Attracting a mate was once a type of performance art. To stand out from the crowd you needed exceptional clothes or super dance moves. To seal the deal, smooth chatter helped. Naturally this favored the gregarious. Shrinking violets got stuck on the shelf....
Music is suffering too. It needs clubs. In an era where only idiots like me pay for music, without nighttime gigs, musicians and DJs simply cannot make a living.
Future generations will probably react with horror when we regale them with our - highly censored - nightclub stories. I'll remember the glory days....
August 19, 2015
"As video killed the radio star, technology has finished off clubs."
"It was never about the music. It was about meeting people. Why go to the trouble of preening yourself and making a huge effort when it’s easier to meet someone on Tinder?"
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The world would not come to an end if those self - indulgent DJs could no longer make a living.
Thank goodness, it's about damn time.
Anyway musicians will do just fine as people still enjoy going out to bars and restaurants with live music, and let's not forget that these people can now put their music up on the internet which allows it to reach a far wider audience.
DJs on the other hand are dying out, as they should.
What's Tinder?
And another person ages out, crying out These damn kids today!!
What's Tinder?
Oh, don't be coy. You know what Swipe Right means.
"Sober clubbing made me question how in God’s name I believed it to be such fun, for so long."
And yet, ye pine for the good ol' days, don'tcha laddie?
'Musicians will do just fine'
Lol at Christopher, thinking this does not heavily impact them. Nightclub culture has/is dying and that means gigs for musicians too.
In the last ten years I have seen the local scene dry up and quite a lot of talented musicians walk away from performing. No reliable source of income for most around here over winter ... summer is half of what it was but winter is almost impossible to pay bills with.
@Mark
You are so right. At small clubs now, a live band makes less in actual (not adjusted) dollars than they did in the early seventies.
I'm way passed "clubbing," but I like to listen to live music, including both major acts and local bands. The venues for this type of thing have really dried up.
Musicians need a government program so they can then compete with a pizza, which has a better chance of feeding a family of four.
Christopher said: "these people can now put their music up on the internet which allows it to reach a far wider audience."
But those are one-shot payments.
You pay for the song once, and then you can play it as many times as you want. (And many folks don't even pay for the song once. They download pirated copies for free.)
Musicians make their money in performances, not just song writing. You pay (or the club pays) for them to perform the same song, night after night. That means they can still make money for songs they wrote years ago, by performing in clubs and at rock concerts. (Look at all the aging rock bands that still perform the songs they wrote in the 1970s.)
I don't know, most of us seem to find our wives at work, more or less as the working classes always have.
I married my tech writer for instance.
ASCAP stands for is the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Once upon a time commercial music was in composing and printing music. Maybe there's a new potential on the horizon for less than professional musicians (like that new TV show) who will perform at (maybe) less than recording quality, but in a typical club the acoustics are not conducive to high fidelity anyway.
As a hack, I'm finding a LOT of stuff on YouTube to help me play better, and electronics are now at a level that an amateur can afford equipment.
Mobile phone social media apps, drinking age going up to 21, banning smoking from bars, dram shop laws, the rising cost of liability insurance, and a general sense that excessive alcohol use and the use of recreational drugs gets in the way of having a happy life -- all seem to be getting in the way of the night club scene.
It's a hard world. Grow up or die.
sinz wrote:
Christopher said: "these people can now put their music up on the internet which allows it to reach a far wider audience."
But those are one-shot payments.
You pay for the song once, and then you can play it as many times as you want. (And many folks don't even pay for the song once. They download pirated copies for free.)
Musicians make their money in performances, not just song writing. You pay (or the club pays) for them to perform the same song, night after night. That means they can still make money for songs they wrote years ago, by performing in clubs and at rock concerts. (Look at all the aging rock bands that still perform the songs they wrote in the 1970s.)
But people buy the music over and over again. When was the last time the Beatles toured? How much did they sell on iTunes?
Also, the idea that acts, especially smaller ones, can make it without sales of records is dubious. Read about small bands trying to make it by touring. At the end of the day they might pull in 100 bucks between the four people.
You need to have a substantial number of sales to get people to go to the concerts.
This is more of that internet is the savior claptrap that doesn't work out for the industries that assumed the hype was true.
Has lonliness been defeated by internet devices that accompany us now and link us to our friends lives?
Clubs are for romance. But romance takes too much time.
I know this is anecdotal, but I've never seen the clubs in downtown Naperville busier than they've been this summer. Even clubs in Chicago are rocking out. So I'd cautiously speculate that this drop-off in the club scene is not consistent everywhere. It could still be a trend, and maybe NE Illinois hasn't been caught in the slump yet, but for now the club scene in Chicagoland is still hopping.
also, how does a songwriter who writes hits for other artists go on tour? I write the songs that make the whole world sing! Who are you again? How does he/she hawk t shirts?
It will all come back after people tire of 'social' media. There will be a backlash, and we'll be reading articles about the "rise of these new things called clubs."
As long as there are Katy Perrys, there will be songwriters.
I've seen a few of these articles now and they're all talking about the UK.
Is this also the trend in the US?
We have a handful of busy clubs here with DJ or live bands. I think college age women still like to go out and show themselves. Guys like to stand around in their ball caps and cargo shorts drinking beer and bullshitting. The girls often have to dance together or dance with the older ones who know how. I get the feeling people crave each other's company in meatspace.
I still make a little money performing music but it's not what it was 30 years ago, for sure. We also compete with penny ante casinos here too. Bleah how boring.
Premise of the post is incorrect. The standouts, knockouts, fashion leaders, best dancers are indeed attractive, but as explained in the movie A Beautiful Mind, it is among the crowd around the knockout where the majority of the real action occurs.
For every knockout, say there are three or four wingmen or wingwomen. Only 1/3 to 1/2 of these less-desirable specimens need to meet and hookup to outnumber the successes of the knockout in hooking up.
And as Idiocracy showed us, this leads over time to the population dumbing down, a lowering of standards, and less attractive people in general over a rather short time.
Yes, via Nobel Prize winning Mathematics, Disco leads to Idiocracy. So does Tinder, because those pics from 10 years ago might just get your foot in the door, after which mutual desperation leads to closing the deals.
Shorter version: While attractive people have sex, so do the schlubs of the world. Guess which group has greater numbers.
Those of us not into the club scene called them "meat racks" back in the 80s. Because that's what they were. They were horrid.
I prefer quieter pub style bars where you can actually have a conversation.
"What's Tinder?"
I wonder why people post comments like this in an attempt to pretend to be above it all. If one had an honest desire to know what it was, Google is available on the same device you're posting the comment on.
Stop preening with "What's a X" where X is a thing you wish everyone to know you don't associate with, but anyone who is even half heartedly plugged into current events is fully aware of. I don't use Tinder, Grindr, OK Cupid, Match.com or Plenty of Fish -- but I won't pretend to be ignorant of what these things ARE just to let people think "Oh, he doesn't get along with THAT sort of thing." And, if someone wanted to have a discussion about a proper noun I wasn't sure about, I would Google it.
Exactly. I used Plenty of Fish to find a decent girl after so many of the barflies and party girls turned out to be nothing special. I had a few misfires, and one 4 month relationship that seemed good, but the girl in question lived with her mother and had no ambition, so I ended things once it was clear she wasn't long term material. I only used PoF once more - and that girl turned out to be so perfect for me that she's now my lovely wife. I love the future.
Notice all the people running around with ear buds, and partying alone.
There's a woman I see some mornings during my Metro in to work, just dancing away to whatever is playing in her ear buds. The Metro is a silly place.
Journeyman fiddle player and guitarist here. My music performance income is down about 90 percent from a few years ago. Places we used to play have changed format, or closed and didn't open back up. Never did it full time but in the early 2000s was gigging 3-4 nights a week. Enough to earn a grand or two extra per month... a lot of which I would spend back out in the venue seeing friends play music if I wasn't playing, because I thought it was important to keep supporting live music. (I used to joke with one of our venue owners that we've been trading the same 200 dollars back and forth for years).
I used to get called in as a substitute player quite a bit because I can think on my feet and play by ear no problem (not easy to find violinists who can do that). Players used to have to take a night or a week off once in a while because they were playing so much they'd get tendonitis. I almost never get those calls anymore. If another player gets a gig in my market, he or she is keeping it.
I could do a lot of weddings if I pursued that market, but not after the libtards got done with the photographers and bakers. I want the right to say 'no,' and gay weddings request shitty music anyway.
Places where Samuel Beckett could dance with Edith Piaf and nobody would bat an eyelid.
I had to laugh at that, knowing full well that those two couldn't dance even if a cowboy was shooting his pistols at their feet.
Especially in a dank basement club...
Never heard of Plenty of Fish, so I learned something today.
So the real issue here is that shrinking violets now have a chance to date or just hook up with the attractive women and men the gregarious would have previously gotten the lion's share of.
As somewhat of a shrinking violet myself in my earlier years, let me say, cry more, you big baby. Can't handle competition.
The apex of clubbing was after The Pill and before AIDS.
You stole tinder from the gays grinder and scruff.
I go out to dinner with friends and they are on grinder-that is how they now check out guys at a the restaurant.
The gays are always the pioneers and the straighties copy.
The gays are always the pioneers and the straighties copy
Said the man who loves Massachusetts from The Cape to Cambridge to the Berkshires.
I don't doubt many gays contributed to that place, but it was built by straight Puritans.
When younger I played a lot of baseball and tennis not because I was prepping for a professional career in sports but because it was fun. I think a lot of people will continue to play and compose music because it's fun and not because it's lucrative. Ditto with sex. How many of us can realistically expect to have a career in porn........I shed a tear in the memory of type setters and watch repairman who learned and mastered a difficult trade only to be made obsolete by changes in technology. The plight of dj's, however, is something that we can all rejoice in.
I've never understood the appeal of live music. Any band playing in a club sucks; that is why they are playing in a club. And music recorded in a studio sounds better than a recording of a live performance; that is why there are studios. And music is intended to be heard, not looked at.
It's really hard to meet people when you have to SHOUT over the band--makes one look ugly.
Of course, video DIDN'T kill the radio star. The radio star is really stronger than it ever was, thanks to satellite and talk radio.
"Video Killed the Radio Star" was MTV's first video when they debuted. Can say they didn't warn us. The kinds of radio stations I listened to when I was young don't seem to exist anymore (WZZX, WLRS, managed to choke down some WQMF). AOR, RIP.
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