We’re living in 1967.  The same year "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" was a hit single and Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees.

You see 1967 was the year the mainstream and the alternative split.  The year the Beatles put out "Sgt. Pepper", with no singles, and FM underground radio got its start.

By 1968, FM stations were flourishing.  Giving airplay to acts that could never get on AM radio.  In a matter of years all the action was on FM, to the point where AM was a sideshow. With hits by acts like the Starland Vocal Band.  Which won a Grammy but was instantly forgotten.  It was all about technology, FM radios in cars, and music.

But then in the midseventies corporate rock, lowest common denominator crap, dominated the airwaves and disco came in and in 1979 the whole record business crashed, only to be rescued in 1981 by MTV, a revolution enabled by cable TV, and the mainstream and the alternative became one.

And this paradigm ruled the last two decades of the twentieth century.

And the kids making music today grew up in this era.

As did so many of the executives.

And those executives that are older became enamored of the money mainstream exposure could generate.

So now we’ve got acts and executives playing a mainstream game that no longer exists.

You see, technology broke it.  Destroyed it.  We’re living in ’67 once again.  With an ever-declining mainstream and a growing alternative market.  Although in this case, alternative exists online, which is unlimited, there are no FM playlists, just a plethora of material.

That does not mean there won’t be any codification in the future, no filter that we all pay attention to.

But right now, there is not.

You can’t make it there anymore.

In the midsixties, if you were on AM radio, EVERYBODY knew you.  Because it was our only choice.  Go to the baseball game and you knew every cut.  Same at the beach. Maybe oldsters were out of the loop, but every youngster knew every song.

Same deal during the heyday of MTV.  Who hasn’t seen Michael Jackson’s "Thriller"?

But go out in the street and read a list of today’s number one hits and in many cases people will be dumbfounded. Rihanna, Britney Spears, even Eminem.  They’ve had big "Billboard" hits recently, but a huge swath of the population has never heard them and doesn’t know them, despite the culture built around them, the newspaper articles, the TV exposure, people just don’t care, they’re living in the alternative world, which is much larger than the mainstream.

It’s just as confusing as it was in the sixties.  Why listen to FM? The signal doesn’t go as far, the playlists are open…

So we’ve got a plethora of young talent desirous of mainstream success, willing to do anything to make it, cowrite songs with established composers, use the producers du jour, tie up with corporations, and the field they’re playing in has not only shrunk, it’s continuing to shrink.

Clive Davis and Tommy Mottola built the last paradigm. Spend a lot, use TV as exposure, get everybody to know and buy.  Worked for Whitney Houston.  Worked for Mariah Carey. But once people got choice they no longer wanted what was foisted upon them by the machine, and the people pulling the strings were diminished or lost their jobs

In other words, if you’re playing the game of world domination, trying to reach everybody, it’s futile.

Your only hope is if the mainstream comes to you.

It can happen.  The rings of your success can spread outward.

But they don’t spread from the outside in.

Everybody’s door is closed.  You don’t have permission to reach them.  Only their friends do.

So stop knocking on the door.  Stop setting yourself on fire. Stop making  Top Forty music which sells ever less and doesn’t generate a touring career.

Be you.

But be a really good you.

Be different.

All the acts on FM in the sixties sounded different.  There was no reason to copy, none of these acts were a mainstream success!

Yet.

And when the audience found them, when they finally blew up, there was a whole catalog to go back and experience.

You can’t shove an automobile down a kitchen drain.

That’s what too many are trying to do today.

They tell everybody they’re going to do it.  They spend a lot of money.  But it’s impossible.

Everyone is not focused on one record, just like they’re not focused on one television show or one Website or one…

Don’t try to corral everybody at once.  Just try to corral a few.

Be smart in both marketing and music.  That’s how you make it in an alternative world.  Don’t be lowest common denominator, approach people on their level, respect them.