The Dean and the Generation Gap

by John Davidson
28 October 2006

There’s an interesting article over at PopMatters.com, which itself is a really nice electronic publication. It’s kind of sad that Pitchfork has been anointed as the heir to music print magazines, given that there are a few other places (the aforementioned PopMatters, Stylus , Cokemachineglow.com ) that do the same thing as Pitchfork and often better, but at least we’ve got some alternatives. Anyway, the article is an interview with Robert Christgau, the legendary music critic formerly of the Village Voice. Among his takes on the state of music today, Christgau waxes nostalgic for the good old days of popular music:

“…the first column I wrote for the Village Voice in 1969 was called “Gap Again”, which was about the generation gap I perceived as existing, not between the old and the young, but between the three different generations of youth audiences. A year later, I wrote about the “Semipopular”, or the growth of a kind of music that had all the earmarks of popular music, except it wasn’t popular with a mass audience. Only certain people liked it. These two pieces form the cornerstone of my personal theory about music and culture. When I grew up, there was a monoculture. Everybody listened to the same music on the radio. I miss monoculture. I think it’s good for people to have a shared experience.”

Christgau’s a smart guy, but he’s missing the point. While a generation gap of sorts could explain a minor aspect of fragmentation, that assessment is long outdated and was probably only slightly accurate when the Dean came up with it in 1969. The fragmentation and niche markets that have erupted in the past two decades are largely due to technological advances and were completely predictable. As I’ve noted here and here, niches are the result of a normal business cycle. When a market begins to become mature, companies are forced to differentiate to attain insulation from commoditization. And so that’s what happened: as popular music becomes more and more a commodity, your margins drop. Large corporate entities then pursue niches (which are typically underserved during an industry’s phase of mass acceptance) and other competitive strategies. The actions of the music business, with regards to corporate governance and strategies are hardly unique.

But what’s frightening is that esteemed guys like Christgau continue to proffer a senseless argument that things were once better. Things may have been better, back in the monoculture days of yore when everyone could sit down and all be forced to enjoy the lack of choice. It’s also frightening that, during this current period of immense choice and massive price competition, there are people out there wishing there was less. If there’s a generation gap, that’s the biggest one of all.

Filed under music industry business