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freakytigger.livejournal.com posting in

poptimists

[Poll #1018696]

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From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

And re populism, it's the same as ever - only music geeks are on the internet, especially on last.fm, and we all know in our hearts that normal people in the actual real world would far rather listen to Beyoncé than any of that nonsense.

From:

freakytigger.livejournal.com

There's nothing actually WRONG with being a music geek tho lex!

I think also our RHCP overlords are just as typical of "normal people" listening as Bouncy is.

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

Oh there's nothing WRONG with it, after all we are all music geeks here, though certainly a superior type to...those people. But music geeks are not representative, really.

Funny last.fm tale - got invited to join grime-based group, did so, when weekly charts emerged they read as expected until, 20 artists down, loomed the name THE SMITHS. They get sodding everywhere :(

From:

freakytigger.livejournal.com

The thing is nobody really knows what's "representative" or not or even whether "representative" has any meaning at all, given that a lot of people listen to music in the context of specific small social groups. This is one of the interesting things about music.

If there is a massive disconnect between heavy users and light users that would make music quite an unusual commodity!

From:

katstevens.livejournal.com

I think last.fm plugins on mobile phones would make an awful lot of difference.

From:

mcarratala.livejournal.com

This a Poptimistic fallacy, as I suspect you know underneath it all. Fer instance, I work mostly on women's mags which are staffed (oddly enough) mostly by women, all of whom are totally into the latest handbag, smock-skinny jean combo etc etc etc... – proper chicks' chicks – and who have absolutely no idea who Cassie is, while loving Arcade Fire, Neil Young, the Zombies and Maximo Park.

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

That is probably even more depressing than this list.

From:

freakytigger.livejournal.com

Conversely, I work in a less fashionable office and lots of the people here like nostalgic hits, school reunion stuff, classic disco, and also semi-current pop like Dido, Lily Allen, Madonna. None of which are really represented in the last.fm lists, because they're not the kind of people who wd download last.fm.

An observation I'd make, though, is that none of those people REJECT mainstream rock and commercial indie in the way that people who are into the modern bands listed here might reject the stuff Lex likes. The people in my office who liked 80s pop and the big Kelly Clarkson songs all also copied the Arcade Fire album.

Also, most Brits don't like hip-hop really. This may be not true any more for under-20s.

From:

skyecaptain.livejournal.com

This is key -- there's no equal binary between me dismissing, say, Deerhunter (whom I've listened to and don't care for) and someone coming onto a comment thread or blog I've written in and suggest that there is no inherent MERIT in even ATTEMPTING to listen to Kelly Clarkson or Ashlee Simpson (meaning, they haven't really listened to them). That's what kind of pisses me off about the supposed pop/indie split most. Invoking "the people" or "the masses" is usually just a shortcut when you can't claim to have listened very carefully yourself but still want to make sweeping generalizations about music someone else (I) like on predominantly, if not exclusively, social grounds. Not to say that these social grounds are even valid (they usually aren't), just that's kind of the conversational escape hatch for people who aren't thinking hard enough.