The State of Rock Music in the Digital Age Rock music greatly evolved with each passing decade of the 20th century, starting with Tin Pan Alley and ending with something more ambiguous upon the dot com boom of the 1990s. While rock has always encompassed a variety of subgenres, each decade lent itself to more clearly definable genres: the blues-inspired rock of Elvis Presley, the psychedelic sounds of The Beatles, the hair metal of AC/DC, and the sludgy grunge of Kurt Cobain. Rock music’s first extreme transformation took place around the 1950s; a genre once geared toward adults suddenly found itself at the helm of teenagers, largely as a result of radio’s new role as the primary medium for marketing. This medium remained intact for many decades until the advent of the internet. By the mid-to-late 90s, having a computer in your home was the new normal, and this revolutionary technology changed the way we experience everything from shopping to socializing. It also changed the way we experience music. Websites like MP3.com gave audiophiles a place to seek independent music that would otherwise have no place to market itself in an industry dominated by corporate labels, and P2P file sharing networks such as Napster and BitTorrent gave rise to a downloading frenzy. Everyone had free rein to download whatever song they could imagine without having to drive to the record store. The door was open for new music revelations that didn’t cost the listener any money to discover. It wasn’t until the early aughts that rock music as we know it splintered off into something less tangible. With our newfound capacity to discover massive quantities of music, coupled with the advancement of social networks like Myspace (which gave musicians a place to market their music to the masses for free), obscure subgenres multiplied at a rate never before seen. Music became more accessible as CDs were replaced by downloads and Walkmans were ousted by MP3 players. MTV2 began showcasing music videos by bands who couldn’t get their foot in the door at a major label, and music services like iTunes provided users with the ability to purchase songs for 99 cents. With our newfound capacity to discover and market music on the internet, rock music was no longer definable, not only in terms of sound, but stylistically as well. Suddenly fans were trading in their tattered jeans for cool cufflinks, and bands like Franz Ferdinand and The Killers brought forth a new wave of well-dressed Morrissey lookalikes, while harder acts such as Slipknot and Mudvayne made a once controversial Judas Priest look tame by comparison. A hipster revival divided rock even further, combining previously well-established genres into something fresh and experimental. Depending on which camp you were in, the face of rock could have been defined by Radiohead’s computerized synths, the sexual antics of indie darling Peaches, or mainstream’s less palatable Pearl Jam-inspired offerings of Nickelback.
Fast forward to more recent years, and music enthusiasts have become less reliant on downloads upon the surge digital streaming services. While the music industry was already facing challenges in terms of album sales, Spotify completely eradicated the LP as the industry’s money-maker. Now musicians depend on touring as their means of livelihood, spending less on the creation of albums in favor of selling a hot single or increasing streams of a more concentrated EP release. The digital age has generated both positive and negative outcomes, providing musicians with the ability to market their music to a niche audience without the need for unattainable top-grossing labels to act as the middle man, while simultaneously making it more difficult to make a solid living off of their musical creations. While many musicians of yesteryear will proclaim that “rock is dead,� statistics say otherwise. Rock music surprisingly remains the biggest-selling genre to this day, in spite of its highly transformative evolution and declining album sales. In 2014, the rock genre sold 85.25 million units, garnering more sales than pop and R&B combined.1 Rock music as we once knew it may have dramatically changed, but it is still very much alive and well.
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