Most of us can think back to that one gig in a tiny venue packed full of people we know; that one house party when a band showed up and put on a full set; the open mic night where that one person blew the entire room away. Ask anyone in the music industry or anyone that is simply involved with a local scene, and they will all have these precious memories, these gems in the rough, the thrill you ride off for the rest of the week, telling everyone that you’ve discovered the next ‘big thing’.
However, with these moments comes the rough. The music industry is a talent-based industry and while everyone has their own subjective tastes, sometimes the band in front of you just haven’t practiced enough, or don’t have their sound down yet.
The general radio listener is not interested in another band full of guys your uncle knew back in high school or god forbid that one band who’s entire purpose is to form a backing track for the lead guitarists 8 minute solo. Chris Moyles knows this, but what he seems to fall short of understanding is that this is what everyone loves about local unsigned artists, they can be anything without the restrictions of some old commercial radio host to tell them what good music is meant to sound like. Radio hosts should bridge the gap and prop up the best of these artists and bring them to their listeners rather than playing the same best of playlist for the 6th time in a row.
Most of these unsigned artists care so much more about local music and local communities than Chris Moyles ever will, and while sure, a lot of unsigned music is not commercially viable, everyone starts somewhere and writing it all off because you have 30 years in the industry and you know best will only lead you to playing the same old tired soulless shows until you realise the entire industry that you ‘love’ has left you behind. Radio is not what it used to be, and antiquated presenters like this who refuse to acknowledge the power of unsigned and unrecognised artists will only push it further towards its death.
A lot of unsigned bands are crap, there is no getting around that, but that’s why we love art and music. Gone are the days when you had to be scouted or to be ridiculously rich to get anywhere near a recording studio, musicians are not reliant on anyone to get their music into the world anymore, all they need is their music and a laptop.
Unfortunately it is still incredibly hard to get any success out of music in a traditional financial sense, these unsigned artists work constantly to try and support their dream and to do all of this just to see a radio presenter near the top of the industry, who should be doing everything he can to promote these brilliant artists, call them all crap because they haven’t yet had money pumped into them isn’t fair.
Chris Moyles should do better. Yes, a lot of bands in the world are not yet ready but there are so many incredible artists who haven’t been signed and to ignore this is either ignorance or plain offensive idiocy. A lot of unsigned bands are ‘crap’, but this is what the music industry has always been about.
