New Age of Rock – More Bands Producing Their Music Independent of Labels

Over the past 15 years music, especially rock and roll, has changed. Bands are no longer signing long term deals with record labels. People aren't buying physical copies of albums anymore, they are downloading them. The entire process of making music and purchasing it is different and has lead to, in my opinion, a Rock and Roll Renaissance.

For the past 50 years, bands have been at the mercy of record weasels and labels telling them what works, what doesn't, and what they need to do to be successful. And the bands had to listen to get funding. But, now, with the advancement of technology and social media, bands can do whatever they want and get funding independent of any label which in turn leads to bands being creative and putting out quality music that they enjoy making, which is awesome for us.

Several years ago, bands like Motorhead, Jackyl, Radiohead, Puscifer and Nine Inch Nails broke the traditional mold of putting out albums on a label and started producing music and releasing it on their own.

Now, bands like Signum AD, Digital Summer, SOiL, and many others are, instead of seeking out a label help and funding, starting Kickstarter campaigns to fund their tours, new albums, and other projects they want to do.

"This Kickstarter project is allowing us to offer unique opportunities to our fans, who are the people who allow us to do what we do. It also allows us as a band to keep control over every aspect of the forthcoming SOiL album," said Ryan McCombs, frontman for SOiL in a recent interview.

Basically, we the fans hook the band up with a few bucks and they hook us up with quality, untainted rock. It's pretty simple, pretty straight forward, and pretty f**king awesome. We don't have some record guy sitting in a room creating the next Nickelback anymore, we have bands working their asses off to put out quality music that they feel is good. Which is the way music is suppose to be.

This change has slowly but surely changed modern rock and has so far made it better. Maybe in the next 10 years we'll see more great bands like Digital Summer, Signum AD, and the Charm City Devils emerge and less of the bands we've been force fed the past 10 years like Nickelback and Saving Abel.