On researching the current status of the Kent independent music scene, I stumbled upon an article which I found very interesting.
The article is titled 'Club Owner declares "The Medway music scene is dead"' and goes into details on how this particular club owner feels about the current state of the music scene as a whole. This particular club owner is noted for suggesting that there is no place for the live independent music industry in Medway. His venue in Chatham called the 'Tap n Tin', stated to be a focal point for the live music scene in Medway, has reportedly been left without any customers of a weekend in recent times. Reports indicate that there are spaces of several months before live bands would play at the venue or at least have any customers to attend these performances.
Due to the lack in popularity for live bands, the venue had to shut down of a weekend. I must make note that this article was published in mid-2011, so the scene may have changed for better or worse since then. However, I feel that this article is a good indication of how the industry has fallen in the past and might still be struggling to this day.
Reasons for my beliefs that independent live bands are still facing the same problems today as would have been when this article was published are as follows and are also mentioned by the club owner in the article:
Part of the article states:
'The Tap has fallen victim to the current "X Factor and Primark" culture, which seems to have a stranglehold on The Towns".
This is still a point that is very prominent and would cause problems for independent live bands today. Media such as Television shows like X Factor and The Voice are dominating the music scene across Britain. The contestants are usually picked on the way they might look and it is questionable whether there is actually any talent given to audiences by these people. The contestants who feature on this show are immediately given media coverage, even sometimes when they are not close to winning the contest and are instantly made famous by this coverage. This is in complete contrast to independent bands who put in the work in the hope to become recognized over a long period of time (if at all). This is proof that consumers of music would only know of and and are more likely to pay attention to who the media want them to see rather than those who might actually posses something that the instant-fame individuals may not.
Another reason which can be attributed to this is the charts. Independent bands are usually not given much of a chance to hit the charts due the the over crowded and controlled nature of how the charts work. Whenever a contestant wins the X Factor, their 'winning song' is immediately placed towards the top of the charts. The charts are based off of the popularity of a certain artist or a specific song from those artists. This means that whenever a certain artist might die or just bring out some new material, their original material is placed at the top of the charts due to a high number of people downloading their music at that time. Similarly, at certain points in the year, especially Christmas, artist like Mariah Carey and even Slade overtake the charts due to their popular Christmas song, again taking the chance away from new independent artists to reach the charts during this time.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for the lack in popularity of live independent bands is the fact that consumers can now just download everything from websites, This can mean that an independent band's CD release might not sell too well and having their music put on a label so they can be downloaded from music sites can be more difficult. Thus people would be less likely to watch live bands when they can just download the music and listen to it elsewhere.
This proves that the biggest problem for live independent bands is the lack of coverage as well as the lack of opportunities for coverage due to the media and the vast amount of alternate options given to consumers in modern society.
These would indicate that the article stated earlier still has relevance to this day.
I looked up the specific venue and they do still several events. However, looking at the star ratings for these events, they either lack popularity still or the quality of the content is dwindling due to lack of people taking interest in them.
Article Site Link:
http://www.kentlive.news/chatham-club-owner-declares-medway-music-scene/story-12862830-detail/story.html
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