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On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Bob Amstadt<bob@amstadt.com> wrote: > Whenever you look at forms of music outside of the mainstream, there >will be > a huge decrease in audience size. A big part of it is that the marketing > simply doesn't exist. When you are bombarded with mainstream music on > radio, on television, in elevators, on hold on your telephone, and > everywhere else, you expect music to sound a certain way. Deviation from > the accepted sound is weird and nobody wants to listen to that. At >least, > that is basically what we are brainwashed into believing. I used to think like that, but to be honest, I don't any more. I think it's too easy to blame "the man" when in actuality people just prefer music when it's in a certain format. I know zero people who are into instrumental music who are not musicians. More people were musicians in the past because there was no such thing as a "recording." If you wanted to hear something you had to play it or have someone play it for you. Edison screwed that up. ;) Now when people are very used to getting their music in a recorded format they don't often choose instrumental music unless it's for the sole purpose of being the backdrop to a dance club. So add a general distaste for instrumental music, then add the often meandering nature of improvised instrumental music... and you have an audience of musicians and not much else. I think that's good though. Little odd niches are kind of like a memetic mutation factor that helps fuel change in all art. Dada started out as a bunch of artists talking to each other about the dissatisfaction with the rigid rules of the art world and 80 or so years later we have Raygun Magazine. How many people have David Torn CDs? How many people have David Bowie's Heathen? It's not because one is better or marketed better. I just think people like the format that David Bowie writes in more.