There is No More Mainstream

Perhaps I should have phrased that as 'the mainstream is just a niche' but the sentiment is the same. I've talked about this to an extent before but it was brought up again by Joel Gibb's comments in the Torontoist interview

"I fucking hate mainstream. Who wants to appeal to mainstream audiences? It should be the other way around. We shouldn't cater to mainstream audiences. I don't like being asked that, because then it makes me feel like, "Oh, what am I doing wrong? I shouldn't be doing what I do." I don't try to think about that. I think about making unique and important and authentic art. How can I think about a mainstream audience?"

The reality is that now when you say 'mainstream' or even 'lowest common denominator you are talking about a niche, perhaps a large niche, but a specific audience that is not anywhere near a majority.

For example:

Rarely does any prime time television program pull in 3 million plus viewers. For the week cited here (December 10-16) the best audience was 3.137 million viewers or roughly 9.5% of Canada. After that it falls of rather sharply to 2.322 million or roughly 7%

According to Reuters Celine Dion sold more albums in Canada than any other artist at 568,000 - so roughly 1.5% of Canadians bought one of her albums. The same article lists the top selling digital album as Timbaland with 98,000 sold or roughly one in 330 Canadians.

I can't really guess at film, it is tracked by box office gross - not number of people and without knowing ticket prices it's difficult to estimate. So let's say that the 'mainstream' is double the number of people in the highest result above - that would make it about 6.3 million of Canada's 33 million people (19%). Canada's current government was elected with a total of 5,374,071 actual votes (36.27% of voters but only 16.2% of Canadians).

It is clear that when we talk about the 'mainstream' we are talking about less than one in five people in Canada. There is no more 'mainstream' there is no more 'majority' it's all about niche's now and as more and more media becomes available, you are going to see a further fragmentation.

According to the Toronto Star there were 750,000 CDs produced last year, almost 20x more than the 38,000 in 2002. The internet has also made it possible for thousands of internet and television stations (not to mention amateur vloggers/podcasters) to seek viewers/listeners around the globe. It is also not difficult to simply collect files - MP3s, Internet video etc., and fully customize what you see/hear. So that you only get the stuff you really want and only check out new stuff when it's recommended by friends.

So, I like Joel Gibb, find little of value in the mainstream but the mainstream as it used to be; the mainstream that meant 'most people' is gone. What passes for the mainstream now is just another, heavily (really heavily) catered to sub-culture, one that is shrinking by the day.