As Pop Albums Outsell Rock: How Can We Save Music?

A lot of negative press has surrounded the announcement of the 2012 Brit Award nominations, and that isn’t going to stop here.

Now, I don’t want to discredit the artists that have obviously worked hard to get to where they are, you can’t blame them for the one dimensional, lack lustre, auto tuned s*it that is now 'pop'. This is what the masses are fed, day in day out by radio stations up and down the country.  We are bombarded with band after band of talent show winning, abb flashing 'singers' that simply could not perform alone on a stage with no backing, even if someone (me) had a gun to their head.

Performers such as Adele, Ed Sheeran and Jessie J were the artists with most nominations, now these are without a doubt some of the better British 'pop' Artists that are out there don’t get me wrong...but are they really the best we have to offer?

In the last 20 years we have slipped out of the Brit-pop era that bought us Oasis, Blur, Stereophonics and Supergrass to name a few, and flown through the brief mid 00's stint of Indie rock at its finest, producing Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The View among many, many others.

Indie-Rock labels are simply not getting the backing from various forms of press to allow them to back their up and coming artists, and this is beginning to tell.

In a recent table compiled by the Guardian, it showed the dismal sales that surrounds the dying genre of Indie-Rock. Out of 2011's Top 100 selling singles only three could be considered 'alternative' in Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Noah and The Whale. In the US, who are suffering a similar dip in quality music, out of the five albums that sold more than 100,000 copies (Gold Category) only two (Fleet Foxes & Bon Iver) could be classed in the Indie genre. To add to the misery, only a mere six indie artists out of the Guardians Top 40 managed to hit 100,000 (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Radiohead, Laura Marling, Noah and The Whale and PJ Harvey.)

Perhaps the most surprising statistic is that out of all of NME's covers in 2011, only four showed what you could class as new-ish successful indie acts (Friendly Fires, Bombay Bicycle Club, White Lies & The Vaccines). They thought they had one in the self-proclaimed ‘new-oasis’ in Viva Brother, but thankfully that didn’t last long as they vanished as quickly as they appeared.

We can’t keep relying on festival 'favourites' to keep headlining our summer showpieces and front our magazines. Bands like Metallica and Radiohead etc aren't going to be around forever, and it was only thanks to bands like The Stokes, Pulp and The Stone Roses this year, coming back to play UK's biggest festivals still have so much pull.

So what needs to happen? Like sport is trying so hard to implement, music needs to go back to its roots and back grass-roots bands. I have to mention a personal and Gigwise favourite, Deaf Havana.

A supremely talented band, who have been left out to dry by main stream radio stations, as 'musicians' such as The Wanted, One Direction and JLS stroll through picking up No1's without any real effort.

Something needs to change.