SSC

Something like marketing? Contacts? Selling an image? Catering to a niche market?

Warning: I'm going to do some serious business internet ranting below, so grab on to your hats.

What the fuck is "incredibly sophisticated" because I'm sure as hell you don't mean Stockhausen or Xenakis and that sort of thing (considering your tastes.) So? Sophisticated?

I mean, I'd argue the most absurdly simple sonatina from Clementi is the epitome of complexity and sophistication just to throw off your argument there.

Either you agree with what the guy said, or you don't, but your mediocre answer is just irritating. Popularity has

ZERO

to do with what is exactly popular, and more to do with culture and mass-marketing systems, demographic catering, and so on. People's goddamn preferences are entirely arbitrary, there's no goddamn objectivity in any of it.

So a composer can only control the "popular" appeal of what they're doing if they COPY what CULTURE arbitrarily dictates is POPULAR.

I'm going to repeat that:

So a composer can only control the "popular" appeal of what they're doing if they COPY what CULTURE arbitrarily dictates is POPULAR.

Is this clear?

Good.

If you want to be popular, you'll just have to sacrifice whatever would make you un-popular in favor of things that'd make you popular.

It TAKES CONTROL AWAY FROM THE COMPOSER to try to be POPULAR.

Why? It's the same'ol argument of "Well, tradition/culture/MTV says this is cool, so I have to use it as to be perceived as "cool." It has nothing to do with the composer's instinct, intuition, none of that. It's the EXACT OPPOSITE. It's taking CONTROL away from the composer and giving it to some random cultural variable!

And there are MANY composers, myself included, that rather like having goddamn control over the music they produce. If it makes us unpopular, so be it! That shit is irrelevant so long as our music sounds like we want it to sound.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS.

I respect people who have as a goal to be popular, trendy, cater to whatever demographic or tradition niche, so on and on. They're free to do what they want, and I enjoy a lot of music composed with these things in mind. It's not wrong, there's nothing wrong with it.

Get that shit through your thick head, before I keep cursing and getting out of line.

There is no wrong or right, there is only music.

Thank you.

ps: I wrote this as a reply to a whole lot of posts that talk about this same sort of thing, with the same sort of irritating attitude, just in case anyone wonders if it's an overreaction, it ain't. Shit like this accumulates with every retarded post on the interwebs~