a station like "They Mighty Y/The Spirit of Radio/CFNY" played emerged, was because of the DIY record labels that began popping up. This only lasted a few years before the big record companies started swallowing them up. Once they disappeared, the music sucked again. I remember my friends and I in the latter half of the 80s lamenting about the direction music had gone, after having been so great from about 1978-86. We all said "something has to happen." That something was grunge. But something new happens once every dozen or so years. Ten to 12 years after grunge came the Strokes. But because big labels rule what we listen to, and bands ultimately want to make money, we will never have an era like we did in the early 80s.