Where have all the bands gone?

A few weeks ago Richard Osman on the Rest Is Entertainment podcast pointed out that only 3 bands had had #1s this decade. This was in contrast to the end of the previous century when bands dominated the charts.

Why is this? Have all bands disappeared? (Spoiler alert: no.). Why have pop bands fallen off a cliff? On this episode we investigate this new phenomenon and uncover some fascinating theories.

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Chapters

• 0:20 Introduction
• 1:28 The Medium Sized Dive
• 2:42 The generic reasons it's always been easier to be an individual artist
• 6:41 Why are bands struggling now
• 15:11 Conclusions

Transcript

Introduction

"In the first half of the 1980s, there were 146 weeks when bands were number one. The first half of the '90s, there were 141 weeks. In the first five years of this decade, three weeks. We have had three number one weeks, one of which was The Beatles, when they had the lovely comeback single, and one of which was Little Mix. And that's the only official band. You've had a single week at number one in this entire decade."

Not my words but those of Richard Osman, speaking on his the rest is entertainment podcast. We need and ask is this true, because it self evidently is. But why is it happened? Why are there so few bands in pop music now? And just as importantly, does it matter? It's time for a medium sized dive.

The Medium-Sided Dive

I’m going to hand over to the Needle Drop podcast for a few words now.

“These days it's just easier to do more with fewer people. Not only that, it's a matter of economics, too, especially in a music industry where primarily artists are making money off of their music through streaming, which notoriously does not pay very well at all. With many even mid-tier artists, if they're lucky making $10,000 a year in royalties off their streams. That $10,000 tends to not go quite as far when you have to split it between five people. In that sense, by forcing yourself into a band as opposed to more of a solo career or a duo, you could potentially be doing a disservice monetarily to yourself and your career.”

He goes on to make some other points some of which we will cover later in this podcast. But is it all just about money? Let's have an entirely reasonable debate.

The Entirely Reasonable Debate

The Generic Reasons Why Bands Are Struggling

So the first thing to say is that bands aren't disappearing. Let's clarify that statement. They clearly are disappearing from the mainstream pop landscape, as we heard at the top of the dial. But they've never gone away in genres such as metal. And they are positively thriving in the Far East where K Pop is a massive phenomenon. And, in a genre which I prefer, there is a huge slew of bands who could broadly be described as indie or alternative.

So there's that. What I thought we would do is separate out the generic reasons which have always been with us but which may have been exacerbated in recent times as to why it's easier to be an individual artist than in a band and start there.

As an individual artist, a singer-songwriter if you like, flexibility and mobility are much much easier. Speaking as someone who has done an individual podcast for the last seven years, and make it 2 with this one, I can guarantee I would never have got to 165 episodes if I decided to invest in a partnership with someone else.

But enough about little old me. What is the power of one?

An individual can easily put their guitar on the bus or train. They can play small venues or big venues. They don't have to coordinate four people’s diaries. They can practise whenever and wherever they want to - in the kitchen, in the garden, in the car. If times get really tough, they can busk.

If it's just you you don't have to invest in a lot of expensive gear, you have to worry less about insurance at a venue. Secure parking is much less of a problem – how many bands have you heard about where all their gear’s been stolen? You don't have to invest in expensive practice rooms, or fight other bands for available practice space to use them. You can worry less about sound levels, soundchecks, venues that don't allow loud bands. You can fit in at the bottom of a bill as a support act. That's more of a problem if you've got a nine piece or even a four-piece experimental band. You don't have to worry about the fragile egos of the other band members, about different work commitments, about other members’ different musical inclinations, or finding a decent drummer.

Now, it's true that being in a band has always been a great way to bond. “We’re fanatical about bands and being in a band,” says Wolf Alice’s Joff Oddie. “A good band creates a community. They have an ecosystem that, as a fan, you feel like you want to be part of. Despite all that’s been said about individualism, there is still a hunger for that collective feeling.” You only have to look at the gleeful faces of The Beatles having a pillow fight in a hotel room to know that’s true. But the converse is also true. There's no quicker way to lose friends than to be in a band with other people - other than perhaps going on a round-the-world gap year with someone.

So much for the problems that have always been there of being in a band versus being a solo artist. What’s changed such that the chart is now dominated by solo artists and collaborations?

The Reasons Bands Are Struggling Right Now

The biggest issue is technology. Pretty well anyone can now download Ableton software and write a song. You don't even have to play an instrument or be able to sing in tune. Marketing folk would call it barriers to entry which are now ludicrously low. This on the whole is a good thing, by the way. It's the era of citizen content. Anyone can start a podcast. Anyone can start a YouTube channel. And anyone can write a song if it's any good and can get gigs out of it.

Not only that, it’s so much easier to collaborate anyway now. 'Here's my track. Here's my beat. Here's my chord progression. Here are my lyrics. What could you add to them in the DAW? Send it back to me over email.' The precursor of this was the band The Postal Service: two individuals who never met in person, but sent each other music through, well, the US postal service.

Then there’s the talent shows such as The X Factor. These became a reliable incubator of girl groups and boybands, from Girls Aloud to One Direction. That route to the loot has also largely disappeared. Now you might say - no bad thing. It was all artificial and contrived in the first place. But you could also say: at least they were bands.

Many people believe that major artists avoid bands because individual artists are cheaper and easier to handle. Record executives always deny that this is the case. But to give an extreme example, if you worked for a record company who would be easier to handle - Oasis or Taylor Swift? 

On a related topic, it is relatively speaking more straightforward to promote and market an individual if they have sufficient charisma and personality. With the odd exception of bands like The Beatles and the Stones, it's difficult to promote an entire group. This is why the Far East model emerged as it did. Viewers are encouraged to spend months, maybe years, getting to know the individual members of a band. This gives more opportunity and flexibility further down the track. But that model doesn't exist by and large in the West. The Spice Girls and One Direction being two obvious exceptions to that rule of thumb. 

Talking of which, the recent furore over Oasis has highlighted another shift in the landscape. Will Liam and Noel get to the end of their worldwide tour intact, we ask ourselves, expecting the answer yes, because of the mammoth amount of money involved. But these intra-group conflicts are almost unheard of these days - although as we can see there's still an appetite for them. Where they do exist they tend to be conflict between individual artists. Who's Beyoncé got a beef with now? Which rapper has released a diss track this week?

Then there's the whole world of social media. Typically this champions the individual, not the group. Platforms such as TikTok Instagram and Twitter are built for individual self-expression. Even the portrait orientation of a smartphone screen gives an advantage to single voices and faces while making group celebrity more problematic. As we've discussed on previous episodes, this has been a boon for individual female artists. A singer such as Phoebe Bridgers exploits Instagram and Twitter in a relatable and fun way.

Then there’s production matters. When I was in a band - not a very good one - at university we saved up our money, and we found a local studio with a producer who really couldn't be bothered. Now you don't have to worry about any of that. In the same way that no one under 40 goes to travel agents to book their flights if you're an individual artist you can record, and market the whole thing yourself. Even as a band you might be able to do some of those things, but it's proportionately harder. 

One factor that gets overlooked is that more bands than ever before now meet up at college or university, for the simple reason that far more people go to college and university than ever before. Tertiary education organisations charge relatively speaking more than they ever did, grants are thinner on the ground and in the countries that produces most mainstream pop, UK the US Australia Ireland Canada and New Zealand, students leave university typically with a large amount of debt. It's far harder justifying the investment required to become good as a band.  

Then there is the virtuous circle and the visibility factor. I rather like cricket and was disturbed watching a recent episode of Pointless to discover that the highest recognition percentage of any English cricketer was now 18%. This is because cricket has become largely invisible to a big percentage of the UK population since it's not on free to air. By analogy if young people don't see bands they don't want to be in a band. If they don't see cricketers they don't want to play cricket. Within two years of The Beatles starting off in 1962 the world couldn't move for bands. Now not so much.

Finally, but not least, we also need to talk about COVID which had two very specific effects on the health of groups.

The first was that venues struggled during Covid and many have closed since. It's been estimated that as much as 30 or 40% of live venues in the major cities in the West have closed down pre vs post the epidemic. With fewer venues to play it's more problematic for bands to find slots when starting off.

Secondly quite simply it was harder to form groups during the COVID era for obvious reasons. I think even now we are only beginning to scratch the surface of some of the long-term implications of the isolation which we all experienced during COVID. But for young people in particular it appears to have had a long-standing effect on their development Now there are worse issues than whether there are more or fewer bands than before but it's certainly a consequence of the Covid era.

Finally finally, back to our original question, does any of this matter? Also back to the Needle Drop channel who makes one last very telling point. “I feel like a bigger and more important question in all of this is, is the music that we're hearing still good, regardless of whether or not it's coming from a band or a single person? Rarely is that single person working entirely alone because behind them there is often a team of writers and producers and various collaborators. I was very much alive and conscious during many of these huge musical eras for bands. And while some of my favourite groups did come out of those eras, some of the worst music I've ever heard in my life is coming from these bands that we miss so much, too.”

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