|
|
by Scott Stambaugh When I was in my early teens, I discovered the world of popular music. It was a magical era of song and there was simply an amazing amount of variety on the local Top 40 station. You'd hear the Rolling Stones back to back with Barbara Streisand, Marvin Gaye followed by Dolly Parton and Led Zeppelin. There was a common element though, it seemed all the songs were well-written melodies and that anybody who wrote a song, if it was good enough, could crack the great Hit Parade. So many bands were one-hit-wonders and I, like many others was enraptured by the culture of the music charts, following them every week to see if my favorite songs would rise to the top. Along with my local radio station, which was WSBA, in York Pennsylvania, I soon graduated to the national charts which were in our local newspaper and pinned up at all the cool record stores. One was Billboard and the other was Cashbox. I always gave more legitimacy to Cashbox at the time because it was more based on sales and I never could understand how Al Green's Let's Stay Together didn't make it to the top of Billboard. :) My childhood of music and my love for these charts came into play when I became Operations Manager for what was then a small music site called Independent Artists Company which in a short 2 years time is no longer small at all, and is in fact now known by many artists and listeners alike as The Indie Capital of the World. From day one of this site for indie artists, which is now shortened to IACmusic.com, we conceptualized a chart that could capture some of the same magic I remembered experiencing with the Cashbox and Billboard charts in my youth. Our creation was called the KIAC Big 50, which simulated the radio station we are in the process of purchasing specifically to showcase the great indie talent we've found on the internet. Back at the very end of the 20th century, the largest group of artists in the history of mankind, via an invention called the mp3 file, gathered at online music sites like mp3.com to bring their mostly home recorded music into the light of day. The internet gave them their first chance to actually have some kind of musical presence in what had become the corporate music business, run by suits and not music people. Billboard magazine had become some kind of promo trade paper that catered to business people who liked to talk about sales figures and not good songs. Their idea of independent music is so detached from the actual indie scene that it's completely oblivious to the whole culture. Starting in 2004, my colleages and I at Independent Artists Company began a truly unprecedented talent search of all the indie portals on the web (which continues to this day), and brought together from this infinite sea of mp3s a contingent of artists so talented that the top artists and songwriters in this group are comparable to the very best acts of any era, and not just in the indie realm. The KIAC Big 50 became established with listeners as a chart that contained original music far more interesting than its mainstream counterparts and corporate radio monopolies, who play it safe, relying on stylish clone acts with not a lot of decent songwriting to be found, hoping to be able stay in business using trends, and no taste. Enter IACmusic.com and the KIAC Big 50. The music's such a ridiculously high quality...I was listening to the top 50 and thinkin' how it just totally blows away anything the majors have to offer.. - Steve Ison It surely wasn't coincidence but rather one of those remarkable twists of fate when a reemergence of the institution known as Cashbox Magazine went looking for great indie music, only to find that most of the best songs and artists they subsequently discovered came from the pages of IACmusic.com. It was a match made in the galaxies, because the superb artists of IAC deserved new, universal worlds to conquer, and the smugness and irrelevance of Billboard magazine needed to be challenged by the kind of cutting edge songs that are the trademark of IACmusic - and by who better than the publication that was their natural rival for years! The best new music on earth finds its way to Cashbox, while the old guard, obsolete to its non-musical core languishes on Billboard, what a concept, it's so fitting. The indie revolution took a big step today. Cashbox magazine announces the addition of 6 lists of special indie picks, 18 indie charts, and the KIAC Big 50 and KIAC Platinum Hits - All indie content provided by IACmusic.com. Artists: If you want to start a free page at IACmusic, which will make you eligible for some of the Cashbox Indie Charts, click here. Listeners/Fans: If you want to start a page where you can blog and create your own stations full of great indie music, click here. To see our new Cashbox / IAC Music Indie Charts click here |
|