Ever since the 1950s, television was people's main outlet to the world and entertainment. As things like satellite radio, downloading, YouTube and iTech get bigger, things become more personal to where everyone's into their own thing, so there's less of a common culture for everyone to relate to. This could also be another reason for the decline of mass interest in music and album sales. Like the boy band era was the last time that there was new music so big that everyone was talking about it and it was on the level of artists like Michael Jackson or even The Beatles. You don't see that with shows or artists now, because stuff is much more personalized and there aren't immediate trends, except with technology.

I think the millenial era were the final call for a shared culture that wasn't totally internet-dominated. Do you think this will change with time, or will there still pretty much just be minute changes that some people will get into, but aren't huge topics of conversation that blow people away? Sometimes I think everything has already been covered by now as far as entertainment. Maybe that's one reason reality TV became so popular and kinda still is. How much more can you push the envelope than South Park and even Family Guy in the mainstream?

1964 to 2001 was the main "trendy, unified pop culture era" probably.

Ever since the 1950s, television was people's main outlet to the world and entertainment. As things like satellite radio, downloading, YouTube and iTech get bigger, things become more personal to where everyone's into their own thing, so there's less of a common culture for everyone to relate to.

*snip*

How much more can you push the envelope than South Park and even Family Guy in the mainstream?


A recent essay on the subject just showed up.  Should be required reading (whether you agree with Steyn or Bloom or not) on the subject.  It goes right to the core of the question you've raised.  In the absence of a common cultural foundation, what can pop culture do other than devour itself like Ouroboros.

Briefly, the "problem" with pop culture since the Beatles is that we've fragmented into so many mutually-exclusive subcultures that the only thing we can refer to is pop culture itself.  To take a case in point, South Park's Season 11, Episode 09 "More Crap", was funny on its own.  But it's doubly hilarious if you managed to be sufficiently niche to see the parallels to the recent art-house-film documentary King of Kong.  Problem is, probably fewer than 5% of even South Park's (abnormally literate!) viewership got that reference. 

90% of pop culture is ephemeral.  Looney Tunes is funny even if you don't get the references to pop culture of the day.  But oh, the joy of seeing these 40s-50s cartoons explained on the DVDs.  "Benefits of a classical education" helped me appreciate more than my share of references, but in no way did I get more than half of what my parents would have gotten.

I don't know what the future of entertainment is, but at least it can't get any worse....

Yes it can.
:-\\

Movies are probably going to be fine, but the HD/Blue ray war is definitely going to confuse people. DVD sales are slowing too, so the movie industry will probably have some losses in the next few years.

The impact of youtube and satellite radio in my opinion is overrated. Kids are into youtube at least when it comes to viewing clips, but its impact on actually personalizing media is a little bit of a stretch, and by that I mean that it isn't going to change the way TV is. I equate youtube with average joes sending videos of themselves to "America's funniest Home vVdeos." If anything YouTube is getting to the point where its not a "new thing" anymore, and by 2008-09 it will have become a standard and eventually fade away, maybe. As far as satellite radio goes, I don't think that it is developing more musical niches that detract from a so-called "mass culture" because many channels on sirius or XM are oldies. In fact most music stations on satellite radio consist of well known, fairly mainstream music.

The internet has not had as dramatic effect on music as one might think either. All that the internet has done, is that its allowed indie musicians to promote themselves on the web, musicians that would typically be apart of an underground "scene." Except now the underground is able to put itself on the web, basically the same thing that goes on in real life. I know some people think consolidation of radio has hurt local music scenes, and maybe the music business as a whole but the effect is not as severe as some might think. The music business was very healthy in 1999-2000 and radio was pretty well consolidated by then. Teen pop was the big genre then, and although it was a very radio friendly genre, consolidation of radio really didn't stop the explosion of new genres of music. I believe consolidation does lead to slightly less variety and more segmentation in music styles, but newspapers have had the same thing occur, they get bought out by major conglomerates that aren't locally owned, and their still doing fine. As for the music business' current state, I don't really know what will fix that, but the lack of new styles of music that interest consumers probably has something to do with that. For the last 30 years new styles have been promoted by A&R people from punk to disco, new wave, heavy metal, then to hip hop, grunge and teen pop. Now theres no new style so consumers aren't interested.

It doesn't really seem feasible that the trendy mass culture we've had since about 1964 will end, but there are peaks and lulls with everything. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next decade with technology and its impact on the media industries, and whether or not consumers will backlash against how "advanced" things are, with things like the iPhone, texting and facebook. And there will definitely be a 2000s backlash so some smart marketers will definitely be able to profit off that, with regards to whatever new fashions, new tv programs (there will probably be an anti-reality tv backlash and a return to more sitcom oriented stuff), and new music genres emerge.

^ Excellent points. I'll elaborate later, but I pretty much agree with that.

Movies are probably going to be fine, but the HD/Blue ray war is definitely going to confuse people. DVD sales are slowing too, so the movie industry will probably have some losses in the next few years.


And while we're at it.

VHS vs. Beta:  The "good enough" format won.
IBM vs. Everyone:  The "good enough" computer won.
Token Ring vs. Ethernet:  The low-throughput, "good enough" technology built the world's LANs.
Internet vs. 80s-era Video Phone:  The crappy ad-hoc academic network that delivered content on a "good enough" basis won.
MP3 vs. (anything, including lossless .WAVs on CD or FLAC lossless compression):  The "good enough" lossy compression format won.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that while HDTV will have widespread adoption, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be the DAT or Minidisc of the 2000-2010 decade.  Good formats, but nothing more than niche formats.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray vs. HDTV vs. DVD:  Most of this will be viewed on "good enough" NTSC sets for years to come.  At least half the people who buy HDTV receivers don't have them set up to display anything better than NTSC video in the first place.  They don't notice the difference, because a DVD over NTSC is usually "good enough". 

There are people who think YouTube's flash video is "good enough", and for them,a gigabyte-ish DiVX from their favorite .torrent would also be more than "good enough".

Yeah, nowadays there are no new music styles, the newest maybe is emo, but it's olderr than 5 years. The only new styles are combination of other styles, for example the trashy punk rock (which, according to my taste is worse than pop and punk separately). Now, that styles were mixed into one, they need to return to their roots, pop should be pop, and hip-hop - real hip-hop.

I think that social networks on the Internet will become standard and people will get tired of them, I mean we will realise that it's not real, just virtual and we'll probably  look back to nature.

People will get bored and fed up with dark motives in music and movies, and happy, sunny themes will become popular again. Maybe there will be a revival of teen pop and bubblegum pop and the decline of emo and pop punk music styles, since they (especially emo) are way too depressing or/and non-optimistic.

Yeah, nowadays there are no new music styles, the newest maybe is emo, but it's olderr than 5 years. The only new styles are combination of other styles, for example the trashy punk rock (which, according to my taste is worse than pop and punk separately). Now, that styles were mixed into one, they need to return to their roots, pop should be pop, and hip-hop - real hip-hop.

I think that social networks on the Internet will become standard and people will get tired of them, I mean we will realise that it's not real, just virtual and we'll probably   look back to nature.

People will get bored and fed up with dark motives in music and movies, and happy, sunny themes will become popular again. Maybe there will be a revival of teen pop and bubblegum pop and the decline of emo and pop punk music styles, since they (especially emo) are way too depressing or/and non-optimistic.


Yeah, I think that's a huge part of the reason. There really isn't any way to come up with new styles without rehashing something that's already been done, so people just aren't interested and look back to old school music. I see 1997 to 2001 (maybe '03 at the absolute latest) as the last call for variety in popular music where people still had a fairly common interest in it.

Same thing for movies really, because that's about when the remake/immediate sequel trend started. I know what you mean about the general "darkness" in some movies (although I think those are generally the most timeless of any entertainment medium. There's always comedies, dramas, cartoons, etc). I believe when the Bush era ends, the mood of the country might change with it, but I'm not holding my breath. The reason I say this is because entertainment tends to reflect the times it was made in.

Maybe people are just content with things as they are now in popular culture, just because they have so many choices (i.e. you can just buy TV season sets on DVD, or almost anything is on cable, so they don't look to newer stuff for excitement as much).

The problem is that the airwaves are mostly corporate -- owned by a small group of people that have shown their lack of creative interest time and time again.  Radio is probably the most detrimentally affected by this due to companies like Clear Channel.

Simply put, your mainstream options dwindle when the majority of programmers are playing the same stuff due to corporate policies.  Not only is the process of searching for talent becoming more "soulless" but profits are falling for reasons beyond that of piracy -- lack of interest is a lot of it.

In the '60s and '70s, the target audience of mainstream music was a bit older than it is today.  Bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd may have strongly attracted teenagers, but they also depended on sales from twenty-somethings.  As the 80s and 90s progressed onward, the music market slowly became dominated by a younger and less sophisticated audience.  In other words, it wasn't 20-somethings that inspired the creation of bands like the Spice Girls and NSYNC.  Nowadays, the same is pretty much true.  The emo and hiphop markets primarily attract teenagers and people just now entering their 20s, but interest in radio music slowly tapers off as people exit college.  Most people who actually buy the latest singles and albums are teenagers, so that reflects the nature of the material provided by radio.  Let's just say that Bruce Springsteen would've found it much more difficult to make it big, if 14 year old girls had been the dominant demographic for music back in the early 80s.  Instead, we get bands like My Chemical Romance.

TV is kind of similar.  Who wants to sit through commercials every 5 minutes, when you can just record a show on DVR, and fast-forward through them as you watch your show?  Now, TV execs are getting creative in their injection of product placement into storylines, and it's only set to get worse.

Besides, most of the best shows are on premium channels, and who wants to pay a hefty fee every month for them, when you can just rent entire seasons of each show for an affordable rate from Netflix (or download them for free on a torrent)?

Movies seem to be the only medium mostly immune to the effects of technology and corporatism.  So far as I've seen, plenty of excellent material comes out each year that mostly makes up for every train wreck produced by the Wayans brothers.

I mostly agree, Machismo. But I would put the age thing even lower. There's alot of teens who aren't crazy about "modern music" (2002 or '03+) either, which is yet another reason I think being retro/old-school is much much much more common today than it ever was before. Just check the comments section for lots of music videos on YouTube and you'll see what I'm talking about. And Eighties music had a very wide fanbase and age appeal. I was 3 when Bruce came out with Born in the USA and I liked it lol.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's people in their late 20s, even 30s who still like current things, so it's not like a 28 year old is going to be in the same boat with a sixty year old, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Sorry to go off on that little rant lol, because aside to that I totally agree. ;)

I mostly agree, Machismo. But I would put the age thing even lower. There's alot of teens who aren't crazy about "modern music" (2002 or '03+) either, which is yet another reason I think being retro/old-school is much much much more common today than it ever was before. Just check the comments section for lots of music videos on YouTube and you'll see what I'm talking about. And Eighties music had a very wide fanbase and age appeal. I was 3 when Bruce came out with Born in the USA and I liked it lol.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's people in their late 20s, even 30s who still like current things, so it's not like a 28 year old is going to be in the same boat with a sixty year old, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Sorry to go off on that little rant lol, because aside to that I totally agree. ;)


Machismo?..  heh heh...  :P

Good points.  It's good to see that younger people still like classic stuff.  Granted, I don't know about you, but it seems like most classic rock stations act as if Led Zeppelin and ACDC only played 4 songs each throughout their entire careers.  I really wish they'd mix up things some.

Oh, and being 28 myself, I know what you mean about the 60 year old thing.  Granted, there's a good chance that a 28 year old actually would be in the same boat as a 60 year old if that 60 year old's name is Larry Craig.

Sorry, had to...  ;)

Yeah, nowadays there are no new music styles, the newest maybe is emo, but it's olderr than 5 years. The only new styles are combination of other styles, for example the trashy punk rock (which, according to my taste is worse than pop and punk separately). Now, that styles were mixed into one, they need to return to their roots, pop should be pop, and hip-hop - real hip-hop.

I think that social networks on the Internet will become standard and people will get tired of them, I mean we will realise that it's not real, just virtual and we'll probably   look back to nature.

People will get bored and fed up with dark motives in music and movies, and happy, sunny themes will become popular again. Maybe there will be a revival of teen pop and bubblegum pop and the decline of emo and pop punk music styles, since they (especially emo) are way too depressing or/and non-optimistic.
I think the interest in EMO is waning anyway.

What do you mean by dark motives in music? Todays music isn;t really dark with the glam rap, the A/C pop, and the new craze of hip-hop infused with Dance Music(see songs like "Stonger" by Kanye West, Whine Up, and Ayo thenology by 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake. I think hip-hop infused with dance music is the freshest trend we have right now instead of the EMO trend which you ae reffering too. As for getting teen-pop getting popular again I don;t know about that because I think there is still a bitter taste in people's mouths from the whole 1999-2000 teen-pop era.

The problem is that the airwaves are mostly corporate -- owned by a small group of people that have shown their lack of creative interest time and .  As the 80s and 90s progressed onward, the music market slowly became dominated by a younger and less sophisticated audience.  In other words, it wasn't 20-somethings that inspired the creation of bands like the Spice Girls and NSYNC.  Nowadays, the same is pretty much true.  The emo and hiphop markets primarily attract teenagers and people just now entering their 20s, but interest in radio music slowly tapers off as people exit college.  Most people who actually buy the latest singles and albums are teenagers, so that reflects the nature of the material provided by radio.  Let's just say that Bruce Springsteen would've found it much more difficult to make it big, if 14 year old girls had been the dominant demographic for music back in the early 80s.  Instead, we get bands like My Chemical Romance.


I think N' Sync and the Spice Girls are poor examples of you pointing out who the prime listening age audience is of nusic these days. I mean every generation has its teen idols. Besides, when the Spice girls were popular in 1997 there was still alot of other stuff on the radio too.I was in my Junior year of High School in early to mid 1997 so I should know. Teen-pop really didn;t dominate until Britney Spears became really popular in 1999 and the ecomomy was really really good back then. I still do believe the great ecomomy of 1999-pre Sept 11th did pave the way for teen-pop's domiance during that time period(1999-2000 anyway.) Ok stuff like the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync were on the charts in 1998 but there was alot of other stuff on the Billboard charts that year too like "The Way by Fastball", Too Close by Next, Torn by Natilie Imbruglia, Put Where Hands Where Eyes Can See by Busta Ryhmes and "Doo Wop(That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill.

As for 14 year old girls being the prodomant music listening audience these days I kinda disagree with that. I mean I think an an artist like 50 Cent who dominated 2003 and the early to mid 2005 music scene was mainly listened too by guys I believe. I do agree though 50 Cents listeing audience back then was probably like age 13-18 maybe. I just think that maybe who were in their early to mid 20's- 30's can;t relate to Hip-hop(especially glam rap) and hip-hop has been pretty domiant since 2003 on the Billboard Charts with each passing year since with the exception of 2006. I read on on the Billboards web site 2 years ago that the music industry targets age 18-34 is their prime listening audience. Are you kidding me I would have believed in 1995 that music was being targeted in that age range (18-34) but not in 2005 no way.

I think N' Sync and the Spice Girls are poor examples of you pointing out who the prime listening age audience is of nusic these days. I mean every generation has its teen idols. Besides, when the Spice girls were popular in 1997 there was still alot of other stuff on the radio too.I was in my Junior year of High School in early to mid 1997 so I should know. Teen-pop really didn;t dominate until Britney Spears became really popular in 1999 and the ecomomy was really really good back then. I still do believe the great ecomomy of 1999-pre Sept 11th did pave the way for teen-pop's domiance during that time period(1999-2000 anyway.) Ok stuff like the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync were on the charts in 1998 but there was alot of other stuff on the Billboard charts that year too like "The Way by Fastball", Too Close by Next, Torn by Natilie Imbruglia, Put Where Hands Where Eyes Can See by Busta Ryhmes and "Doo Wop(That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill.

As for 14 year old girls being the prodomant music listening audience these days I kinda disagree with that. I mean I think an an artist like 50 Cent who dominated 2003 and the early to mid 2005 music scene was mainly listened too by guys I believe. I do agree though 50 Cents listeing audience back then was probably like age 13-18 maybe. I just think that maybe who were in their early to mid 20's- 30's can;t relate to Hip-hop(especially glam rap) and hip-hop has been pretty domiant since 2003 on the Billboard Charts with each passing year since with the exception of 2006. I read on on the Billboards web site 2 years ago that the music industry targets age 18-34 is their prime listening audience. Are you kidding me I would have believed in 1995 that music was being targeted in that age range (18-34) but not in 2005 no way.


Good points, I agree.

Yeah, people seemed to act alot older in the '90s so the demographic of music reflected that I guess. Lots of people in their 20s, even 30s listened to general pop and even grunge. You're only two years older than me, did you notice that too? Like when I was around 10, teenagers seemed to act very adultike. For example, around 1992, my school bus that I rode actually picked up some high schoolers, and they seemed quite grown up. They were cool, but there were times I couldn't relate to what they were talking about, what with going on dates or parties.

It's kind of the opposite today, where the tendency is to act young for most people. I wonder if that's why music is more centered on young teens in the early-mid '00s.

I think the interest in EMO is waning anyway.

What do you mean by dark motives in music? Todays music isn;t really dark with the glam rap, the A/C pop, and the new craze of hip-hop infused with Dance Music(see songs like "Stonger" by Kanye West, Whine Up, and Ayo thenology by 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake. I think hip-hop infused with dance music is the freshest trend we have right now instead of the EMO trend which you ae reffering too. As for getting teen-pop getting popular again I don;t know about that because I think there is still a bitter taste in people's mouths from the whole 1999-2000 teen-pop era.



I meant that pop music as a genre is a bit heavier than in the late 90s. And the videos are a bit 'cold' now, where are the saccarin themes from the late 90's videos that made you smile? I think 9/11 and Bush ruined not only the US, but the whole world. But, enough politics!

And I am really worried about cars - they are becoming too large (gasoline-hungry) and too aggressive in design. I miss the oval and round car shapes in the mid-to-late 90s. I think I'll just have to wait until oval cars become popular again.

But I think that the world may appear the same as in mid to late 1990s, it depends on what aspects you look at. For example, if you decide not to follow all trends (as little children do), then youur life may be thge same. There is a big difference between one's personal life in a year and collective world events. For example, I can see 1999 as a good year and someone else as a bad one. I think it depends on who's observing and what he's observed. And not to forget - sometimes we miss (or ignore) some trends.

I meant that pop music as a genre is a bit heavier than in the late 90s. And the videos are a bit 'cold' now, where are the saccarin themes from the late 90's videos that made you smile? I think 9/11 and Bush ruined not only the US, but the whole world. But, enough politics!

And I am really worried about cars - they are becoming too large (gasoline-hungry) and too aggressive in design. I miss the oval and round car shapes in the mid-to-late 90s. I think I'll just have to wait until oval cars become popular again.

But I think that the world may appear the same as in mid to late 1990s, it depends on what aspects you look at. For example, if you decide not to follow all trends (as little children do), then youur life may be thge same. There is a big difference between one's personal life in a year and collective world events. For example, I can see 1999 as a good year and someone else as a bad one. I think it depends on who's observing and what he's observed. And not to forget - sometimes we miss (or ignore) some trends.
I am a big car fan John and your saying how cars look too aggreesive well everybody complained about bland styling in the 90's with cars. I;m not saying that 90's cars looked bad or anything but I saw people complain how cars looked in the 90's too. The mid to late 90's designs which you are reffering too everybody said they looked the same. As for cars getting bigger I have a Mazda 6 myself and its not that big. I do not like something like the 03-07 Caddy CTS thats a little too aggressive to me though.

As for pop music being heavier thats the first I've heard for this decade of pop music being called too heavy in this decade. I mean todays music sounds more fluffier than in 1997-1998 with the exception of 1999 of course but there are exceptions of course.

What do you mean saccrain themes mean by themes of late 90's video's that made you smile?

And there will definitely be a 2000s backlash so some smart marketers will definitely be able to profit off that, with regards to whatever new fashions, new tv programs (there will probably be an anti-reality tv backlash and a return to more sitcom oriented stuff), and new music genres emerge.


I hope so!

By the looks of things, this is what happened in the 50s. Everything was trying to look all space-age and ultra-modern in the 50s, yet by the 60s and 70s everything was more ethnic with the hippy look.

I am a big car fan John and your saying how cars look too aggreesive well everybody complained about bland styling in the 90's with cars. I;m not saying that 90's cars looked bad or anything but I saw people complain how cars looked in the 90's too. The mid to late 90's designs which you are reffering too everybody said they looked the same. As for cars getting bigger I have a Mazda 6 myself and its not that big. I do not like something like the 03-07 Caddy CTS thats a little too aggressive to me though.

As for pop music being heavier thats the first I've heard for this decade of pop music being called too heavy in this decade. I mean todays music sounds more fluffier than in 1997-1998 with the exception of 1999 of course but there are exceptions of course.

What do you mean saccrain themes mean by themes of late 90's video's that made you smile?

Well, compare Britney Spears videos from 1999 - so sunny with her post 2001 - a bit bitchy, darker as a whole.
As for the cars, maybe you mean US cars? Because in Europe it was the opposite - people loved Ford Escort, Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus, Mazda 121 and Toyota Corolla from the mid to late 1990's.

Well, compare Britney Spears videos from 1999 - so sunny with her post 2001 - a bit bitchy, darker as a whole.
As for the cars, maybe you mean US cars? Because in Europe it was the opposite - people loved Ford Escort, Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus, Mazda 121 and Toyota Corolla from the mid to late 1990's.
Yeah I;m talking about US cars. We had the Ford Escort and Toyota Corolla in the mid to late 90's in the Us but I;m not sure if Ford and Toyota repectively sold the same mid to late 90's Escorts and Corolla's that we got in the US back then as they did in Europe. I don;t even know what the Mazda 121 is but back then Mazda had the 626 as their mid-size car offering(90's and early 00's) and the "Protege" was their compact car offering in the US.

I think 1999 was when cars began to get that "supermodern" look, with the edges really rounded. Another way to tell a fairly new car is when the trunk compartment is halfway tucked underneath the backseat.

Out of the 1991-1998 "early rounded" cars, the Honda Accords actually still look quite newish and in good condition (they're very reliable and I've ridden in some too). The mid '00s Accords are extremely rounded too.

I think 1999 was when cars began to get that "supermodern" look, with the edges really rounded. Another way to tell a fairly new car is when the trunk compartment is halfway tucked underneath the backseat.

Out of the 1991-1998 "early rounded" cars, the Honda Accords actually still look quite newish and in good condition (they're very reliable and I've ridden in some too). The mid '00s Accords are extremely rounded too.
I loved the look especially of the 1996-1997 Accord's back then when they were sold as new and I still do really like the look of those 1996-1997 Accord's today.