They were once the linchpins of the music industry, but today, the ever-shifting tides of economics, coupled with technology and a lack of youth interest seems to have rendered the band an obsolete concept. Should we be worried – or is this just another natural evolution of popular culture?
Though it’s something we’ve all been conscious of, the speed of the drop-off in new bands is pretty alarming once you examine the stats.
In a recent episode of The Rest is Entertainment podcast, author and television presenter Richard Osman deployed some jaw-dropping data that underlined the plummeting appeal of bands.
“We’ve had half a decade roughly so far, the first half of the 2020s.” Osman said, “I looked at the first half of the 1980s. There were 146 weeks when bands were number one [in the UK charts]. In the first half of the 1990s, there were 141 weeks when bands were number one.
