A mate of mine was listening to commercial radio the other day. The announcer said something like "Ok! Some demo just arrived in a cardbox box! There's no name on it! OH WELL! Here it is!"

and played a poorly recorded, poorly written and poorly permormed demo...

Depressingly bemusing...Half of all my friends and acquaintences have sent recordings they have spent heap$ on (paying attention to quality of the whole package too) and never even been played on community/govt let alone commercial. These are often good bands with a solid live following, or talented electronic artists...
Like beating your head against a brick wall sometimes.

[ 01-08-2003, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: Leonis ]

Yep. You've got to be doing it because you love it, that's for sure.

Good music is made in spite of the music industry, not because of it.

Yet some how the RIAA is still clinging to the idea that falling profits are due to piracy, not crappy product. (yes I know the situation is MUCH more complicated than that).

A note on good music .... some of the best stuff is played in dive bars ...

I just recently went to a club and found that the music was absoltuley astonishing, but it was all underground. it's in a great demand but can't be distributed for an ever-changing-ever-expanding market. The music industry would make too much money too fast and they obviously dont like making money, thats why they exist [img]tongue.gif[/img] to be annoying and complain about the "Trading systems" which are mostly used to obtain the material used in Dive bars and Raves...

Yes there are always exciting and daring things going on at the fringe. I recall a number of mindbending live drum&bass bands around Sydney a couple of years ago. (a few are still going). I felt at the time these people were at the forefront of rave/dance music and were set to do big things...but most of them faded out unfortunately...

It seems nowadays all you gotta do is shake it like shakira to become a big time corporate rock courtesan. Talent just doesn't get you anywhere.

But was there any particular reason to play that demo then? A special part of the radio show in which a new demo is selected to be played?
There is a Belgian commercial radiostation (which I can listen to in the Netherlands without any problem as I live close to the Belgian border) who actually have a special section in a radioshow in which 3 demo's are selected on a weekly basis and get some airplay; the listeners then get a chance to vote for the best demo and that one will be played an extra time. In my opinion very interesting. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Oh, and that radio station also has an online-section, where the demo's can be listened to online and people have an opportunity in some sort of forum-kind-of-structure to give their opinions about the song. Even though the site is in Dutch, you can find this "demo-poll" here to get an impression. ;)

had a mate who was on tv and all sorts because of the single he had released, they were all saying that it would be christmas number 1 but many months later i hadnt seen any chart news about it whatsoever and i asked what was going on, despite the song being quality and one of these guaranteed to do well and despite some heavy backing because of the way the music industry works he barely got it past first base, even with tv coverage and support,basically my mate said the whole system is screwed, that you need bungs and bribes to get a song anywhere and that 20 places in the charts can be dependent on being nice to the right person, its one of the most corrupt money grabbing industries you will find in the world today :( further proving what my mate had said i saw a program all about it along the same lines, absolutely terrible how it all works :(

To be fair, Shakira's spainish music is quite good. She was having international success as a dark haired spainish singer, before bleaching and anglocising for the U.S. market.

She is a genuine talent.

from here: http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa111201a.htm

Go to the official website for the group Mary's Danish if you want to get a story on how even a band that has "made it" can be screwed over. The music business is just that, a business. Unfortunately it is a business run by people who don't care about music, just product.