There is absolutely no doubt that I have been around for awhile.  For those who know me and following me they know this to be true.  

What this means is I have seen a lot stuff and seen the same stuff come and go.  This includes Music and millions of musicians who are part of bands.

I focus mainly with Rock music since it has much more of a Street Feel than what people say Street Music is which brings me to what my thought was for today..How do the different types of music and the musicians who play the music get categorized?  How do today’s bands become popular and why are we told they are popular when absolutely nobody has never heard of them?  

OK, let’s start my rant off with the last question…Who the ‘f&$k’ is it that feels one rock band is more appealing to the rock music listening world than another band that really is?

As you probably know, or should know, I am an senior exec at a digital marketing agency.  We know how things in the marketing world work…or don’t.  I know how things are manipulated to makes things appear when they don’t appear like they should.  No, this is not an admission to us doing these things..on the contrary.  We expose those who do black hat marketing.

Like I am doing here, we find out how things are manipulated to cover a flaw a product or service has so as to know how to take a more straight forward..honest..approach to marketing something.  In other words, we work to help a client build trust with their consumers, not create a lie they have to maintain forever.

But I digress.  Over the past ten years…or since the end of the flood of grunge type rock bands hit the rock music scene…., there has been a fluctuation of bands and musicians who for some seemingly unknown reason are declared a ‘Hit’.  There are number of these bands..most of them had one hit or one good album and they were gone.

However, in the recent years there have been bands showing up at places like the Grammy’s and other music awards shows that I…nor anyone else I can find…has NEVER heard of.  Naturally they are introduced as the ‘Next Hit Success’ or ‘The People’s Choice!’…which leads me to the point of my question or questions.

Who is it that feels these bands or musicians are really good?  Who is it that got this band on global TV?  Did they REALLY sell a million CD’s?  Can that even be proven?  

It is questions like this that are being asked by not just me, but asked by just about everyone I run into when I go out onto the street..into the real world…where the users or listeners of this music reside.

Again, I’m not going to single out a band or musician to use as an example…there just are too many of them who fall into the ‘WTF Category’.

There is a process everyone I have talked to goes through when they encounter one of these bands or musicians.  

I’ll either be watching TV…yes, I will watch TV from time to time…or listening to popular traditional radio and internet radio station so as to keep up on what is going on in the music industry.  Frequently a band will pop up and my first reaction is…‘never heard of them’.  For me this is not real strange to say this but when I do I will ping my ‘Plussers’ (a large group of people I know who use Google+) to ask if they have ever heard of the band or artist.

Over the past year nearly every time I ask others online or offline if they have heard of a particular band I get a resounding..never heard of them.  This just makes the questions I have asked even more profound.  If none of the thousands of people I know have never heard of a band, How Can They Be Popular?

I think you can see where I am going with this.  Questions are being asked…like…Are these bands being artificially marketed?  Have their promoters over invested into the production of the bands’ music that they are paying people to buy their music?  

These and other questions naturally pop up whenever something that is not popular…or ever heard of…all of the sudden pops up to being…”the hottest band ever”.

Knowing what I know that goes on in today’s marketing world, I can only assume that a lot of money is being spent to make something not popular to be popular.  What would happen if this money dried up and unheard of bands are not over marketed?  Well, from what my personal history tells me will happen is more bands will have to promote themselves while they continue to search for someone honest to elevate them to general popularity.  

Eventually…which might be too far off…music promotors’ falsehoods and dark methods of marketing will result in pushing consumer’s trust in their efforts even further away.  Consumers are starting to gain back control of how information is presented to them for which businesses…in this case the music business…should take note.

From here, you can fill in the blanks as you like.  I’m going back to listening to the bands I know who play music everyone I knows likes.

Thoughts?