Originally Posted by sunbeam007:
“The rise of boyband happened around 10 years before Pop Idol hit the charts. You can also look at Stock Aitken and Waterman in the mid-80s for the same genre.
The XF has given the UK 41 number 1s including the current one. It's also created the first UK pop act to smash USA since the Spice Girls (also a 90s act).
The charts's problem now is that it is dominated by streaming and so it's hard for unknown artists to crack them. The acts are dominated by the American urban genre where you have ActA featuring ActB.
The music industry wants names because they'll get the streams. The industry won't take the long-term investment decisions because records don't sell much in the digital era.
The rise of the internet is what changed the music industry, not the XF or American Idol.”
I'm not really clear what point you are making …
The music industry stopped investing in new artists about ten years before the impact of the internet became apparent, and way before streaming took hold. I'd say Britpop was probably the last major attempt record companies made to bring new talent to the fore, and when the alternative was the easy pickings the likes of the Spice Girls offered, you can see why the money men wanted the latter, rather than the former.
A number one single does not immediately guarantee credibility - much as Simon Cowell might like it to. Or are we now saying that Rene & Renato, St Winifred's School Choir, the Goombay Dance Band, the Firm, Bombalurina, Mr Blobby and Rednex have all made significant contributions to music?
And boy bands did not start ten years before Pop Idol - you can find plenty of them in the 60s and 70s. And they, like One Direction, aren't known for writing their own material - in stark contrast to the artists I mentioned. Cowell merely used his US profile to promote them there and also hired internationally successful songwriting teams to make sure their music would go worldwide (even the Spice Girls didn't do that).
Yes, SAW are a significant forerunner of Fuller and Cowell - because they by and large didn't bother with musicians and so kept costs down, because a large proportion of the acts they produced had little or no staying power and because they were pretty dictatorial with their acts.
The music industry totally dropped the ball with the internet - but its problems started before that. Which is now why pop really is eating itself on TV.
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