I heard rumours once of a Scot living in Scotland, but it there was no evidence to back it up.

Woah-oh. He's an alien. He's a legal alien. He's a Scottish man in Bangkok...
He don't play mahjongg, he plays bagpipes dear.
He wears his kilt without jockeys.
Oh you can hear it in his accent when he talks.
He's a Scottishman in Bangkok.

Many miles away, something crawls to the surface of a dark Scottish loch . . .

...A get purple blob. It breaks he surface and... "Hi boys and girls!" Oh my God! It's Barney the Dinosaur! Run for your lives!

Nah, it's Bruno Mars in a Barney costume, trying to sound like Sting.

"Bruno Mars [...] trying to sound like Sting. " Like he could even sound like a singer, much less one of the greats of my generation.

Bruno Mars has one of the best voices in the industry today... it's not like you have to forget about Sting and the Rolling Stones and Metallica and all the like just because Bruno Mars has a hugely different style with incredible talent.

I'm sorry, I was thinking of James Brunt. Yeah Bruno Mars is pretty decent. Definitely a different style than Sting, more along the lines of Harry Connick, Jr.

There are plenty of popular singers that flat out suck nowadays, but that's part of the industry now... not really the fault of the populous. (Yes, James Blunt sucks.)

I blame auto-tune, Disney (every actress must be a singer and every singer must be an actress), and producers who want to manufacture bands and singers rather than discover real talent out in the wild.

That's called materialism and that's what it is right now. I'd say most everyone agrees with you, but when there's easy money and we put so much value on it, why would they do that?

Well, I won't be buying any Selena Gomez albums, but I get that the 'tweens will buy anything from their favortie Disney star or boy band so Disney and the other producers don't have an incentive to look for actual talent. Sometimes they hit some and don't see it (The Monkees - despite being manufactured - had talent that the producers neglected) but most times it's flash-in-the-pan money-now productions. Kind of like Pink Floyd sang:

And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it 'Riding the Gravy Train'

I'd buy a Selena Gomez album for nothing more than the cover photo...

Music isn't what it was 20 years ago and the expectation that it should be ought to go away. It, like most things, has changed. Same goes for gas prices, same goes for inflation, same goes for minimum wage, same goes for bunches of economic and social standards. With these changes come fundamentalism, and that's normal, which also sparks backlash, furthering the divide between the new change and the old standard, also normal, but only furthering the traditionalist and "rebellious" divides between generations. That's why we don't dance the Charleston. Music industry is no different, good or not.

I don't expect it to be the same and embrace change. I even listen to talented bands like Evanescence and Staind and even newer stuff. I just wish the "pandering to the kids so they badger their parents for crap" didn't completely dominate the musoc landscape.

I blame history. Old bands don't go away, they continue to populate the record shops (well... Amazon) and demand to be heard. Every new band now has to compete with the likes of Elvis, The Beatles, Queen, Meatloaf, The Who, Sinatra, Beethoven etc etc who all have albums out their with their best music on offer. It's damned near impossible for them, so most don't try.

You forget U2 in that list, Octavious.

Draug, I am very open when it comes to music.. there's not much I don't like. I don't like country and I don't like straight rap. I like hip hop, I like rock, I like metal, I like just about anything soft, I like both guys and girls singing, and pretty much anything but Disney Radio has something on it I'll like. I listen to Metallica, Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, and plenty of others from way back when.. my favorite concert I've been to was Cheap Trick. So yeah, the old sticks, but new comes out. You know it as well as I though - there's no better business than having a way to shut up a whining kid. All sales caters to kids because they don't have the self control as to what they want. That's what the restaurants do and that's what music does too.

One thing that my dad never seems to realize is that the music he likes was because of his generation and his parents hated it. His grandparents would have called Elvis a white guy playing black music, and in some ways he was. It takes younger, newer stuff to keep the industry going, but that doesn't in any way mean the old stuff gets forgotten. It just doesn't top the charts, nor should it if history has a say in things.

I liked Bruno Mars' early collaborations and his first album, but not what I've heard off his second album. I listen to a lot of pop, including Selena, Ke$ha, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, etc. I think having the marketing power of Disney behind you only lasts so long. Those with some talent are able to sustain their success (e.g. Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus for a while but not lately, Christina Aguilera, Anne Hathaway) and others just can't keep it up post-Disney (Cheetah Girls, Hilary Duff, Ashley Tisdale, Vanessa Hudgens, Christina Milian).

The last ten concerts I went to are a mix of 80s (when I was a teen) and current stuff: Ellie Goulding, Pentatonix, Roxette, Concrete Blonde, Jayme Dee, Erasure, Nouvelle Vague, B-52s, Taylor Swift, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

"Those with some talent are able to sustain their success"

Yeah, by putting on lingerie and corsets if female and by singing about sex and sex and more sex if they are male. Case in point, Disney is not half of the reason they stick around.

Just feel lucky you guys aren't stuck listening to this music for 8 hours a day. Make me wanna go home screaming. None of the music I listen to a lot is ever on. :/

Spotify is $5/month, plus it has radio. Can get it offline cheaper than iTunes and it works well. Mog is good too (anything Scott Jones made is good). Radio is good for driving and that's the only time I listen to it anymore. Get your own programs online and you really don't have to get stuck with anything anymore.

I use Slacker, Pandora, Rhapsody, and my onw stuff uploaded to Amazon and Google streamed through my phone and then Bluetoothed into the car radio on the road or to my ear protection headset when out mowing/trimming/edging the lawn.

If I was going to put music on I could use my ipod. Yes there are alternatives and using them will get me fired. Starbucks has standards on the music it wants played as well as it's own music receiver.

When I get really sick of it I just turn on the Big Band or Classical but then my co-worker complain.

@ Bo sox

Spotify is free, surely?

Premium isn't, which lets you go offline (which, like Draug said, can be used with plugins in a car too).

I didn't know you were talking about Starbucks... that changes it up o_O

Well where else would I be 8 hours a day and have no control over the music? I assumed you could figure that out on your own. Silly me for that.

Didn't read closely, didn't notice 8 hours at all o_O

oh and for music I do my iPod or Pandora for the most part.

The new Mercedes has Sirius XM already activated in it. Woot!

Oh I just hook up Pandora from my phone for my car or the ipod.