I am 200% with the fact that music artists are what it's all about. We need a new music 'prophet'or icon to wake people up. It's gonna happen, perhaps as an indirect result of the internet..ironically.
And I am not blaming people who honestly try their best to make things work. you can't blame them.
Thank god there are places like this forum, as they are a real indication that there are talented people who care and understand.
By saturation, I meant cashing in on a genre/trend and sqeezing every possible drop out of it, so that sound-alike records are favoured to an excess, and
too many acts are signed because they resemble other acts.
when this happens almost any independent producer/team can
manufacture something that will be acceptable, and fit into a genre.
too many manufactured acts upset the balance and reduce the number of artistic people, replacing them with practical hands-on arrangers/technicians, who don't focus on making any artistic statement but on following a trend in the most convincing way possible.
So you get a series of carbon copies that are too easy to market, too easy to assimilate by the record buying crowd, but only last so long before the whole wave of cookie-cutter artists changes the way the whole system works and creates formats that are too specialized.
when a genre is exploited too much, it loses value artistically and the whole genre becomes old-hat, eventually, never to be re-gained. The only way to get around this is to promote change and individual artistic work so that the genre evolves constantly and no-one can make the music fit into a box..innovators need to be able to make a living!
the consumers need to be educated to a point, to look beyond the superficial, and get deeper into the possibilities of music.. or at least not be bombarded with just ONE sound at a time, which makes them insensitive to new music.
when coke tastes the same every can you get, and the choices are narrowed to the same 5 soft-drinks, people will have a harder time adjusting to anything new, even though it may be better..retail and distribution won't see the need to push anything else either, especially since the work is assured if they don't go against the flow dictated by the major manufacturers..which provide them with steady work, eternally.
But music does not work like soft drinks, not forever.
this can all be solved with more live music, since that is THE way of getting the artistic message across musically and start a movement.
for example, the dance-pop music market in the 90's here in Europe was so over-exploited that most production entities that didn't have anything to do with it suffered, and a lot died off.
bands have less places to play because everybody catered to the 'new sound' (cheap to produce) in a way that it killed everything else.
now that it's been exploited to the point that everybody and their relatives has had a go, there is nothing left to say or do, and a lot of younger music professionals don't even know what a great live band is like.
meanwhile lots of musicians who didn't fit in that genre have been out of work for a decade, so there are fewer to pick from, less scenes etc. there isn't the same ability to market a real artist anymore. but it's going to turn around as a result of individual action.
You can't blame a corporation. Who would you point the finger at? It's just a money-making system.