There's no doubt that there are music producers in this fandom who are only out for the fame, yes. They do it for fame, and they want their fame the quick and easy way. Like, today they click together a brostep tune within one afternoon and spice it up with some "Yay!" and "Louder!" samples, tomorrow they'll have 15,000 hits on YouTube, and the next day they're the next Alex S.
If this weren't the case and remarkably often so, brony musicians such as Silva Hound wouldn't tell aspiring brony musicians to
not do it only to become famous, and MandoPony wouldn't have lampshaded it with "Horse Famous".
This is probably one of the reasons why there's a constant influx of always more of the same stuff. One might be tempted to believe that it's impossible to even get noticed making anything different than the "crowd". Fortunately, then up pops a certain Sand Josieph with his "Mother Changeling" which is
nothing like any pony tune ever made before. And it becomes popular, also for this exact reason: It's original to the max. At the same time, what fame do those gain who just "follow the herd" as Freewave said? How many of them get VIP tickets for conventions to co-host a musicians' panel or perform live (as live as it gets)?
If you asked me, I'd roughly divide brony musicians into three groups. One are the big names. It's them who are played by the radio stations, it's them who are flown in to conventions at the con team's expenses, and it's them whom everypony™ wants to hear, at least those who have been around for long enough to know them. Surely, many really deserve their big names, and that comes from an old, old-school brony with an even more old-school taste in music who has been making music for longer than most bronies have been living.
The second group are the "followers" who blindly run after everything that happens to be fame and try to copy it if they think they can. They've become a mostly nameless mass. Among them are many many remixers who do remixes because that spares them from making entire songs (I actually draw a line between a remix and a cover) while building upon something that's already highly popular.
The third group are those who want to make or actually make quite original music of whatever kind but stay unnoticed; many of these hang around here. Hardly anypony knows them, and that becomes a problem when major news outlets like EqD seem to pick their choices by names (either a famous musician or the title of a famous piece of music), and if not that, then by genres they think are popular (no matter how many bronies are fed up by now over those ever-increasing masses of dubstep just because dubstep is "fame"). Now you don't have a name (yet), you don't remix popular tracks, and you make music in a genre that doesn't automatically catch everypony's attention. Out of the overwhelming quantity of brony music being released around yours, chances are slim that someone who has got a voice in this fandom discovers yours. The best that you can hope for is a lot of luck like word of mouth, a remix by a big name (can also backfire, see "Discord" and Tombstone's remix — too many bronies think Tombstone made the original) or a collab request from a big name (think EileMonty in need of an instrumental backing yet again and happening to pick you, and when the song is done, bronies might go all, "No idea who that other guy is, but hey, it's Monty, so let's listen to it.").
As already mentioned, another problem with this fandom is the lack of music outlets that actually matter. For every brony following Derpy Hooves News, there must be tens of thousands following Equestria Daily which almost has a monopoly on pony/brony news (although DHN is technically even older). The problem with this near-monopoly is that if EqD happens to be biased (even they only have so many music editors, mind you), this bias will be carried over to the majority of bronies because they don't hear any different opinions. However, you cannot really blame EqD for their popularity; many bronies don't know any alternatives, and many simply go where everypony goes.
At the same time, brony music publishing sites of any kind are in a decay. EqBeats raised hopes but came to a halt because both developers had "moved on" and no-one is willing to take over their work and continue the development. The Everfree staff simply resigned. Who would blame them? On the one hoof, tons of music are produced every week or so, but on the other hoof, it's up to a very few bronies to carry it to the masses and make the musicians known, and there are very few bronies who are willing to work at such online news outlets — and continue to do so for the next years with a massive workload while having next to no viewers because everyone just goes to YouTube and EqD.
Musicians are often not really helping either. The second group, the followers, throw all their stuff on YouTube (and often on YouTube only regardless of quality loss due to the compression) because that's where they get the most hits and wait for EqD to pick them up and raise their hit count even further. Introducing themselves to the BMD is too much an effort for too little outcome as far as fame goes. The same holds true for specialised brony music hosting sites (then again, if EqBeats was rushed by masses of brony musicians, I think chances would be even slimmer that someone would want to take over the workload to maintain and improve the site).
The first group is on YouTube, too, hence their popularity (partly at least). They're pretty much automatically picked by EqD. Many have their music on non-pony audio sites like Bandcamp as well, also because these sites allow them to charge money for their music. They don't have to go to pony-specific sites anymore. So the latter are left with lots of no-names waiting in vain for their breakthrough because those who know sites like EqBeats and Pony.fm are musicians themselves and therefore only a small fraction of the bronydom. The next big shots are scouted on YouTube, leaving brony music sites unmentioned and therefore obscure which in turn leaves the music on them obscure because nopony comes to visit and listen to music on these sites. A vicious circle.
colortwelve wrote:And beyond the simple question of popularity, shallow as it is, there's the feeling that everything's already been done before. Progressive rock? Tarby. Experimental hip-hop? Midwives. Liquid drum and bass? Addictia. Ambient? Kyoga's probably getting to the point where he's gonna be the ambient producer of the brony fandom, especially after that solo EqD post for his Slendermane song.
This has been said more than two years ago already, and brony music is still carrying on.
However, is that really true? Prog rock, for example, has so incredibly many shades that the entire genre can impossibly covered by one sole artist. I mean, how many different prog rock bands were there 40 years ago that coexisted with no major problems? Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd (actually art rock, but that's nitpicking), Van der Graaf Generator, what-have-you.
We've had quite some alternative pony rock already. Nonetheless, Freewave started ponifying the discography of the Smiths. Go figure.
If two acts play the same genre, they don't necessarily have to sound the same. There's space for more than one musician or band within one genre.
Besides, how about genres that haven't been massively popular in the 2010s? They've mostly been ignored by our musicians. Yes, some genres are simply "old" and sound "old", and when you're in your late teens or early 20s, you want to make music that's as new as possible,
and you especially don't want to make the kind of music that your parents or even grandparents made. Yes, some older genres aren't popular with younger generations, some are unknown, others are obscure enough that hardly anypony knows how to make such music in the first place; the dire lack of YouTube tutorials makes things worse. And yes, the older the genre, the smaller the chance that it can be made in a DAW with softsynths only without having to be able to play at least one musical instrument by hand (and owning it in the first place) and/or knowing one's way around music theory.
This, by the way, is why I'm still waiting in vain for more pony music for standard and especially latin dances. We don't have any latin music in this fandom, full stop, regardless of the variety of the "latin" and "ballroom dancing" super-genres. (And no, one cannot dance to epic orchestral battle themes. And yes, there's more than waltz.)
I could go on forever. We barely have any reggae (and this although turning existing songs into reggae has been a musical "fun sport" ever since the 80s), and I don't think we have any ska (no, adding horns to otherwise straight rock/punk music doesn't make it ska). There are even lots of possibilities to make pony pop music in unheard ways. I'd like to make a pony song that sounds like Stock-Aitken-Waterman just for the hell of it, backlash or not. Pop music extends beyond Katy Perry and LMFAO, y'know, and it has been around for decades (yes, even longer than the 90s).
Speaking of whom, I don't consider stuff like "Pony Rock Anthem", "Don't Mine At Night" or especially "I Am Octavia"
remixes. If the former two are remixes, then Weird Al is a remixer, too. I'd consider them covers or, better yet, parodies. "Pony Rock Anthem" was pretty much bound to happen, and Shady's version is the best one to date. "Don't Mine At Night" may seem a bit forced because there is barely any connection between MLP:FiM and Minecraft and because Shady pretty much took over an existing parody and slightly rewrote it to ponify it, but hey, Button Mash has got his own song, and he got it without having to resort to some vintage 8-bit video game music. And "I Am Octavia" is
far from a run-of-the-mill remix. It's a complete retool of an electronic dance song into a piano ballad that now sounds
nothing like David Guetta anymore.
Evdog wrote:StevenAD wrote:Resenting a popular artist for being popular is jealousy in its purest form.
^ This.
Zigackly.
Even worse that this happens in a fandom that still keeps on preaching "love and tolerance" like these words were spoken in the show itself, but that should at least teach you about tolerance and friendship.
But no, once a brony musician reaches certain steps in their career (still within the bronydom), in comes the backlash. Look at all the continuing hatred for MandoPony. What for? Popularity? Hey, he's probably among our top 10 best instrumentalists, he's a great singer, and he knows his way around production. Showing off his skills? Seriously, is
that showing off? Acoustic music? Blame it on your music preferences. I for one prefer his music to "more of the same" because that's what's popular. Collab with Michelle Creber? Well, so did AcousticBrony, so did BlackGryph0n, so did EileMonty (at least live), and not even the princesses know who'll collab with her in 2015. Relationship with one from the show staff, in particular Sibsy who has been famous for her ponysona Wild Fire for some three years already? That's love. Don't try to understand it. (Bonus points for TheFlashGuy a.k.a. Timsplosion successfully predicting it in a comic.) "Horse Famous"? That's lampshade hanging.
Do try to understand it.
Old brony, older than old school.
Gear list, Jabber ID: see my profile.
No FL Studio, no VSTs. No Skype, no YouTube.
Sounds fly through the night, I follow Vın̈yl Scratch to Pony Wonderland.