There are many factors that have lead to a decrease in the number of live performances.  DJs are more of a symptom than cause because DJ's are suffering too.  The music industry has consolidated and changed greatly from decades ago.  The big stars are bigger and the big concerts are bigger.  Even older bands are generating far more now than they did in their prime in terms of creating hits:  Artists that have not dominated the charts in decades like Bon Jovi and AC/DC regularly produce tours that generate in the hundreds of millions.   That leaves a lot less for the smaller venues to divide up.  Even the second tier acts have found ways to create a bigger stage and the expense of the smaller stages.  Various festivals with multiple acts are regular events  with the true big fish getting the mega tours on their own.

John T


The word-to-word volume automation strikes me as an odd one to complain about. Meticulous engineers do that because it's better than leaving it to a compressor, if you've got the time and the skill. It's the absolute opposite of lazy cheating.

+1 ... Well spoken, IMHO.  Art really has no limits for me.
 
But I see Grant's point, too ... at least for some excellent vocal vibe-performances.  A lot of my older music references (Spinners, ELO, etc.) have wide vocal dynamics and performance jewels, AKA extraordinary performances that were *miraculously* obtained ... and poorly engineered.
 
Still ... spinning up turds into platinum has always been my humble yet neurotic goal as a artist, since I can't always dramatize like the Spinners.
 
Perhaps in the end, to each his own madness.

I'm still waiting on  an answer of who "THEY" are.  It sounds like one of those nutty conspiracy theories that can only refer to the infamous "THEY".  

So i pose another set of questions that are not likey t obe answered by anything but a repeated rant of utter ****ation but here goes:

1) Is the people who you seem to refer to the star acts?  If so, looking at the top selling albums of 2011, you have :

1. Adele, "21" (5.82 million) 
2. Michael Buble, "Christmas" (2.45 million) 
3. Lady Gaga, "Born This Way" (2.1 million) 
4. Lil Wayne, "Tha Carter IV" (1.92 million) 
5. Jason Aldean, "My Kinda Party" (1.58 million)[font="arial, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; "] 





of these 5, let's take Lil Wayne and Lady gaga off the list.  Gaga is the generation's Madonna and more of e cult of personality than a great singer.  One either likes her or they don't.  Same goers for Lil Wayne.  He's not a singer and autotune is used strictly as an effect with no attempt to hide that he is using it.


Since none of these are bands, their music is all produced by studio musicians.  Are you implying that big stars who can hire any musician in the world  hires bad musicians and spends the extra money in studio fees to have engineers fix these bad anonymous musicians's work?  That sounds as silly as it sounds. Pop acts are rarely popular because of their instrumental or singing ability. You could autotune or anything else to Britney Spears and the answer to why she was popular was definitely not her singing.  which leads to


2) If you are not talking about star acts, are you implying the hobbyists are cheating and subjecting their friends and family to mnusic somehow magically created with plugins that take them from medicore to musical genius?  Because that sounds even sillier than the 1s scenario


3 is this just a matter of you being bitter because the music you prefer is not  what is currently embraced by the masses and think creating a music is dying boogey man with a strawman argument to support it makes you feel better  It's called aging and we all have to cope with it. Our music always seemed better back then just like your parents music seemed better and so on.  Deal with it.  Crotchetyness is a drag.

Don't say anything dubdisciple, cause your post count is 666!!!

I care about the music. Is it an enjoyable experience or not? Whether they can perform live or not is irrelevant. If the music is good, I'll enjoy listening to it. If they are crap live, they are crap live. So be it. I won't go watch their act. But I'll still enjoy their studio albums because it's pleasing to the ear. That's all I really care about. I'd love it if they were amazing live as well, but if they ain't, they ain't! To me, it's as simple as that really. I personally like to be honest about how I make my music if the question is asked, I'd never lie about it, but I'm sure most artists would be the same.

Quick point of order about Lady GaGa; you may or may not like what she does, but she's a great singer, and an amazing piano player. Absolutely slays it live. 

Also, Lil Wane is a not brilliant but also not bad guitarist 

In fact, looking back at that list: Buble is a shocking AutoTune abuser, and probably the closest thing here to an example of what droddey is talking about. GaGa isn't at all as far as I am aware; she certainly doesn't need it.

John , I agree that talent wise Bible is the weakest link of the bunch but even he fails as an example because his music is the bubblegum pop version of jazz. Does anyone really consider him some form of high art and Representative of the American Jazz tradition?  Buble is a mediocre singer that happens to be very marketable.  id droddey wants to use him, so be it, but he has failed to even do that even though i am helping him out. he simply wants to keep ranting with no substance behind the rant.  

I also agree about lady Gaga.   I simply pulled her from the list because, despite her talent her style of music  in recordings is not the best medium for judging such things. I'll even give another freebie.  i read an interview with the mix engineer for The Carter IV and he was upfront about doing a lot of processing on Lil Wayne's voice when he attempted to sing.  The biggest problem with using that is rap has a long history of rappers putting out a song or two of bad singing that somehow becomes a hit.  This is no knock because not a lil wayne fan on the planet would claim he is a great singer. Biz Markie scored a hit without being able to sing a lick.  in fact just a friend was huge because he sung so poorly.

matt..damn..,i kind of want to delete this post and previous one now lol

The thing about people like Lady GaGa is that I think it's easy for miserable muso types to assume they do what they do because they can't do anything else. I'm not a big fan of her records myself, but she's a very accomplished musician making exactly the music she intends to make.