I've been writing a feature for a magazine and need to gather opinions on the current state of music culture, so all thoughts are welcome.

To start everyone off...

Do you think the current state of music is thriving or stale?
Are we just destined to hear rehashes of old records from now on, or is music still as exciting as it's always been?
Is the Internet a good or bad tool concerning spreading music all over the world - should we all still purchase our own copies from record shops, or is it OK to (illegally) download music? Where would you draw the line? And do you use the Internet to find new bands rather than say, buying music magazines or listening to the radio?
Would you say that there are still large music movements taking off, or is everything now going in circles and reverting back to previous movements?
How do you find out about new music?

It depends what you are looking at. I reckon that the UK industry is being ruined by people like the NME which has been making up music scenes and championing incredibly mediocre rock bands in a pathetic attempt to sell more copies, but if you look at the real indie sort of people then it is thriving.

EDIT: Just found out that my nearest live venue is closing at the end of this year. So that makes it seems as if live music for smaller bands is dying but for the larger bands it is thriving.

There are some really good songwriters and genuine musicians around, but it depends on the artist's target market. If it is a pop act then it is more likely that they will just redo an old song (how many times have Unchained Melody been covered?)

I think the internet has been extremely good for the music industry. Things like MySpace mean that bands who would previously only be known in their town or area can now be heard by people all over the world. I download music but if I like the artist, I am more than willing to pay £9.97 at Tesco for their CD. If you like the artist then you should buy their music IMO. I heard about new bands mostly through word of mouth from mates, but also hear new stuff on XFM often enough. NME is just cunty.


I can only talk about the genre of music I am into, but I reckon we are a little stagnant right now. People keep talking about new rave and all this bollocks but the fact is that nothing out right now is that new or special. The Smiths > Arctic Monkeys and The Kinks > Razorlight. Find out about new music from mates or XFM. Mostly I go to a gig and find that some of the support bands are pretty good and so get into them rather by accident.

Hope all this helps

wow, thanks so much for replying so quickly & being so indepth, that really is a huge help! i'd rep you if i could! who shall i credit the quote to?

Haha don't worry about repping I like to make myself useful for once in a while. You can put Nick Wright if you want to but I'm not bothered if you want to take it yourself. It is getting the message across that matters. It also happens to be something that I care about if you want to chat more about it then just PM and I will get back to you

My opinion is that music isn't stale. It's the fact that there are so many brainless idiots buying so much stale music that it's only too easy to get the impression it is stale. There's so much interesting exciting music out there, but all that seems to be getting through are whatever blazer-clad-fuckwits of the week NME are pushing, Panic At My Chemical Fallout or whatever Kerrang are into, or coffee table bland merchants for the over-30 crowd.

Certainly, the problem here in Glasgow is that any emerging band will be struggling to get crowds/gigs/CD sales etc., unless they perpetuate this stale state. The audiences are now so accustomed to accepting rehashed clone music, that the only way for a band to be successful is to cater to that particular taste, and there's a whole pile of creatively bankrupt morons more than happy to take on the task. My big problem is that at the moment it's not about the music you play, it's about how you look or what you say and do.

My prime example of this would be Dundee band The View. I'd call them nothing more than a bunch of wannabe Libertines ripoffs, and that's nothing to be proud of, given that IMO, the Libertines were little more than overhyped style-over-substance rubbish who got lucky by getting the "NME golden touch". Of course, The View were total unknowns until... shock... their drummer got arrested for being in a car with Pete Doherty! All of a sudden, this gave them this stupid false rock credibility, the NME were all over it, and all of a sudden they're all over the radio and MTV. Thoroughly stupid if you ask me.

As for the internet, I think freely available music is a great thing, although still definitely no substitute for having a real, physical CD in your hand. I think at worst, all it'll do is make some greedy greedy people less money, but with their attitudes, I'm only more than happy to see their bank balances fall a little. It's the artists like Metallica that really get on my tits something awful. And Zakk Wylde too, I used to have quite a lot of respect for him, then I read the following quote in an interview on www.ultimate-guitar.com...

"It's a good thing I never ran into him because I swear to Christ, I would have broken his legs and beat the fuck out of him. You think I'm fucking joking? I ain't fucking joking. It would be no accident. I swear to Christ the crucifixtion that they did to Christ, would have been a laughing joke compared to what I would have done to that cocksucker. Let me get this straight, basically you're stealing."