Where are the bands defining Gen Z?

By Tyler Montgomery | Guest Contributor

Where’s the Gen Z music?

An imme­di­ate coun­terex­am­ple would prob­a­bly land the con­ver­sa­tion on the rock band Greta Van Fleet, but they’re not Gen Z either — they were born in 1996, which makes them the youngest millennials.

It feels that an entire gen­er­a­tion lis­tened, but didn’t par­tic­i­pate. Even when ask­ing Gen Z friends and acquain­tances about the bands of their gen­er­a­tion that inspire them, they tend to be at a loss — they sim­ply don’t exist.

This isn’t to sug­gest that there aren’t Gen Z bands or artists, but they are few, and the notable ones are even few­er — not count­ing solo artists or social media sensations.

It’s a true conun­drum. Why did an entire gen­er­a­tion decide not to estab­lish bands and pur­sue music more aggressively?

The record indus­try has been in flux for many years. With the rise in dig­i­tal music over the past 20 years, a lot of indus­try trends have pushed sin­gles over albums. And while there are still music venues all over the U.S., a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties in an over­sat­u­rat­ed indus­try cre­ate a bot­tle­neck for new artists.

I believe that there’s room for new artists — but I think the days of try­ing to sign with a record label are ful­ly dead.

Artists today don’t need sup­port from labels to get their art in cir­cu­la­tion. Physical media, out­side of the resur­gence in vinyl, has almost com­plete­ly fall­en by the wayside.

In pre­vi­ous years artists need­ed labels and addi­tion­al sup­port to get an album pressed and dis­trib­uted to Walmart and oth­er major music retail­ers. They also need­ed assis­tance for radio airplay.

Due to plat­forms like iTunes, Spotify and YouTube, as well as local inde­pen­dent radio sta­tions, artists no longer need labels for that sup­port. In fact, to sign with a label would just be more mon­ey that would need to be split.

Gen X artists like Joe Bonamassa have spent years blaz­ing a path away from labels and the tra­di­tion­al artist route.

But, while it’s become so much eas­i­er to record, dis­trib­ute and gain atten­tion than ever before, why don’t we have more music from a generation? 

Could the appar­ent short­age of promi­nent Gen Z bands reflect a fail­ure by old­er gen­er­a­tions to sup­port young musi­cians, the effects of COVID-19, indus­try over­sat­u­ra­tion or a fail­ure to Save the Music?