Do you hate Skrillex too?

Like most of the posts I write, I think this one should start with a disclaimer: I don’t know much about music. I like music, as a whole, but I don’t know much about its history and I don’t really have an ear for it. I feel like I need to say this, because I don’t want anyone to think I know what I’m talking about. Please bear in mind that I will not be talking about the quality of anyone as a musician (or whatever the name you want to use for electronic music artists, which is kind of the point of this post…), but rather about the philosophy behind music discussion.

I know it doesn’t make much sense right now, but hopefully it will in about 4 paragraphs…

Despite the title, I don’t hate Skrillex. But a lot of people seem to. I actually kinda like most of what he does, probably because he’s the artist who got me into dubstep, a genre which I now really like. Some would say I worked my way backward, from Skrillex to Kill the Noise to Porter Robinson to Vex’d to Distance to Digital Mystikz, and this is what prompted me to write this post.

A lot of people dislike Skrillex. I don’t mean that they dislike his music, they seem to hate Skrillex himself, supposedly because he’s ruining (or killing, depending on your disposition toward hyperbole) dubstep. As I said, I don’t know jack about music, so I would never venture to say that Skrillex is a great musician or that he’s doing something that had never been done before, and if you want to say that Skrillex sucks, I’ll probably agree with you if you make a good enough point.

Probably still would like his music though…

But even if he did suck, would that really ruin the entire dubstep genre? The theory, as far as I can tell, is that by making dubstep more accessible, and by being successful, he’s making it tempting for artists to walk in his footsteps (which is true), consequently multiplying the number of Skrillex-like artists (which is also true), and reducing (by comparison) the number of core-dubstep artists. Which is the part I disagree with.

I would agree with the sentiment if people told me that they used to go to this awesome club, or used to listen to this radio station, or used to attend this great festival that used to play non-stop PlacticMan, Skream and Moldy until they switched to Skrillex, Zomboy and Knife Party, but I don’t think this ever happened. Ever. Or you were going to the most bipolar club in the world.

What did happen is that “brostep”…

You know what? Let’s talk about the term “brostep”. I actually agree with subdividing genres, and I can really see the need to differentiate between Datsik and Eskmo, but did it have to be such a passive-aggressive, “stupid fratboy jocks ruined everything” self-pity label?

Anyway…

What did happen is that “brostep” started showing up in bars, in movies, video games, commercials, even in pop music. To most people, the genre was new, and they associated dubstep with that kind of artist. Which is, I have to admit, less than ideal, but you have to keep in mind that we’re talking about people who would otherwise probably never have heard of the genre. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone about 2-step.

I feel a little bit hypocritical, because I apply the same logic where a popular thing ruins another, less popular thing to other media all the time. In fact, I did it for movies and TV right here before, but I’ll try to explain why I’m always right, even when I contradict myself.

Let’s imagine 2 movies at the edge of a cliff. One is a fucking trainwreck of a waste of film with absolutely no redeeming value that will be forgotten approximately 9 seconds after watching it, but it has explosions, tits, and a shaky cam. The other is a well-written, well-directed, well-shot movie with actual actors, but no real big name attached to it. Our first movie gets a $30 million advertising budget, our second movie get $100 thousand, because the studio doesn’t want to take risks; expensive movies get expensive ad campaigns, cheap movies get cheap ad campaigns. Opening week-end, people go see our first movie in droves, because they’ve heard about it on TV and on the bus and on YouTube and down the street, and they forget about our second movie. Next week-end, movie theatres realize that the first movie sold about 100 times as many tickets as the second movie, so they replace the latter with another screen for the former. After a few weeks, The first movie made a billion dollars, the second movie didn’t even break even. First movie gets 2 sequels and its director somehow still finds work despite being a horrible hack, second movie barely gets a DVD release to recoup its losses and might enjoy a cult following a few years down.

The more things get popular, the more money they make, so the more money gets invested in them. This, in itself, shouldn’t be a problem; nobody is forcing anyone to spend more money. In theory, you can still make a low budget film and be competitive, except for one thing: shelf space. Shelf space is bought, either directly or indirectly, and the more a thing costs, the more you can justify investing in shelf space, consequently the competition also has to invest a similar amount of money, and smaller players can’t compete.

Shelf space is becoming less and less relevant for music, because an ever-increasing part of the profits are made on a virtually infinite platform. With YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes, Last.fm, etc., smaller bands can get known. Yes, it’s still hard, but you can’t directly blame Ke$ha for the limited success of smaller bands, and artists that would’ve otherwise never been inside a recording studio are selling digital CDs on Amazon.

I kind of wish I didn’t end a music post with a rant about the movie industry, but too late. Anyway, the point I’m so laboriously trying to get to is that “brostep” is not damaging to dubstep, because they are not competing. They’re coexisting and there’s enough room for both. Seriously, if Nickelback didn’t ruin rock music, Skrillex won’t ruin dubstep.