“they are not a nostalgia act.”
Still charting hits or new album sales?
Prince had become a nostalgia act to the masses. when he died, the revived sales were all for Purple Rain and the songs from that album comprised half of the entries on journalists’ “top 10 songs” list.
It doesn’t mean that you’ve stopped creating, just that the majority have stopped listening.
Steve Sailer had some interesting observations about Prince in the weak of his passing.
I think one of the things critics-and to a lesser extent, the public-admired about him was his indifference to pop music tastes.
See there is an issue using the old measuring sticks. Used to be going gold meant a band MIGHT start to make some money but not necessarily "FU" money. That is why bands toured so much because there they could actually make some good cash if they got popular and sold out the big venues. Otherwise the record companies made the big bucks off of the music sales and if they snookered the song writers out of the publishing rights the band rarely made anything substantial on music sales.
Now anyone with 10K in funds (or less) can make a very professionally sounding album with a knowledgeable operator/engineer. So you can produce a good product for a very small fraction of what it cost in the era when record companies controlled the process. You can create your own publishing company and you can distribute via the internet either digitally or with physical media via Amzon etc. The problem is everyone can do it and thus your awesome CD is lost in a vast sea of every other band doing the same exact thing.
BUT, you get much more money off of any music sales you do manage. used to be if you got pennies for each unit sold you were considered very lucky. Now you can easily get over 50% of anything sold. So now you don't need to go gold to make some serious money. If you sell 10k copies of a CD that retails for 9.99 you can profit over 50% of that. And at that you won't even show up on the billboard charts likely but a two man group playing live 9 months a year on a circuit and selling 10k in album sales can make some very good money.
Now Daryl does a show called Live from Daryl's House. Which BTW used to be exactly that. He would get some guests musicians and broadcast live over the internet from his house. He started small and now it is a big endeavor that is also broadcast on MTV though now it is from his club. So yeah he is playing live all manner of material some new some old lots of it his guest's material and is making some serious scratch. So he is not a nostalgia act but more a music variety show that broadcasts via the internet.
Prince had become a nostalgia act to the masses. when he died, the revived sales were all for Purple Rain and the songs from that album comprised half of the entries on journalists’ “top 10 songs” list.
It doesn’t mean that you’ve stopped creating, just that the majority have stopped listening.
The corporate music world he says are idiots is one of the big reasons established artists fade away. The record labels always have a very short demographic horizon, tuned to a listener's high school years. It works well because people are nostalgic about that time of their life and will hold onto that music.
If you were in high school when Daryl Hall or Prince was popular, then by the time you graduate, the record companies need to be pushing the next big thing onto the freshmen. Since the record companies have a gigantic influence on what gets played on radio, older acts do get crowded out and fade away.
After being successful for about five years, a band is probably on their own to appeal to a new crowd, because the record label would have no interest in pushing an older artist on a high school crowd. To be honest, most artists can't last more than about five years anyway. And the large majority of artists stop being creative songwriters after about they hit 40-45 years old. If they are still around after 45, they do tend to become nostalgia acts.
So it is very impressive that Daryl Hall is doing this and is successful. He had to find a way to get his music out and did. Prince was successful well after his Purple Rain days too, under the radio radar. In the case of Prince, he didn't help himself with his fights with his record labels. That held him off the radio as much as anything. But if you look at videos from live shows during his "where are they now" years, he still had a large audience.