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| quote: | Originally posted by Axolotyl
Decentralisation of a movement provides a certain freedom from commercialism that isnt possible when a movement takes place in a club environment. Trance never started out as commercial, but as soon as it started competing with house for floorspace at major clubs, it started a vicious cycle of promotion that eventually drove it into the mainstream. As it becomes more popular, the big DJ's get more into it, people rave about the big ch00ns more, the events sell more tickets, promoters and labels become more interested... and the cycle continues... but hey... the kids love it  |
To add to this....mainstreamization or something getting popular is not inherently a bad thing, but what can make it a bad thing is the inherent danger in creating something for the sole purpose of commercial appeal in the first place.
To wit: commercial music, by its very definition, is very simple, tepid, watered down, safe and boring. It has to be. In order to appeal to the greatest number of people (thus edifying its status as pop), it can't be too "outlandish" or too strange that might offend or turn away the balance of the population. It's got to appeal to EVERYONE...and the only way to appeal to EVERYONE is to not disclude anyone's taste or judgment. Thus, we get this lukewarm schlock that is faux-excitement, made digestible by committee and catered directly to the lowest common denominator. If it were a food it would be white rice.
Pop music is historically retrogressive, and by that I mean it uses tried and true music models and formulas for success. It rarely, if ever, innovates, creates, or evolves new internal structures by itself, because that's not what it's meant to do. Typically, what will happen is the underground--that breeding ground of new forms and new ideas where each scene cares only about self-satisfaction and the satisfaction of its eclectic yet miniscule (and thus non-commercial worthy) fan-base--might accidently create something of worthy appeal to the masses. When this happens, Nirvana and grunge music, for instance, the pop music industry always smells money, never the aesthetics of the music, and immediately makes copycat music (by signing similar sounding bands to big labels) in an attempt to cash in on the craze. In most cases, this copycat music is an inferior, low-quality impression of the original, but close enough that the masses don't mind, because they aren't unhealthily obsessive nitpickers about their music. They just like what they hear on the radio and TV, they generally don't discriminate like the dissectors of the artform do.
In trance's case, it has actually gradually grown into the commercial market rather than shoved into the spotlight suddenly over the night. It's been a slow process of shaving away the slivers of the old trance model that is not appetizing to mass culture and repainting the genre with sing-a-long melodies and car commercial jingles. Slowly over the years it has become more and more like the pop music you people so vehemently oppose, and today's Vocal Trance is pretty much indistinguishable from eurodance--minus the rapping. Now, that wouldn't be a bad thing if the music (and its listeners) didn't have a tendancy to take itself so god damn seriously.
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