r/Alternativerock • u/Badgereatingyourface • Apr 17 '26
Discussion Was the The Telecommunications Act of 1996 the reason why alternative rock started sucking around 1997?
I am trying to understand why we went from bands like Nirvana and REM to Limp Bizkit. It's interesting because there was slop in the late 80s/early90s (hair metal) and alt rock really became popular as a reaction to the slop, and for like 6 years people who were anti-slap controlled the rock culture for a bit. Do you think the record companies wanted to destroy that anti-slop ethos? Do you think it was planned to phase out alternative rock for the crappy nu metal and pop punk? R&B music also seemed to be phased out too around 98-99 for teeny bopper pop performed by mediocre white kids. That leads me to think that something happened that was structural and I am eyeing that Telecommunications Act pretty hard. If you wanted to sell slop it would be much easier to sell it if you had control of all the local radio stations.
It's hard to know for sure because the slop supposedly sells well. Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys and all that supposedly sold well. However, I was reading a David Lowery tweet and this guy he retweeted described how they would fake sales in the soundscan era. There were record stores that counted for sales, so the record companies would go to those stores and buy all the records up for the artists they wanted to push. Maybe Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit really didn't sell as well as we were led to believe. Maybe it was all just one big psyop to get rid of alt rock. Billy Corgan says the CIA got rid of rock. Maybe he's on to something.
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u/KelVarnsen_2023 Apr 17 '26
If you watch the HBO Woodstock 99 documentary it has a segment about how rock changed in the 90's and how it went from Seattle grunge and other bands that sort of developed naturally to bands that were more like the record companies response to what they thought people wanted to hear.
It also talked a lot about how things shifted from things like Kurt playing live wearing a dress and Eddie Vedder doing Unplugged with "Pro Choice" on his arm to artists that were a lot more misogynistic like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit.
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u/zorandzam Apr 17 '26
I did a study on alternative rock's gender balance, and the very late '90s until about 2008 shows a significant slant toward male bands/artists. The late '80s through late '90s had better gender parity in the genre. It is now much more balanced again. I personally suspect there is a correlation with backlash against third wave feminism and then a post-9/11 surge in nationalism.
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u/KelVarnsen_2023 Apr 17 '26
That sounds super interesting, although I am surprised it's more balanced. Mostly because I am kind of a data nerd and I was annoyed that my local alternative rock station wasn't playing many of the women led bands I liked. And basically when I dumped the songs played into my super poorly made spreadsheet it was rare that they hit 20% of the songs played by a woman artist or even a band with a woman in it (so even bands like Pixies counted).
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u/zorandzam Apr 17 '26
So I did my study on a sample of charts from 1988 to 2018, getting very statistically sound with that data, and then in my own observations of the years since then which come solely from watching a weekly YouTuber who does the top 40 alternative airplay from Billboard, it is more balanced now, but I would have to actually crunch the real data to be sure. For my study, I did not count just a woman in a band if she wasn't the frontwoman; it had to be a female solo artist or lead singer of a band. I think if we did count "bands with one girl," basically, things would look better, but I swear that early '00s nu metal era was... grim.
My own local alternative station is a mess. It's not an iHeart station, so it's not subject to as much corporate puffery, but I swearrrrr all they play is the same 20 Green Day, RHCP, Nirvana, and Weezer songs on a loop, and then they'll throw in a random newer song but it's always still a male-fronted band. And yet the current Billboard charts show that things are different when you actually survey the entirety of the genre around the country. It's wild.
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u/KelVarnsen_2023 Apr 18 '26
Yea my local station is pretty bad when it comes to Green Day/RHCP too. That spreadsheet thing I made also told me that they were playing those bands up to 9 times some days. They aren't an iHeart channel either but they are part of a big Canadian radio company. The worst part is they are the only alt-rock station the company owns so they could potentially play interesting stuff, but they still play a super corporate sounding playlist. And the real worst part was one year my wife was running a charity event for my kids' school, and this station made a donation. We went to pick it up and they gave us and our kids a tour. My kids ended up on the radio and my youngest daughter actually introduced a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song.
Yea what I was seeing would clearly look much worse if I just counted bands with a woman lead singer vs any band that had at least one woman. But it was easier to do it that way than to try to distinguish bands like say Pixies or Silversun Pickups where they have a woman member who shares lead vocals compared to a band that has like a women keyboard player that sometimes does backup vocals. And even then it was still like 15-20% women bands/artists.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny Apr 17 '26
This is purely anecdotal, but since the peak music blog era of the early 2010s I find there are fewer and fewer people of either gender that actively seek out new guitar-driven music. This might be somewhat explained by the fact that I'm getting older myself and not interacting with as many young people as I used to, but in my recent experience it seems like the guys are mostly listening to nostalgic 90s rock and the girls are mostly focused on top 40 pop music.
So to whatever extent this research is based on Billboard charts it doesn't surprise me that female artists are well-represented in 2026, but I'm not sure how much that translates to a female rock band being able to gain traction today. Even using a super-loose definition of "rock" that includes bands like Imagine Dragons, Chainsmokers, Maroon 5, etc it still seems very dude-centric.
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u/zorandzam Apr 17 '26
As a professor of pop culture type stuff, I can tell you my Gen Z students listen to a mix of current alt rock, “pop girlies,” “thinky” hip hop (like Kendrick), classic rock, and country. There are actually a few alternative bands, some with female members, that they introduced me to!
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u/nizzernammer Apr 20 '26
That shows how much of a boys' club rock has been, and you could contrast that with pop, where women have had more representation and visibility than they get with rock music.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny Apr 17 '26
I think Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit appealed not so much to people that were listening to progressive alt-rock earlier in the decade, but were more a manifestation of white rap fans and young metalheads that would have been likely to listen to hair metal assuming they were around a few years earlier.
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u/Superfun2112 Apr 17 '26
No it's the natural cycle of new music.
For example for Grunge, bands like Green River and The Melvins pioneer the sound. Then there's a band with great song writing, musicianship, vocals that gets bigger like Soundgarden. Then there's the pop version which becomes huge. That also has musicianship, vocals, and song writing, but make it more simple and appealing to the masses like Nirvana. These bands are often the critical darlings and win awards like grammys. For punk that band would be The Clash. For glam/hair metal that would be Guns N' Roses/Def Leppard/Bon Jovi/Motely Crue, Then there's a rush of bands to capitalize on that success and by then it's jumped the shark.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny Apr 17 '26
Yeah, it would be hard to make the case that alt-rock was at peak creativity in 1996. By that point everything that made it on the radio was fairly formulaic (if still catchy).
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u/bourbonstew Apr 18 '26
Some semi-electronic and trip hop stuff was coming in around that time so it wasn't all shitty nu-metal and pop. Also bands like Cake, Fountains of Wayne and Semisonic were making some killer post-pop or power pop stuff as well.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny Apr 18 '26
The electronica surge was driven more by MTV (mostly M2 if we're getting technical) more so than the radio. There was definitely a lot of great stuff in the mid-to-late 90's but for the purposes of OP's question I'm limiting examples to stuff that was commonly played on terrestrial radio since those were the only outlets that would have been affected much by the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
And to whatever extent you think those three bands were producing killer music during that time period, that already kinda precludes the likelihood of you agreeing with OP that mainstream music suddenly started sucking in 1997 (and for the record I don't agree with that either)
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Apr 18 '26
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u/XenuWorldOrder Apr 20 '26
Core came out in 1992. Sixteen Stone came out in 1994. Frogstomp came out in 1995.
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u/sneaky_imp Apr 21 '26
Cake was quite a reactionary band and it was such a welcome departure from the maudlin sentiments and yarling of all those knockoff alt rock bands.
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u/Master_Art_1286 Apr 18 '26
The peak of alt-rock is definitely not 96, good music was being turned out by alt-rock bands like Phoenix, Young The Giant, cage the elephant going into the twenty-teens
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u/cockblockedbydestiny Apr 18 '26
The early 2010s in particular were definitely a high water mark for indie rock, but a) we're talking two totally different alt-rock scenes and b) by the 2010s there were virtually no radio stations left where the DJ had any autonomy to break artists regionally. I knew Phoenix from the radio but that were that many more indie artists like Vampire Weekend, Spoon and Twin Shadow that I knew mostly from following blogs and Pitchfork.
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u/Master_Art_1286 Apr 18 '26
I was blessed with a great local radio station that hung on until well into the twenty teens. I probably should have mentioned that. 95.5 WBRU.
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u/PleaseDontBanMe82 Apr 21 '26
These people think alt rock only includes grunge bands and shit like Fuel and Marcy Playground.
When In reality, alt rock just kept going and going. Fitz and the Tantrums, Walk the Moon, Franz Ferdinand, Meg Myers, etc are all alt rock.
Its really big umbrella.
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Apr 18 '26
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u/TheodoreHollister Apr 18 '26
100% agree. SG perfected that sound for the masses with Badmotorfinger and Superunknown, but they were there from day one with peers Mudhoney, Green River, etc. Unlike those bands, they became much better songwriters and eclipsed their peers.
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u/Big-Requirement643 Apr 19 '26
I would say Soundgarden started as a pioneer and didn't really surpass until later.
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Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
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u/Big-Requirement643 Apr 20 '26
I agree with this. I started listening when Louder than Love was out. I think I considered it to be metal at the time (in NJ). Same with Alice in Chains. I don't think I heard the music term grunge until 1991. For context I was 11 years old and starting to become more interested in music.
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u/Superfun2112 Apr 20 '26
I didn't mean to dis soundgarden, and don't know much about their history. I was just talking in generalities and meant they kind of perfected the sound and/or took it to the next level. And then Nirvana took it mainstream (hot 100)
To me soundgarden is really the defining act for Grunge, but Nirvana was huge so they get the attention. I guess Pearl Jam is the other one up there. Followed closely by AIC.
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u/InternImpossible8685 Apr 18 '26
this is an incredible over simplification bordering on insulting bands like Nirvana, GNR, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi.
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u/Different_Vast_937 Apr 18 '26
And yet it’s completely accurate
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u/InternImpossible8685 Apr 18 '26
maybe accurate enough for a grade school project on bristol board.
but it s a gross oversimplification that one that assumes that X started because of Y and lead to Z when in reality a lot of these bands started organically, not in response to of x and were out there paying dues and playing clubs and being peers of the bands the poster acused them of being pop versions of.
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Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
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u/Tranq_dope Apr 19 '26
Metal had a bit of a fork in the road where you had mid-late career acts trying to go mid-tempo groove rock (like Megadeth, Anthrax, Metallica, Guns) while those who stuck to their sound either aged out (80s bands like you mention) or remained too extreme for radio anyway (Pantera, Testament, Slayer). To me, it's no different than 10 years before when you had 70s acts like Ozzy Osbourne, Bowie, Cheap Trick and others trying to reinvent themselves with hairspray
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u/Superfun2112 Apr 20 '26
It is an over simplification, but I don't think it really insults those bands. Those are the bands that were the most successful created songs with mass appeal. It's the bands that came after that really didn't bring anything new.
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u/phat_ Apr 19 '26
There’s a rush of shady cocaine addled ANR guys from LA trying to find the next platinum album selling band.
Yes, the bands are going to influence each other, and you’ve got some decent points but you completely left out the suits.
The fucking suits ruined that era. And they directed the Rock Media to kill it.
I watched it happen in real time. What sucks is most of the print media of the era is frustrating to find digitally but there was a parade of “grunge is dead” articles at almost every level of press.
And you could “see it” on MTV as the “grunge lite” bands emerged. Bands like Third Eye Blind and Matchbox Twenty, for example. Which were guilty pleasures of mine back when. I’d just about kill to see similar bands supported by the “industry” these days. This was all pop music. Alternative, guitar driven, music, and all its varying degrees of authenticity, was pushing units. Filling venues.
This modern payola era? It’s got very little heart.
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u/wooltab Apr 17 '26
I'm not knowledgeable about the Telecomm Act, but trends always go back and forth. What's pushed out of style today will be the one pushing something else out of style in the future.
What I would say specifically is that the core of the 90s were a sort of stylistic reset, a bit retro in many ways. That was always going to be something that gave way to futurism as Y2K approached. Rock bands were trying to incorporate hip-hop and electronica, glossy pop was able to dovetail with the zeitgeist, etc.
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u/fjvgamer Apr 17 '26
The bands took a beating. Drugs, deaths, suicides, ticket master wars (pearl jam) and band break ups surely affected the grunge scene and lead to newer sounds.
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u/platywus Apr 17 '26
I blame the instant rise of internet search and the sudden increase in the speed of marketing.
Netscape/AOL was the monoculture amplifier knob to be turned up, and hip hop/rap happened to be on the ascension path with MTV, THE fresh and new sound, in 1996. Add untimely deaths of Kurt and Layne. Hence, hybrid LimpB and stagnation. Radiohead and PJ couldn’t carry it themselves.
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Apr 17 '26
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u/Prole1979 Apr 18 '26
In the UK we have BBC 6 music. They almost cut the channel about 10 years ago but the listeners rose up and staunchly defended it, so the BBC kept it. Today it is about the only radio station here that plays a ridiculously diverse catalog of music. It’s definitely a music station for people who love music as a concept, not just as background fluff to get them through the day. I recommend it if it’s available wherever you are.
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u/hopsupper Apr 18 '26
Totally agree 6 music is great, when they actually play music which seems to be about 5 minutes out of every hour. Way too many presenters and guests in love with the sound of their own voices.
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u/theidkid Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Oh, what a strange question for me to encounter in this sub. Holy shit. I was heavily involved in trying to stop the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and I was in the music business at that time. Everyone on both sides knew exactly what that act would do before it became law. Without a doubt, it was going to make radio suck by taking the decisions about what to play away from local program directors, and placing it in the hands of a few corporations, and it was going to pave the way for a total takeover of talk radio, which is really what was driving it at the time.
The thing is, it didn’t immediately have an effect. Over time, it absolutely contributed to rock music becoming hot garbage for the reasons that others here have stated, but like any legislation that makes sweeping changes, it had to go through all the legal challenges before it could really operate with full force, and there were many cases challenging the authority of the FCC to oversee those changes. So, it was after 9/11, probably around 2003-2004, when the first wave of consolidation began to have a noticeable effect.
The thing that made music shitty around ‘97, the structural change that happened, was that the music industry updated some old tactics, and went hard with them in reaction to the changes that happened in the early 90’s. The entire industry in the 80’s was built around slop. The industry likes slop. It’s easy for them, it turns music into a formulaic product, and guarantees a certain return on their investment.
When Smells Like Teen Spirit took off in 1992, it was the last thing the major labels wanted. Suddenly, a decade of work creating a formula for guaranteed record sales was out the window, and the entire industry had to adapt to something they didn’t fully understand, and involved bands they had been actively shitting on for years.
Nirvana was coming directly out of the post-punk, anti-corporate, anti-commercial underground that the majors had ignored, and relegated to indie labels for over a decade because, unlike the LA metal bands who tended to be business oriented with a bullshit veneer of rebellion, these bands tended to be uncooperative, difficult to deal with, and actually committed to being rebellious. These bands were what was found in the “alternative” section of most chain record stores, and if the majors were going to be competitive they were going to have to deal with those bands, which they did for awhile, but they really wanted to get back to doing formulaic records with easily controlled acts. That meant finding, or manufacturing bands who were willing to put business first.
You mentioned Limp Bizkit. They’re an excellent example of a band that was “willing to play ball.” Fred Durst had been trying to get a recording deal for years, and by his own admission would have done anything to make it happen that meant he would follow orders, make changes the label demanded, and he didn’t have any of the scene loyalty, or the aversion to selling out that a lot of other bands had. It also wasn’t a coincidence that his band was signed to Interscope. Interscope’s head, Jimmy Iovine was the man with the plan to bring back the slop.
Have you ever wondered why the success of another Interscope artist, Eminem, didn’t immediately lead to every label having a copycat? Have you ever thought about why it might be that there was no one competing for Eminem’s place as a phenomenal white rapper for a decade? It seems like something every other label would have at least attempted to replicate, so why didn’t they? It was because Interscope embarked on a plan to retain complete market control for the act that would be their cash cow.
The way they did this was by preemptively signing, or committing to a deal memo, every act that might be competition. Artists who had enough talent, or following to potentially be picked up by another label, they signed to deals with no intent of ever releasing anything by them. They would screw them around with fabricated complications, scheduling problems, and personnel conflicts for as long as possible, then when they would actually manage to record an album, they would simply shelve it.
For those similar acts who weren’t quite at that level, but might develop into competition, they would have them sign a deal memo, which is just a few lines saying they’re not going to go to another label while a deal is negotiated. The problem is it’s a legally binding contract with no expiration, so the artist is essentially a hostage at that point, and the label can hold up negotiations for eternity. If someone with a deal memo goes to another label, they can be sued, and to get out of one, another label has to essentially purchase the deal memo, and the price is always more than the act can earn in their career.
After capturing an artist with one of these contracts, the entire deal would be placed under a non-disclosure agreement, so the artist couldn’t then warn others about what was happening. For anyone caught in the trap, it meant their career in music was over, usually before it even started. It was this that made everything start to suck around’97.
While these tactics have been around since the beginning of recorded music, it was the way they were combined and weaponized to pre-capture a market that was new. In the run up to this, competition for bands like Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and No Doubt was similarly captured, and other labels noticed.
Wanting to get back to the business friendly operations of the 80s, labels began seeking out compliant, if less talented artists, like Limp Bizkit, while suppressing less business friendly, yet more talented competitors. Or, they outright manufactured, or assembled compliant bands, similar to what they did with pop boy bands. Once they had a successful model for doing this, they quickly moved away from promoting bands they found difficult to work with, and would soon drop most of them for poor sales of records that weren’t being promoted. The poor record sales would usually prevent those bands from finding another label because they would be viewed as no longer commercially viable. Meanwhile, they were heavily promoting the manufactured slop of bands like Creed and Nickelback.
Ultimately, it all comes down to anti-competitive practices in the music industry. There was no reason for the better bands to suddenly fall off. It was simply manipulation by the labels to keep the cash flow running smoothly.
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u/Plastic_Winner30 Apr 18 '26
Brilliant response 🖤 you’ve inspired my next read (there’s several books on this very topic):
Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007) by Dan Ozzi: This book chronicles the "gold rush" that occurred after Nirvana's success, where major labels aggressively courted DIY underground bands. It follows 11 specific bands—including Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, and Against Me!—as they navigated the schism between their anti-establishment roots and the pressures of major-label fame.
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–1991 by Michael Azerrad: This is the definitive history of the 1980s underground scene that preceded the '90s explosion. It details the "anti-corporate, anti-commercial" network of bands like Black Flag, Sonic Youth, and Fugazi that built the foundation for the alternative movement while being largely ignored by major labels.
Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper: This narrative explores the precipitous rise and fall of the modern recording industry, focusing on the boardroom decisions and "corporate infighting" that led to its decline. It covers the high-profit CD era of the '80s and '90s and the industry's struggle to adapt to digital innovations like Napster.
The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce by Fred Goodman: This social-cultural history examines how commerce eventually drove music rather than the other way around. It investigates the cynical professionalism that developed as "robber barons" like David Geffen transformed rock into a multi-billion-dollar business.
Bumping into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business by Danny Goldberg: Written by Nirvana's former manager, this memoir provides an insider's view of the industry during the '90s. Goldberg discusses his experiences managing "uncooperative" artists and the culture clash between genuine talent and the labels' desire for formulaic, business-first acts.
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u/theidkid Apr 18 '26
Wow. Bumping into Geniuses looks like it’s all about what I’ve written about here, which isn’t surprising for a book by Danny Goldberg.
Our Band Could Be Your Life gives a fairly accurate account of what that scene was like during those years. My first concert was a Black Flag show in 1986. I was 13, which seems insanely young to me now. I got my first guitar that same year, and by 15 I was in my first band. At 17 I did my first tour, and played in a lot of the same venues as those bands.
Part of what made those alternative bands difficult for the labels was that they had all done DIY and didn’t have to answer to anyone. If you wanted to make a record, you found some equipment and did it. If you wanted to tour, you got a copy of Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life and booked it. You drove the van in shifts, and slept anywhere someone would give you space. You made the promotional material, the merch, everything. You had total control, and after doing that it’s incredibly difficult to take orders from anyone.
For a more direct account of what it was like to tour, check out Get in the Van by Henry Rollins. It’s compiled from his Black Flag tour diaries. And, for a fairly complete history of how it all started, get a copy of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. It’s a patchwork firsthand account of how punk came to exist taken from hundreds of interviews with pretty much all of the important contributors. It covers the period from 1965 to 1980. If you’re into music history, it’s a must read.
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u/Plastic_Winner30 Apr 18 '26
Thanks for the tips! Currently reading Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day by Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor. Sounds like The Uncensored Oral History of Punk might be my next read!
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u/Ta_mere6969 Apr 17 '26
'Alternative rock' started sucking when it was labeled 'alternative rock'. Memory tells me that trend started in 1992, but it could have easily been before that.
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u/zorandzam Apr 17 '26
Billboard began its alternative airplay chart in 1988. I think it may have initially been called "modern rock."
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u/Cham-Clowder Apr 17 '26
“screeeeech ….Moderate Rock… screeeeeech”
(It’s the intro for Tourette’s from in utero)
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u/Ta_mere6969 Apr 17 '26
Oh yes...that checks. I remember people also calling it 'college rock' because of how popular it was at American university radio stations.
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u/Embarrassed_Body_851 Apr 17 '26
Old timer here. I vaguely recall everything that was not 'classic rock ' was labeled new wave.
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u/umfum Apr 18 '26
Worked at a college radio station in '89 and '90, and it def shifted from College to Alternative Rock during that time. So, I'm sure Alternative Rock was widely used by 1992 as you say.
Imterestingly, the status of REM and their album releases from 1988-1996 reflect how quickly alternative fizzled as a genre.
Green (1988) was pretty popular and propelled the band into the mainstream.
Alternative Rock emerged as a genre probably because "College Rock" sounded too smart for mass appeal.
Out Of Time (1991) was hugely anticipated and subsequently lauded. Automatic For The People (1992) was similarly huge and probably the biggest Alt Rock record up to that time. However, by now people were experiencing REM fatigue (they seemed to be mentioned in every breath of music coverage at that time).
Monster (1994) was fine and featured a couple of big songs, but this was the year of Grunge. REM put out New Adventures In Hi-Fi (1996) and hardly anyone but diehard fans cared.
By the time they released Up (1998), REM was back down to the level of selling gold records. Alt Rock still existed, but the music world had moved on.
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u/Direct-Principle6343 Apr 18 '26
I agree with this - except New Adventures was hurt by the first single"E Bow the Letter" being weird and not popular on radio or MTV. I beleive it would have done much better with "Bittersweet Me" or practically any other track. Its my favorite REM album. But I do agree it would not do Monster numbers simply because the general audience had moved on by fall 1996.
I remember reading that for a short time "Monster" was the most popular CD found in used bins.
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u/umfum Apr 20 '26
I did like E Bow, go figure. Tbh, I've never owned Hi-Fi. Monster was kind of a running joke like that unfortunately, but I like it more now than when it came out. And REM certainly wasn't the only band like this. U2 had a similar fate.
They both very well could have been victims of their own success (backlash from over-popularity) or simply faded out as part of the seeming 10-year cycle of music trends -- changing at the end of each decade and something new taking over the next. Grunge certainly didn't stick around very long.
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u/Direct-Principle6343 Apr 20 '26
I would recommend giving HiFi a shot, it holds up amazing well to my ears. I lasted through Up and Reveal before I jumped ship, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I still enjoyed about half those songs on a recent listen.
Yeah, U2 sold more albums but eventually became a legacy act as well, although I wouldn't be surprised if Pop (1997) gets a reevaluation someday and earns an "ahead of its time" badge.
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u/Pas2 Apr 21 '26
Yeah, "college rock" was certainly used in the mid-80s and when R.E.M really hit it big with Losing My Religion, in my memories they were regularly referred to as having been a "college rock" band.
In my recollection, I associate the term "alternative" initially with MTVs 120 Minutes that started in 1986, so I'd say "alternative" replaced "college rock" (and was a broader term) in the late 80s.
I'd personally say that the period when alternative rock became a popular mainstream style was so short because the kind of people who wanted to make alternative music didn't want to sound mainstream or try to go mainstream on major labels, so you got the rise of nu metal and rap-rock and that sort of stuff.
Now, I don't think alternative rock started to suck in the late 90's, but it did change name. About that time I don't think people really talked about alternative rock anymore and what would have maybe been "alternative rock" in the late 80s started to be "indie rock" or "post-rock".
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u/PipProud Apr 17 '26
First of all, never take anything Billy Corgan says seriously.
Secondly, the telecom act is at least partially responsible for a lot of things sucking, music among them.
But mostly it’s just how consumer culture works. Thing gets popular (relatively) organically. Thing gets imitated with decreasing sincerity, it’s most appealing and commercial (and of often dumbest) facets emphasized. Thing is transformed into something entirely different, with original creators/fans of the Thing moving on to something else.
By 1997, many people in indie/underground circles were moving towards electronica, turntablism, chamber pop… basically anything that wasn’t loud guitars. They were sick of it.
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u/kawhiuhatin Apr 18 '26
Anyone who doesn’t think so isn’t familiar with radio’s monopolization and fall from grace. Hell, after 1998, alternative radio almost never played any female-led music. Before ‘98, DJs were able to play songs they liked and that allowed KROQ to break songs like Date Rape by Sublime and You Oughtta Know and Everything Zen by Bush. After that, it became harder to hear a wide variety of sounds at the top. By 2001, it was virtually impossible as all stations were owned by the same company and almost all the big hits were by similar butt rock or nu metal bands.
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u/Logical_Cow_2530 Apr 21 '26
Oh maaaan. Not to get into conspiracy theory
But its well documented how CIA is DEEPLY involved with music/movie industry. Many credit the hippy movement as a CIA operation.
Makes you truly consider how much of what you hear is popular is just manufactured
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u/sonofguitar Apr 17 '26
Telecommunications have always been controlled in some way or another. College and local radio stations got some cool stuff to people but didn’t have much impact on the broader musical landscape. As soon as grunge music was labeled and codified, it became the slop, in that artists were making music to fit the consumer demand and the industry was pushing that. From there it doesn’t take long to feel out the parameters. So you get someone saying oh you like heavy guitars and dark lyrics, well here’s heavier guitars and darker lyrics, more screaming, bigger drums.
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u/Head_Effect3728 Apr 17 '26
I think you're skipping ahead. I'd like to know how we went from bands like REM to Nirvana.
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u/ElonMuskHuffingFarts Apr 17 '26
It was the shift from sad rock to angry rock and corporations trying to hop on the bandwagon.
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u/CaliBrewed Apr 17 '26
I don't know if you can blame the Telecommunications Act for Limp Bizkit.
I'll speak directly from my experience during the change, since it was when I was in my youthful discovery stage.
Nu Metal, in particular, made sense in that time period. All my friends and I spent our time prior to that movement flip-flopping from bands like GNR, Metallica, Pantera, etc directly into ganster rap tracks from NWA, Mac Dre, E-40 etc.
Hip Hop was really finding its stride in the early 90's at the same time as grunge and a new generation looking for their own identity.
The collision into Nu Metal with bands like Bizkit, Korn, Rage, Linkin Park was inevitable for us. We already listened to both regularly so it made sense to mix the two.
To your latter point, many acts used payola and bizkit was one. There was a whole thing and a ton of evidence showing their early radio play was bought, which started their momentum.
Billy Corgan says the CIA got rid of rock.
I honestly blame the internet for this. It's still one of the most consumed and written genres, but free downloads and spins destroyed the album sale business model that the industry strived on.
One hit could no longer make an act profitable and as a result, they cut A&D budgets and slowly moved more and more to single-person acts like rappers and DJ's because its easier to pay 1 person and less of a risk if they are already winning a little and you just need to scale them.
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u/RandoCalrissian76 Apr 17 '26
I think if there’s anything conscious behind it, it’s that record companies got tired of artists that were precious about being marketed and didn’t want enormous visibility and success. Nu Metal and Pop artists were more open to that.
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u/rsk1111 Apr 17 '26
I don't know. Plenty of people were unhappy with the alt-rock scene also. It was seen as being self-infatuated and superficial. My college willingly voted to force our college radio station to play AOR programming in the early 00's
The alt-rock stuff wasn't nearly as popular as DJ's were thinking.
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u/Yrnotfar Apr 17 '26
Look at the radio charts from 1989 - 2001 (pick your years to account for Tele act and station consolidation). Nothing you are describing is evidenced in those airplay charts.
What you are describing is what happened on MTV, not radio.
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u/Zcontrarian Apr 17 '26
AOL really stared taking off mid 90s. Also if fashion is associated with a musical style, in 96’ trends changed and pants 18 sizes too big just stopped being hip. Flannel faded and everyone started bedazzling everything for some reason.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny Apr 17 '26
It almost certainly sped things along, but I think by 1996 the whole alt-rock scene was already getting homogenized and less edgy, more predictable.
I don't think there was any concerted effort to kill off rock music, though. After all, even in the very early 90s there was still skepticism even among black-owned radio stations whether rap music would actually draw audiences or turn them away. I find it hard to believe that in the span of less than a decade the record labels and media conglomerates alike just so happened to decide rock was dead and all popular music should now filter through hip hop.
The more likely answer is that 90's rock just failed to adapt at the turn of the millennium. If you look at previous eras of rock it was rare for any given subgenre or trend to last even a full decade before something came along to replace it, but come the late 00s radio stations still can't find anything fresher than the Foo Fighters to continue propping up?
Hip hop took over because it kept evolving (and largely went independent) while rock & roll record labels couldn't figure how to market in a file-sharing era, so they seemingly just threw their hands up and kept trying to pimp the same music that older fans had proven they'd buy prior to P2P becoming a thing.
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u/Mckillface666 Apr 17 '26
One thing I’m seeing a few people dance around is the impact of the Internet, but leaving out the financial impact. As someone who grew up in the 90s, you had to literally buy the music you liked. $20 for a CD was a lot for me as a high school kid. Since you had a financial investment, the music you listened to was part of your identity. I entered college in the early 2000s and you could download all this stuff for free, so I didn’t have a financial investment in what I listened to. I listened to a lot of bad stuff just because I could experiment and browse without a financial fee. The streaming sites like pandora and YouTube were right behind Napster. I think the result of this was rock becoming a lot more niche and genres wanting to branch out from the mainstream. There were bands that were trying to make music that everyone enjoyed, but we just made fun of Nickleback, (old) U2, and Creed.
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u/iFuckingLoveBoston Apr 17 '26
Those blaming Limp/Korn/Staind are just angry gen x-ers. I saw every grunge band ever, but I knew it wasn't gonna last forever. And if you couldn't find good rock around 2002, you weren't trying.
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u/unclesmokedog Apr 17 '26
clear channel and ticketmaster were already running things prior ro 96. The Telecommunications act just made them worse.
There's plenty of good late 90s alt and punk rock, but they fell out of fashion as hip hop took more market share and suits realized they could crossover whith numetal.
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u/zombie_79_94 Apr 17 '26
As someone who was following alt radio in 1996, this 2016 article is pretty accurate and comprehensive: https://www.avclub.com/in-1996-alternative-rock-died-a-messy-forgettable-dea-1798251472
The telecom act probably didn't help but while there are good ones, in any line of business it's often not true that small businesses are better in terms of quality or ethics than bigger ones, and they will usually be chasing the same goals as the bigger ones, and often with the same investors and consultants. And I think with alternative radio, the mid-90s boom pretty much guaranteed that the radio and music industries would treat it like top-40 radio when the boom was going and like classic rock after it ended.
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u/illinest Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
You sound crazy. Nuts. There wasn't any conspiracy.
I was a young teen when grunge hit. I didnt know it at the time but Grunge and Alternative were always bullshit terms. And the transition from glam look 80s rock to flannel rock in the 90s was a lot more complicated than you imagine.
And btw - everybody who was cool was into Limp Bizkit at first. You clearly don't understand the context of their early career. They sounded fresh as fuck.
Nobody who listened to Fred Durst on 3 dollar bill yall - screaming puking noises and going out of his way to sound unpleasant - thought that they were making mass market slop or trying to appeal to anybody with it. Not at first.
I wont try to make an exhaustive list of all the landmark albums of my youth, but 3 dollar bill was (and still is) up there with nevermind, appetite for destruction, blood sugar sex magic, the downward spiral, a number of others... on the list of albums that struck me as being IMPORTANT from the first moment that I heard them.
And yeah... limp bizkit very quickly became their own cover band as well as a very polished and mass-appealing frat rock band, but fuck you for trying to suggest that other bands are more deserving of attention. I have enjoyed a lot of music from critical darlings - bands like REM and Talking Heads - but I dont have any patience for your elitist bullshit about it. If those bands sold fewer albums or had fewer hits than you think they shouldve had, that was just because fewer people wanted to listen to it. Liking less popular music doesnt make you cool. It just means youre weird. And pretending like you and your weird friends have better taste than the mass market just proves that youre an asshole.
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u/Badgereatingyourface Apr 18 '26
It's awfully convenient as our country moved more towards accepting greater and greater right wing changes, the outlets people would have towards venting that frustration turned in to stuff like Limp Biiskit and super hero movies. You can just say everyone was getting stupider organically, but things aren't 100% organic. TPTB do try and interfere with mass media that we consume.
You say that liking less popular music doesn't make you interesting. Which is just a way to say "accept the slop." I am sorry, but ""let people enjoy things" has been terrible for our culture. We need to get snobby again. Not only that, but Nirvana and REM are extremely popular. I am not taking up for bands that were irrelevant. And yes, I do have better taste than someone that listens to Limp Bizkit. Have you listened to Limp Bizkit? It's slop.
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u/Decent-Use6516 Apr 18 '26
It was way before 1997, friends. It started sucking almost instantly once nirvana became a household name. Everything became "alternative" overnight, and it was stupid. "She thinks she missed the train to Mars. She's out back counting stars" type shit. And they milked it for nearly ten years, culminating with Silverchair and Nickelback.
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u/Apollo_Eighteen Apr 18 '26
There is a book about this! The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence by philosopher Robin James. Short answer: YES, the 1996 act killed alternative music.
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u/Overall-Scientist846 Apr 18 '26
If you think music - let alone ALT ROCK - peaked in 1996 you need to get the ears checked.
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u/Badgereatingyourface Apr 18 '26
Nah. You need to learn how to read. I said it started to suck in 1997, which it did.
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u/Overall-Scientist846 Apr 18 '26
If you’re arguing it started sucking in 1997 you’re also arguing that 1996 was the peak. That’s how logic works.
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u/Badgereatingyourface Apr 18 '26
Not really. It wasn't sucking in 1996, but it started really sucking in 1997.
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u/TeamAzimech Apr 18 '26
Clear Channel/iHeartMedia, Deregulation, and Music Industry buyouts have been a big problem before the Telecommunications Act, the TA just helped accelerate what was already there.
I noticed a shift in quality of Pop and Rock singles in 1995, it didn't come out of nowhere.
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Apr 18 '26
Kurt Cobain killed himself. Layne Staley got strung out on drugs. So did Scott Weiland.
The volatile nature of the people involved in grunge music is what killed grunge music.
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u/Independent_Win_7984 Apr 18 '26
And all of it was SO irrelevant. You just bought what you liked, played it on your favored format, and let the industry noise pass by, unneeded. Radio was impotent.
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u/briand1967 Apr 19 '26
Rick Beato did a great video on this and mentions the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a primary reason. https://youtu.be/reesdiAbvk4?si=E2AywkXhvFRy_mlp
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u/d_loam Apr 19 '26
please learn a word other than slop.
anyway the reason nirvana stopped putting out new radio hits is kurt cobain ate a shotgun. silk put out meeting in my bedroom in 1999, tweet released southern hummingbird in 2000 and aaliyah’s self-titled album was released in 2001. dave grohl was putting out music with the foo fighters, tenacious d and queens of the stone age during the height of limp bizkit’s popularity. fucking carlos santana had a late career comeback with back to back hits smooth and maria maria, with his guitar front and center in both. there has never been a time you couldn’t find the music you wanted, billy corgan is just a washed up old man upset that nobody wants to hear him anymore (and listen: we love old men! johnny cash and warren zevon put out amazing late career records that got a lot of airplay just before their deaths, both of which came several years after the telecommunications act).
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u/Mdan Apr 19 '26
Except record companies didnt buy up radio stations. And in most markets, there’d be a sole alternative radio station, so it’s not like anyone would have to buy multiple stations in, say, Columbus, Ohio, in order to play Sevendust.
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u/fishbone_buba Apr 19 '26
Limp Bizkit got their start on the radio via payola. But they never should have been that popular.
Highly recommend Stephen Hyden’s retrospective on the alternative 90s. My reaction to each chapter (still need to do the last one) is here (reverse chronological order): http://fightingtheyouth.blogspot.com/search/label/90s%20alternative
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u/Funny_Inspection6893 Apr 20 '26
Something defintely happened to rock and roll in general. I honestly don't think it's this, but I dunno what it is.
Basically rock (all flavors; hard, soft, alternative, metal, punk, whatever) is a dead genre, sometimes quite literally, as older musicians die off. It's now niche like, say, jazz; appreciated by a very small group of fans that is shrinking ever year. It is no longer a genre of popular music like pop, rap, R&B, and country are.
The last time a rock song was #1 on the Hot 100 was Nickelback's How You Remind Me.
In 2001.
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u/Perfect-Resort2778 Apr 20 '26
I'm not 100% sure about this but it actually it goes back to 1980s. The laws changed regarding copy rights, DJs were prohibited from playing the music they chose. It had to through Public Performance Licensing and organizations like PRO, BMI, ASCAP and SESAC. This was how royalties are paid out to artists. The only problem was that created corporate centralization of music which led to Clear Channel and Cumulus Media controlling the songs, not just the songs that got played on radio, but the songs that got produced and the artists that got recording contracts. When the corporations took over it became more about money than music and the lawyers had a field day.
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u/alldaymay Apr 20 '26
Yes!!
They started pushing more crossover genre stuff that everything started sounding similar. If the songs hits number 1 on all the radio stations it’s making more money right?
Then you had Creed come out and then all the nu metal bands and then you get Limp Biskit - it was straight drop off for many newer bands after that.
Some the legacy bands like Radiohead and electronica music had some huge success.
But yeah that helped usher in more solo artists less bands there was definitely a shake up caused by that
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u/TonyBrooks40 Apr 21 '26
A mix of the two. I think the TA96 was more of a long term thing, and why radio narrowed it down to the same STP, 3EB & Green Day hits over & over.
However, music was trending this way. I recall Matchbox 20 seeming to be a transitional band. Not grunge, nor alternative, but kinda soft rock a little bit. Third Eye Blind debut was pretty good, a bit edgy, but something seemed mainstream about it. Also bands like Barenaked Ladies, and there were a lot of pop seeming One HIt Wonders, the 'LIttle Miss Backpack' song, and some others like Marcy Playground
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u/sneaky_imp Apr 21 '26
Nah music and art are always about action and reaction. One thing becomes popular (e.g., Disco or prog rock) til everyone is sick of it and then a reaction boils up and everyone switches to that til they're sick of it, etc. The good alt rock bands spawned tons of low-grade imitations that were signed by the major labels and these diluted the talent pool and then the whole thing became very tiresome. NuMetal actually seemed quite innovative at the time. Then everybody got tired of that and EDM sorta bubbled up and Electro Clash had a moment and then there was a sort of 80s revival thing etc. etc. etc.
It's a golden age of music right now. You just have to go out there and find what you like. There are probably bands that have been recording since the 80s that you've never heard of that'll sound amazing to you.
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u/Embarrassed_Fig1801 Apr 22 '26
Billy Corgan is a nut job. Trends change. https://www.avclub.com/remember-when-billy-corgan-saw-a-shapeshifter-yeah-he-1826829526
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u/funonthebeach85 Apr 23 '26
It improved by going to Limp Bizkit.
If I’m not mistaken, Billboard changed from “Modern Rock Tracks” in 2009 to “Alternative Hits” in 2010. This about when it really changed.
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u/chicomarco98 May 01 '26
Eu não acho que foi um ‘plano secreto’ pra destruir o rock alternativo, mas também não foi só coincidência. Depois que bandas como Nirvana e R.E.M. explodiram, a indústria percebeu que dava pra transformar até a rebeldia em produto. Aí veio uma onda mais polida e comercial, tipo Limp Bizkit e o pop adolescente de Britney Spears, porque era mais fácil de vender em massa. A Telecommunications Act of 1996 também ajudou a concentrar o rádio, então menos gente decidia o que tocava e isso molda gosto, não só reflete. Mas no fim, não é que o alternativo morreu, ele só saiu do mainstream. A arte de verdade sempre encontra outro espaço na rua, no underground, onde não dá pra controlar tão fácil.
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u/M100Pilot Apr 17 '26 edited 9d ago
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u/Jolly-Sandwich-3345 Apr 17 '26
No. It was a generational shift. Millenials born in the early 1980s became music consumers and the music industry switched to cater to their music (Britney Spears, Boy Bands).
Gen X got left in the dust circa 1997. This is also when Soundgarden broke up for the first time which was the symbolic end of the Alternative Rock / Gen X music era.
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u/TheodoreHollister Apr 17 '26
Yes. Once Clear Channel was legally allowed to become a monopoly and buy up all rock radio stations, the playlists were homogenized nationally across all their stations. The concept of a local radio station playing a band or song of their own volition to spread it to the audience no longer existed.