...thank you, Drnrg, for not taking that personally. My initial response was fueled by a great deal of frustration and, while I do think I made solid points, I reacted a bit too strongly to your post either way. Please accept my apologies for the tone of that response, I care a great deal for the music I love regardless of country-of-origin, not just Eurobeat so I can get riled up a bit easily these days (finishing final projects for this semester as well as the sequel to My Life as a Pixel V1 might also be contributing!), but it's not an excuse for my lashing out so harshly.
That said, I still have some points of rebuttal to your previous post.
drnrg wrote:
I'm not taking it personal. I do not hate all American music. I actualy do ; exacatly like you said; love most; if not all American rock bands. You know which ones. Green Day, Kiss, Killers, Daughtry. ect..American Pop can also be great. Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert, Katy Perry ocasional Pink, Carley Rae Jepsen(actually Canadian right). Most of you are probobly surprised I even listen to these artists, but I do? It's not entirely American Pop artists I hate either either. I mentioned Rihanna(Barbados).
I actually had no idea she was from Barbados. Ten points from Odyssey-dor.
drnrg wrote:American dance pop; however, is a complete joke and they know it . Every song shamlessly has the same beat nowadays. That is where half of my post is actually aimed for.
Of American Dance Pop, this may be true (if we're focusing more on the pop segment of it). However, this simply cannot be levied against the EDM world fronted by mau5trap, OWSLA, Never Say Die and what have you. The variations of rhythms between these styles are sufficiently varied both within and between subgenres (this will draw ire, but... some dubstep has multiple time signatures and beats, and has different time signatures and beats from drumstep [drum & bass with dubstep influence], which is still different from moombahton, or from neurofunk, or from glitch-hop, or from trap, etc), and already vastly outnumbers Eurobeat's (4/4, no shuffle, 140-170 bpm in most cases). Believe it or not, producers such as Zedd (classically trained pianist), Porter Robinson (formerly produced hands-up as "Ekowraith"), and even Skrillex (former emo band frontman/singer before he had to have surgery on his throat, piano player, guitar player) actually DO have some talent and try to make interesting and compelling music with variety, even if not in the same ways some Eurobeat fans would appreciate it.
Think of their "wubs" in a similar manner to our brass riffs, if you will— a casual listener would blow them off as all the same ("generic wubs"/"generic flailing brass", as one non-fan of mine may paraphrase!), but a fan who knows the style(s) intimately can tell you how each one is different in their own way. Both actually DO take talent and creativity to create and produce in a way that is compelling and interesting, and there are frankly enough lazily-generated Eurobeat songs in the world to where I can say it's equally guilty of generic/"sameface" production. (Any genre that has the song "I'm Superstar" in it CAN'T be perfect... this, from a Futura fan!!!)
I have more on this matter, but it better addresses points you make below.
drnrg wrote:@ zoup zuop2
You should concider yourself completely exemplified from my post because , 1. you mostly produce Eurobeat, 2. Your style caters mostly to Eurobeat ; which is a Japanese market. and three and most important; you havn't sold out your credibility to the American music Popular labels
This is somewhat true, but most of my buying audience has actually been from the USA, statistically speaking. I've also made other genres, and really wouldn't mind working with folks at OWSLA (if not for the fact that I like what they do with EDM, then for the fact that they're known to be VERY humble and fun to be around and work with). Not really a rebuttal, but... I'unno.
drnrg wrote:You are heavy into the Music industry. I don't deny this at all, but you are not so deep that to know these are the kinds of tactics the American Music Indutsry resorts too to sell music. Point being. they sacrifice talent for sales. It most certainly is not happening a your current status , because you are not mainstream. That's Another reason why you shouldn't take my comments to heart. This is the main reason for the Indi lables becomming so popular in the states. So the artists have more freedom.
I actually know a couple of the tricks. If I'm not mistaken, the practice of "payola" from labels to radio stations is still quite common?
And, sadly, I have hit a small level of mainstream— my Youtube channel has 4 million views, of which one original song of mine, "Discord", has 1 million of those (and counting), and
I've shown up under my "Eurobeat Brony" alias in Rolling Stone. (You will probably NOT like the remix of my song they chose to post unless you're really into KOAN Sound/Pendulum).
Additionally, most independent labels are only so by name— they'll often have a big-label distributor, or still be neatly under the thumb of a biggie like Warner or Universal. (Oddly enough, while still being distributed through Warner, OWSLA and Mau5trap have levels of creative freedom that are damned near unheard of in the industry, and I heavily doubt their status as "indie".) The contracts indie labels use are also very often copy-pasted directly from larger labels, and can still have precisely the same soul-crushing contracts contained within. (If I'm not mistaken, it's usually in the clause where the label can request multiple albums of X-number-of-songs within a single calendar year, which often drives bands/artists to seek outside help, often called "uncontrolled songs" because the artist(s) themself/themselves do not have direct creative control of it. This tends to happen around album 3 of your average band's career.) "Indie" is a title to be used with caution— truly independent labels do still exist but they're a lot harder to find than we think. True freedom lies in the DIY approach, though this very seldom takes off. (Usually the next big step in an artist's career that's done the DIY approach is to use the dedicated resources of... a larger label.)
drnrg wrote:Put all my post into perspective and you see that if Eurobeat was to become mainstream; they would have to release songs on those popular labels, thus they would have to include or be entirely sung by the American pop stars of the moment. That would also exclude all our favourite Eurobeat artists and just like that . They are out of work.
They're already releasing through Avex. Avex is (or at least was) huge. Plus, who ever said they would all have to be sung by the pop stars of the moment? Why can't it be the people who have already been making this stuff in the first place, marketed to a different country? Even if it was an American artist singing on it specifically, wouldn't the writers and producers still have their jobs? (
This is obviously NOT ideal if new talent replaced old talent instead of added to it, that much we agree on. But... who says these vocalists AREN'T added to the roster instead of kicking the old one out? There are plenty of vocalists in the Eurobeat world who could still have appeal outside of the Eurobeat genre.)
drnrg wrote:A no-name artists can also be an overnight sensation(Wether they have talent or not) if they agree with what Popular Record lables want) Change your sound, add in a cameo appearance, maybe even change your Music genre completely. This means The American Music Industry can either make you or break you if you don't play ball.
This part is a bit strange, because I know plenty of people who got signed BECAUSE of their popularity (as in, popularity came before the signing, not vice versa). Hell, even Bieber... as begrudgingly as I admit it, he got popular through Youtube BEFORE being picked up by Ludacris. (The fact that Bieber later became an entitled prick and insulted Zedd, a far better musician than he will EVER be, is another story. I have a couple of reasons I legitimately dislike Bieber, or so I like to think.)
And, uh... Eurobeat is in NO position to accuse others of "changing according to a label's desires", when we're one of the strongest examples of precisely that. Hell, our most popular song was radically altered into what it is BECAUSE of Avex's request to change the singer! Avex makes requests for changes VERY very often (two of my songs were subject to such!), about on the same level as Warner or Universal or Disney might. Our Eurobeat artists and singers and whatnot are under nearly identical varieties of scrutiny.
This next part is a bit long, so tl;dr until the next quote: I agree with you on the notion of changing someone's sound upon signing being a bad move.
While I do agree that a label that signs an artist for their unique sound, only to demand they change it later, is batshit stupid. However, I can see their reasoning, and it lays within the vocabulary of an old Warner contract (special thanks to the book "Confessions of a Record Producer" by Moses Avalon) :
Warner Contract wrote:"Each such master shall be subject to COMPANY's approval as commercially satisfactory for the manufacture and sale of records."
The record company wants to make sure that the thousands (or millions) of dollars they invested in helping you make your record (through the form of an advance) will be compensated so they can pay their employees that month. They want to be sure that what they're selling of yours will, in fact, sell and start to earn back money on the debt they've accrued. (In rare cases, these advances ARE recompensated; rarer still— almost exclusively for platinum-sellers— these advances are compensated AND profited upon.) So if they don't think that Yoko Ono scream in the middle of a piano ballad will put food on their kids' tables (even if it is fine French gourmet, if we're going with a "biggie" in this instance), they'll ask for its removal.
Of course, the problem here is that it defies the very point of signing the act in the first place. If you booked him because he does great metal, and suddenly you want him to croon like Bublé or Sinatra, that's bloody stupid and counterproductive. I notice that even some of the "biggies" are letting their acts get pretty radical with song content and sound design, so perhaps this notion is weakening a tad.
drnrg wrote:I have complete respect for you and all American and Non American music artists so long as you don't sellout. I can stop listening to forign artists just as easy, but they don't sell out as often as American artists do. These artists also usually are pop or dance with no real identitly as to what genre they want thier music to be? and the majoraty don't even write thier own material. I prefer Rock genre , because they almost always write thier own material.
How on earth do foreign artists not "sell out as often"? Most of what we're listening to as Eurobeat fans is from Avex or Farm or even Warner itself... big(-ish) record labels with contracts and staff-writers! What can we say of the Eurobeat labels, then, who can barely publish anything from their libraries without Avex's concern? If anything, the Eurobeat labels, by what seems to be your definition of "selling out", have sold not only "out", but sold more than they've got! They're more dependent on their parent label than most electronic acts I know. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but the way it's been handled in the Eurobeat context has been elaborated on for eons, little of it in a positive light.
As well, it's generally true that rock-specific acts DO tend to write their own material. However... how sure are you (hell, how sure am
I?) that those artists you mentioned DID, in fact, write all their material? What if one of those songs had an additional writer? What if one of those had someone who didn't have a vocal or instrumental talent, but could compose and write lyrics like nobody's business? Would that even be so wrong, if the act still by-and-large does mostly their own material? I mean, if the band played mostly "uncontrolled" material for there career, that'd be grounds for discussion of their own creativity, but why is it so bad when one or two of the songs are written by someone who ISN'T exhausted from weeks of touring and recording?
By the way, I also dabbled a little in (80's Freestyle, NRG dance music industry)Promoted, wrote lyrics even a few backup vocals. Groups like Barduex, Chapter One, Toppaz ect..)
A big American lable(won't mention name) wanted us to change our sound to Rap(Hip Hop) That Vanilla Ice, M.C Hammer crap that was comming out.. Once again; thier way or the highway. That's when I left the American music industry for good. So yes, my expirience with the BIG American Music Lables hasn't been a favorable one.
I had absolutely no idea that you were involved in the music industry. My sincerest apologies for any assumptions I may have made to the contrary.
drnrg wrote:Hopefully this gives a better understanding of the aspects that I hate about American Music Industry.
It does indeed, and it did in fact open my eyes to your understanding of the music world. However, there are still some problematic patterns in your thought process, understandable as they may be from the burn you got from your label experience, that are just not accurate to the existing scene, or at the very lest, make assumptions about quality that simply cannot be objectively verified.
I would urge you to consider how some of the acts you dislike might actually still have some talent after all— having worked with pitch-correction software myself, it can't necessarily fix a tone-deaf vocal session, for instance— or that just because the style isn't to your liking doesn't mean that it's garbage by default. I absolutely loathed dubstep... until I gave it a couple of listens, on my own, from both a "fan"/listener perspective and a producer perspective. What started as mere appreciation grew into actually quite a joy with that most detested genre, because I gave it a chance to surprise me.
Don't forget, Eurobeat could very well have been in that position to Japanese fans of Italo Disco. I could even see it now:
"UGH! These Italo Disco guys are selling out to TECHNO of all things... TECHNO AND HOUSE! And what's with these disgusting guitars they've added, why would they EVER want to sound like a rock act? They're just peddling sped-up, keyword-laden, formulaic rehashes instead of the genre I love and recognize as high-quality. Hell, most of the vocalists aren't even the writers or producers... they're bringing in outside talent! Yuck."