Did grunge actually kill hair steel? The reply is not as cut-and-dry as you’ve got been led to consider, in keeping with veteran rock producer Howard Benson.
In an unique interview with Loudwire, Benson particulars a few of the huge adjustments the music trade has undergone because the big-money days of the ’80s and ’90s — some for higher, some for worse. He additionally explains how, because the co-founder of his personal label, Decide & Jury Information, he is capable of give his artists rather more equitable offers and assist them make hits for a fraction of the meals funds bands used to command.
The present local weather of the music trade presents its personal set of challenges, however Benson’s a long time’ value of expertise underscores that earlier eras have been upended as nicely. That features a little nugget about hair steel’s downfall you may not have been conscious of.
How Nielsen SoundScan Helped Kill Hair Metallic
Earlier than engaged on smash hits for the likes of My Chemical Romance, Hoobastank, Three Days Grace, Halestorm and Daughtry, Benson made inroads within the late-’80s arduous rock scene by producing Bang Tango’s Psycho Cafe and Fairly Boy Floyd’s Leather-based Boyz With Electrical Toyz. Each 1989 debuts carried out respectably, however multi-platinum success eluded the glam steel latecomers because the scene was already on its means out.
“I acquired into the music enterprise about two years too late,” Benson tells Loudwire. “That period, the hair band period, had began with, nearly, Weapons N’ Roses — you possibly can say 1986, round then, and it peaked in 1991 with the start of Nirvana. That’s what killed it, just about. So I actually had my first actual file with Bang Tango. That was about 1989, 1990. After which after that, the Fairly Boy Floyds and the Little Caesars and Kid’s Play, all these bands, they have been type of already over. That sound was historical past, however we did not actually realize it but.”
The glam steel scene’s seemingly in a single day extinction upon the appearance of the Seattle sound (colloquially referred to as grunge) and the discharge of Nirvana’s Nevermind has been endlessly documented. However Benson factors to at least one different main issue that helped put the spandex-clad, big-haired rockers six ft beneath: Nielsen SoundScan.
READ MORE: The Greatest Album by 11 Legendary Hair Metallic Bands
Launched in 1991, SoundScan collected album gross sales knowledge from barcode scans at collaborating companies. It changed Billboard‘s outdated methodology of calling file shops throughout the USA, making for extra correct tallies that have been much less susceptible to error or fraud. This, Benson explains, led to main chart shakeups that upended the standard knowledge about what was well-liked on the flip of the last decade.
“Folks do not actually equate these two occasions taking place, however SoundScan confirmed you what we have been actually promoting,” Benson says. “And earlier than that, you faked the numbers. All people faked them. Not me, I did not work at a file firm. However Columbia would stroll into Tower [Records] and say, “Okay, I will provide you with 50 free Bon Jovi data and you are going to say we bought 100 Bon Jovi data,” and the clerk would say, ‘Okay.'”
As soon as SoundScan carried out its barcode-scanning system, different artists emerged as frontrunners — and never simply rock bands. “I bear in mind the week it got here in that the No. 1 file was one thing no one had ever heard of, a man named Garth Brooks,” Benson remembers. “And hastily, all of the hair bands have been on the backside of the chart and we thought they have been all on the high of the chart. So after all, the file firm stopped signing them nearly the following week. After which Nirvana. All of these things occurred without delay.”
READ MORE: The Historical past of Grunge Informed in 13 Albums
Why Howard Benson Is ‘Type of Glad’ the Outdated Report Business Is Gone
In 2021, Benson co-founded Decide & Jury Information with Three Days Grace drummer Neil Sanderson. Their aim is to present artists larger inventive freedom and extra mutually useful offers than within the halcyon days of the music trade, when cash was flying all over the place however artists had little say in the way it acquired spent.
“Our budgets have been $300,000, $400,000 each file — and that was thought-about low cost, consider it or not,” Benson says. “The computer systems modified all the pieces and made it a totally completely different enterprise. I imply, God, dinners for a whole venture would price like 30,000 bucks and the bands anticipated it. If the bands did not have a meals funds, they might freak out. The legal professionals leap on the cellphone and stuff. You possibly can grasp [an album] seven occasions.”
These days, a Decide & Jury artist can file a whole album for a similar worth as a type of dizzying meals budgets of yesteryear and so they’ll cut up the income 50-50 with the label (an unprecedented transfer again within the day). Benson says this setup incentivizes each artist and label to make the perfect music potential. And even because the mp3 and streaming eras have cannibalized the income of the file trade, there’s nonetheless cash to be made when the collaborations are profitable.
READ MORE: How Three Days Grace Made the Greatest Rock Album of 2025 (Interview)
“I bear in mind a man over at Interscope advised me they mastered the No Doubt file like 20 occasions,” Benson remembers. “And now, after all, after the mp3, we actually have realized that none of that mattered as a result of individuals did not give a shit whether or not it was an mp3 or a wav file or any of that. It was this large comeuppance for all of different technical guys.”
It’s normal for music trade professionals to bemoan the lack of the outdated methods, however Benson has a special perspective. “I am form of glad it occurred. Truly, it made the songs extra essential,” he argues. “Within the manufacturing course of, you are not worrying an excessive amount of about, ‘Is it this guitar or that guitar? Is it 48kHz or 44.1 kHz?’ No one cares. Are you chatting with someone or not? Are you delivering this emotion?”
“I feel nice data are while you get all of it proper, while you pull all of it off,” Benson continues. “However you possibly can nonetheless have the file firm be blissful by having hits that price you 1,000 bucks.”
See how these different well-known producers acquired their begin in bands of their very own:
Bands 27 Massive Music Producers Have been In Earlier than and After Switching Careers
Earlier than they have been title producers (and typically whereas), they’d bands and performing careers of their very own.
Gallery Credit score: Rob Carroll
