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Zelgeon
Zelgeon is a duo of twins, composers, music producers, musicians, graphic designers and artists from Venezuela.
Offering 1:1 music lessons, mixing/mastering, sound design, music transcription/arrangement services and more. DM me on Discord: Zelgeon#3343

Adrián and Andrés Sánchez @Zelgeon

Age 21, Male

Musicians & Artists

Venezuela

Joined on 10/30/16

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Rant about oversaturation of generic music and being successful as a producer

Posted by Zelgeon - August 18th, 2018


Hey guys!, it's me, Adrián from Zelgeon. I know it's been a while since last time, stuff didn't turned out as we planned but i promise you'lll be listening new stuff from us soon. Is just that too much stuff is happening at the same time and getting focused in a single thing is very hard for us. Whatever, so i was in a Discord server, where a guy started complaining about the fact most of the popular tunes in NG are either boring or made badly or they're really generic. 

 
Someone got to the following question: "why in typical electronic genres original stuff is so hard to find?" 
Well, it's because there is an oversaturation of generic music nowadays (as the title said), but why this happens? Because our brains prefer to listen something they are familiar with more than something they're not used to.
To what degree a genre or style can be considered generic? It gets to be considered generic when many people try to recreate a certain style they liked, a lot of people enjoy the same style and it gets overdone, so if there's a moment you say, "huh, i think i have heard this a bunch of times before" that's when you can call something generic.

Making generic stuff is basically going through the easy way, it's just easier to come up with ideas when you are doing something you already listened than trying to make something you haven't heard before, and it will be more accepted since most people are used to it and they'll most likely love it or perhaps complain about the fact it's nothing new haha. So, as an artist by doing generic music you basically have success guaranteed (especially if you're famous already).

You may be asking yourself, should i make generic music?

Well, if you're quite unknown and underground, it might or not be a good idea, since it could boost your popularity if done right, let's say, you make a dope and generic remix of an already generic track which uses a generic chord progression and send it to the right label, the label will probably sign your remix and you get chances of getting your music played and supported by several DJ's in mixes, sets, gigs or in a festival; you can even get played in the radio if get even more lucky!

So, why would that be a bad idea as well if what i said earlier sounds like a rock solid plan?
_Cause there's a chance that the label rejects your submission and your track just gets lost in all the other thousands of generic tracks that are uploaded everyday, and your chances of failing get higher if the track you're releasing is just an original.

Why the label would reject such an effective track? You may be wondering.
Because the label is most likely more interested in artists that bring something new to the table. Now.
Let's say someone gets to make something original and unique that isn't unbearable to listen to and it's actually dope. If they release it by themselves the track will either get a lot of support and reposts or it gets lost between the oversaturation of generic stuff out there, it's a matter of getting lucky, to be honest. If they send it to a label there's a possibility that they reject it because it's too different from the style they are looking for or maybe the label accepts the track and it's actually well received by the public (which is a very rare case, in most cases, there will be a lot of haters that will dislike it and say they want the old "insert artist name here" back). The track still gets quite a lot of listens in comparison with their earlier releases.

So, yeah, it's a quite tricky situation.

If you wanna make it into the music industry you could choose between the following 4 strategies:

1. Start out making what you already know that works and will give you lots of attention, it will also help a lot to suck dicks (doing remixes, collabing with bigger artists, taking advantage of a popular meme, etc.) then, when you're bored of making generic stuff try something different and unique which will probably get accepted by the label since you are already famous and they'll be biased by that fact. As i said before, you will get a lot of haters, but it will be a lot more accepted if you already have a solid fanbase to begin with. For example, Curbi is an artist who went through this way and got successful. He started making generic future house and then he got promoted by NCS and then he started getting tracks released in Spinnin' Records, and now he's making more weird shit and Spinnin' still releases it.

2. Get to develop an unique style at first, try to get in decently big labels who are looking for new talents and get lucky. Keep in mind that having an unique style definitely helps to stand out from the rest.
Then, when you are already popular and you got a decent fanbase, go for a more generic approach and see how that shit sells like hot bread. Basically, just become a sellout and make generic shit that will reach to a bigger audience and will get you a lot more money than making experimental stuff which you're doubtful whether it will be accepted or not.
For example, Zedd, he started out making a really cool and distinguish style of progressive house for a few years, and almost by himself he got a lot of exposure. Just like Virtual Riot. Now, Zedd's just a sellout, making generic EDM-oriented pop.

3. Go full generic, from the start till fame. Just make generic stuff, and either pray for someone to notice you or send your stuff to huge but lame promo channels and labels like NCS, Trap Nation, DubstepGutter, etc.

4. Go full experimental and make original stuff, you won't most likely persevere this way, you'll probs get a lot of comments from people saying stuff like "Why you are so unknown, fuck dude you deserve a lot more attention!!" or maybe rather hate comments like "THIS SOUNDS LIKE SHIT"; "ThIs iS uTtEr crAp"; "Just noise"; "Pro Tip: Make sure the synth and the vocals are in the SAME KEY!!!!!!". But if you really wanna make it into the music industry you can still try to get as much promo and exposure as you can by some promo channels and stuff, the problem with "unique" stuff is that will be very hard to get accepted, but if you keep it up, people might start to like it more. This might happened to you at least once: You listen to a song, you don't like it at first, then as you go listen to it a few more times you start to enjoy it which means your brain is getting familiar with the song and with that style. You can use this principle to get your style more known and get people into it, and just like that, you can build up your fanbase, slowly but you'll get there if you persevere and never give up.

5. If all fails, then give up on trying to make it in the music industry and just become a ghost producer or mixing/mastering engineer and enjoy the profit.

You have to consider that the music industry isn't much interested in only musical aspect, the way you present your music matters, the thumbnail of the youtube videos, the artwork you use for your album/song, the brand itself, all this stuff is important. So, having a good, interesting and creative brand can be a nice idea to drag the attention of the public! 

Well this probably stemmed way too far, oops xd

Okay, so to conclude this rant, if you get to stand out making original music you'll be making original music easier to find, helping to solve this problem, but, let's say you aren't a producer and you just like to listen music? What should you do in this situation?
It's not like NG does not have interesting and actually good music, i can confirm there are lots of great musicians and producers that aren't just as known, believe me, there are actually very few artists out there trying to innovate the music scene, so if you get to find one, support them as much as you can! Share it with someone who you think that might enjoy as well the style of that artist, post it in your friend's discord server and stuff like that. You know the deal :)
NOTE: if you are an artist that is already decently popular or at least you have more fans than the other artist you just found, please give them a little shoutout, any kind of support is very appreciated! (Even if you have less fans than them!)

_Thanks for reading.


Comments

Ok ok

@RoblesK robles shut the fuck up

@TestUser472 no u

fam we all make generic music. you can make the most interesting shit ever and the industry will still list your shit as 'generic' while the actual generic shit gets lifted cuz they're rich motherfuckers