Football (soccer) is killing the music industry

Nonsense.

what about the music they play at football matches, did you take that into account? and the background music on Football Focus?

I think it's absolute pish.

why do you say football is more mindless than music?

What's really killing the music industry is home taping of football matches!

This doesn't relate to the lives of myself or, as far as I can think of, anyone I know. I'd think that if there was anything true in that post it'd be a lucky guess on the part of the writer, rather than anything based on experience or knowledge

This appears made up and ridiculous.

I think I went to more football matches than gigs last year maybe, and I bought a season ticket this year rather than go to a festival, but I'm generally much more sick of being exhorted to listen to music 24 hours a fucking day anyway.

Other things killing the music industry:

Facebook Scrabble
Big Brother
Restaurants
Staying in and having sex
Bees

Also the premise it starts out from:

20 years ago (apparently) people used to go to football matches on a Saturday afternoon and go to gigs 3 times a week.

Is wrong.

For real, lovely music being crushed under the jackboots of the Loud Shouting Men, with their scrabble and their bees and their two holding midfielders

If only some massive media conglomerates could throw their weight behind music and spend lots of time convincing that it is great and we should listen to it all the time

I think the key line is "Remember when music used to be a matter of life and death?" - dude who wrote this is OLD and OUT OF TOUCH, possibly, and railing against his own ailing passion for music by hacking at football. I do think football in the UK is vastly over-exposed, over-moneyed, etc, but I'm not sure it alone is "killing" music.

theres something of a point about the conquering of pubs by sky sports maybe

Ridiculous. Football SAVED the music industry.

http://i9.tinypic.com/4mrgol0.jpg

yes to that one.

xpost NOT THAT ONE!

There was an interview, back in the day (1965?) where someone asked the Beatles what football team they supported, and they all said they weren't interested in football at all.

I can't even imagine thesedays any band saying that.

"Pull Shapes" by the Pipettes is actually a heavily veiled Sepp Blatter diss track

Hahaha, I know for a fact that Embrace have next to no interest in football, and they ended up doing the World Cup song. Total jokes.

dynamic range compression in the midfield area makes football unwatchable these days

To be fair, Embrace clearly have no interest in music either

"stop bunching, lads"

xpost boom tish

actually the "brits school" is a "good" "candidate" for "something" that's "killing" british "music"

I already did the "football is compressed" thing in an SLSK column after the World Cup last year.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/soulseeking/cars-football.htm

Hahaha, I know for a fact that Embrace have next to no interest in football, and they ended up doing the World Cup song

same is true of New Order; the difference is, theirs was good.

I think that there is a lot of overlap between music fans and football fans. I don't think music is killing football or vice versa. Most of the time the two exist in happy symbiosis. I think that indie bands and their fans are more likely to be fans of non league or lower division football though and fans of pop and R n b are more likely to support a Premiership club. It's all about the sheen of both the music and the football and there are parallels in the popularity aspect, ppl who watch top flight clubs in 60,000 seater stadia eating prawn sandwiches and buying platinum selling artistes vs ppl watching Conference teams in 1,000 capacity stadia eating meat pies and listening to music played in toilet venues and given away for free via myspace.

Hmmm.

Watching a band I really love and have always wanted to see > going to a stadium and watching my team play > watching a big game in the pub >>> watching x indie band play the Luminaire because its a night out and on the offchance they might be good >>>>>> watching Bolton v Middlesbrough on Sky on a Wednesday evening just because it's on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> having my pub evening ruined by a shite band.

Or even a good band. I don't want bands in pubs full stop really.

I don't think this assertion stands up. I go to as many gigs nowadays as I ever used to, and there's no way I would ever not go to a gig because there was a football match on.

...much as I love football

isn't the premise of this that venues in outer places are more likely to be sky/football than put gigs on, rather than whether individuals would choose football over gigs? (yes, theres an implied causality, but its not quite the same thing)

i mean, i dunno how true that is, whether there are fewer gigs in whipps cross, west ham and tooting than 10, 20, 30 years ago, and how much is due to pubs being 'football' pubs now

there's been a huge resurgence in live music in suburban and perhaps even rural pubs in the last ten years, from what i've seen.

arguable factor, football (pre-gentrification) wouldn't have been a lowest-common-denominator default background option for pubs in the way it is today, 80s etc - 'football pubs', but now football shown in pubs that are not 'football pubs'

i think it's been in line with the increase in mini-festivals (xp)

i mean, i dunno how true that is, whether there are fewer gigs in whipps cross, west ham and tooting than 10, 20, 30 years ago, and how much is due to pubs being 'football' pubs now

Yeah I don't think this argument really holds up - there's certainly more live music in pubs than there was 10 years ago. Possibly because both guitars and live music are more popular than they were 10 years ago. But in any case:

- the impact that pub gigs (as opposed to designated music venues) has upon "the music industry" is difficult to gaugue

- average gig attendance has risen in recent years, average attendance at football matches has fallen, especially outside the top flight

- televised football packs punters in and antagonises local residents a lot less than a loud band playing on a weeknight

- pubs therefore prefer to put bands on at the weekend and there's no football on a Friday or Saturday night

- in a lot of town centres just getting a DJ is a cheaper and more reliable option so a load of pubs just plump for that

All London venues in and beyond zone 3 have either shut down or been turned into Sky Sports pubs. The same can be said for all other towns in the country.

This is also not true. Laughably so if by "London venue" you mean "pub with live music" of which there are at least three on Lewisham High Street and Lee High Road alone.

i think what the guy *might* be trying to get at, is the idea of zone3+ venues as being places where 'name' bands might play, as opposed to pubs with local bands (reading about punk there seemed to be bands that would do full tours and venues in places like west ham and eltham would crop up repeatedly...but thats 30 years ago, and i think thats just changing demographics and other factors over a longer timeframe and not down to football)

2nd argument is not so much sky or football but the massive gentrification of a) a large number of pubs, b) large swathes of the city

I think that indie bands and their fans are more likely to be fans of non league or lower division football though and fans of pop and R n b are more likely to support a Premiership club.

So who do fans of jazz, classical, folk, noise, dance etc support?

Last Friday I had a straight choice between going to watch skronk in Nunhead or noise in Deptford, funnily enough.

There's an argument that both bands and promoters might not really see the point of playing in eg Eltham when you could play somewhere where you're more likely to get a decent audience and actually build up a fanbase ie somewhere with lots of students. Equally this is largely irrelevant to football.

isn't the premise of this that venues in outer places are more likely to be sky/football than put gigs on, rather than whether individuals would choose football over gigs? (yes, theres an implied causality, but its not quite the same thing)

Filey Camp, the first bullet of the original question suggests that people are going to fewer and fewer gigs and watching more and more football - that's what I was responding to.

i think people are watching more football and going to more gigs too

of which there are at least three on Lewisham High Street and Lee High Road alone

Makes you proud, doesn't it?

Personally I hope NME type indie music fans get into tennis.

Just to annoy the Lex?

I think that indie bands and their fans are more likely to be fans of non league or lower division football though and fans of pop and R n b are more likely to support a Premiership club. It's all about the sheen of both the music and the football and there are parallels in the popularity aspect, ppl who watch top flight clubs in 60,000 seater stadia eating prawn sandwiches and buying platinum selling artistes vs ppl watching Conference teams in 1,000 capacity stadia eating meat pies and listening to music played in toilet venues and given away for free via myspace.

I don't think there's any correlation whatsoever: you get a broad cross section of music tastes at both levels. Adults might choose to listen to obscure indie music and trawl round gigs in toilet venues, but they're unlikely to choose a football team to fit in with this lifestyle. The vast majority of supporters only choose a team once, in childhood, either based on locality or family or success, and then stick with that team forever. So unless you were a hardcore indie fan when you were five years old your choice of football club is unlikely to have any connection to the kind of music you like. I'm struggling to believe that there are tens of thousands of indie kids in their early 20s who have suddenly decided to support Stalybridge Celtic or Crawley Town.

wimbledon fans to thread.

Hermann, I think there are plenty indie fans on the ILX tennis threads already (me, Markelby, Michael Jones), as if your comment needed qualifying. Though I doubt tennis will ever become as omnipresent as football, and why the fuck am I even arguing some lame jibe at The Lex anyway.

Anyway, NB&S pretty much OTM re. takedown of Grandpont Genie's correlation of club v type of music. I think maybe the "ethos" (for want of a better word) of a club can grow on you, and you can take that on board become the kind of person that thinks more deeply about stuff and that can cross over into the way you "consume" music, but I'm not sure I believe that even as I type it. The amount of Chelsea, Rangers, Man Utd fans I know that are way WAY more into music than people who don't waste their lives glued to Sky Sports at all kind of makes this argument look like straw-grasping of the highest order from all angles.

Anyway, premise of original argument = mostly bollocks, as sensibler people than me have already pointed out.