Listen to Lonely Ones by One Lone Car. The band hails form Missouri and will be playing a string dates on the East Coast, performing at Arlenes Grocery (NYC) on November 6th. The band cites Matthew Good Band, Ryan Adams, Gin Blossoms, and Nada Surf as influences.

Rock acts today seem to find inspiration in Jonas Brothers, Hanson and Miley Cyrus rather than blues based rock bands ala Aerosmith, AC/DC, and Guns N’ Roses. To illustrate, check out Stereo Skyline who was recently a PureVolume featured artist and sees steady plays on their myspace. “I see alot of artists on myspace list modern acts from their own genre as influences. These are not people who have connected to music. If the artist has never connected to music, they won’t create music that connects with others,” says Angela Jenson at Altsounds. Most of these rock bands today simply cannot find an audience and disappear after a couple of performances on Warped Tour.

Nickelback is streaming a new song called ‘Something In Your Mouth‘. We at KOAR were betting that legendary rock producer, Mutt Lange (Def Leppard, AC/DC, Foreigner) would breath new life into Nickelback, but sadly to say, we are getting cold feet. Rock bands today just simply lost their edge except for the slim few like AC/DC and Metallica. Of course Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed still perform and live like rock stars, but we still need a crop load of new ‘game changing’ bands if rock is looking for a resurgence.

Is it still possible to sell 3 million records and 2 million iTune singles? Absolutely, and is it still achievable for a new artist to be traveling with 3 tour buses and performing at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Arena with an audience so big that cars are causing traffic on the turn pike like a football game? Sure, that’s possible as well. Anything is possible!

Music history shows us that the greatest rock artists had the similar ingredients that caused music listeners to tremble. For instance, Def Leppard (Mutt Lange) who sold millions of records and packed arenas were certainly not original. They just plagiarized and ripped off AC/DC as can be seen in the video
Let It Go.

The moral of the story is stop trying to be original. We pity those acts that find inspiration in Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers. Artists that listen to disposable music will create disposable music and the cycle must come to an end. Start referencing legendary bands as your main source of inspiration. Steal from the greatest artists and copy the riffs and slightly re-arrange the choruses and the verses as every guitarist should be able to kick out classic AC/DC riffs.

Send new music – tips@kingsofar.com

Lets welcome Matt York who hails from Ontario, Canada. For fans of John Mayer, James Taylor, and Dave Matthews. “I grew up listening to the Motown and gospel that my mom and dad would listen to around the house,” says Matt. “In high school, when all of my friends were listening to Nirvana, I was listening to Stevie and Rare Earth. In 2007, Matt was nominated for three TIMA (Toronto Independant Music Awards) including “Best Male Acoustic” and “Best Song” and his new album “Mine” has been picked up by US-based Indie label Rock Ridge Music and is slated for digital release November 4, 2008. Our favorite tracks are Let Me Go and Lucky Man.

AC/DCÂ ‘Black Ice’ – 784,269
Metallica ‘Death Magnetic’ – 52,169
Kid Rock ‘Rock N Roll Jesus’ – 40,069
Adele ’19’- 24,926
Katy Perry ‘One Of The Boys’ – 18,426
Kings of Leon ‘ Only By The Night’ – 16,032
Slipknot ‘All Hope is Gone’ – 14,546
Rise Against ‘Appeal To Reason’ – 12,927
Keane ‘Perfect Symmetry’ – 10,710
Saving Abel ‘Self Titled’ – 8,316
Journey ‘Revelation’ – 8,077
Buckcherry ‘Black Butterfly’ – 7,508
Hollywood Undead ‘Swan Songs’ – 7,221
3 Doors Down – Self Titled’ – 6,432
Secondhand Serenade ‘Twist In My Story’ – 4,776

Digital Albums (Total Sales)

Cold Play ‘Viva La Vida’ – 564,150
Metallica ‘Death Magnetic’ -132,109

It has been a tough year for the music business and all who are involved including artists, managers, lawyers and label execs and employees.

Matt McDonald, vice president of CMJ, said the attendance was high this year but the outlook for next year is less certain. Martin Mills, chairman of Beggars Group record company says, “We’re doing great this year, but it’s been an ongoing struggle for our industry. We’ve been hurting for awhile. Now the whole world is experiencing that”. The recent post How Quickly Is The Music Industry Shrinking? tells us that 2008 should be as bad as 2007.

Illegal downloading, hundreds of thousands of music releases, and market fragmentation (the loss of reaching a large, stable audience of potential customers through print, radio, and television ads) has still left the music industry along with other industries in utter chaos.

Now the world is faced with a global economic crisis. “You were paying $1.80 a gallon and suddenly it’s $3.80,” said Bhowmik. “The cover charges haven’t gone up. The concept that you’re going to be the next Nirvana is a nice idea, but most musicians almost just do it to have their art out there.” “You get offered a scoring job on television, but they want to pay very little or nothing because they think you should be grateful for the publicity,” said Shonali Bhowmik of New York-based Tigers and Monkeys.

More importantly, artists today are not as viable as artists of yesterday. Sure a couple of artists breakthrough here and there, but the magnitude of works available in the market place are over looked by the majority of consumers. Whether the music industry will return to its heyday is certainly unknown, but many people still hope so.