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Can Someone Tell Me What Happened To Alternative Music?

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I'm going to blame it on me "growing up" but I've (un)fortunately haven't been caught up to popular music for the past few years. I live in Toronto and have been turning on 102.1 The Edge lately but have been hearing music that doesn't sound very edgy anymore. I am hearing songs by these bands: Imagine Dragons, Of Monsters And Men, Lorde, Bastille, Fitz and The Tantrums, The Neighbourhood, Young The Giant, Vampire Weekend, Grouplove, Twenty One Pilots, CHVRCHES, Broken Bells, AWOLNATION, New Politics, Portugal The Man, Phantogram, NONONO, July Talk, Wildlife, MS MR, Dear Rouge, etc...and to me, this music sounds like something that should be getting played on 99.9 Virgin Radio or KISS 92.5 (Top 40 stations). Am I crazy to say this or has the switchover been so gradual that the change of format wasn't even noticed?

 

Almost everything to me sounds like either cookie-cutter hipster electronic music or annoying hipster folk anthems. I may be generalizing a bit here but it's hard for me to decipher between most of these songs. Could someone pinpoint the date to where alternative rock radio turned into Top 40 radio? Was it actually this year or even before that? Was it the popularity of Florence & The Machine and Mumford and Sons that opened the doors for all of these bands? I heard the latest A Perfect Circle song once on The Edge and it did not belong on the playlist at all.

 

So...what the hell happened?!

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I don't know why this is happening, but I've noticed a very similar change to the classic rock station here in Victoria. 100.3 The Q has been playing more and more new "hipster" music. For example, I was unaware that "Fun." and "Serena Ryder" were classic rock. I have a feeling that stations are doing this since the ones that get the most listeners play the generic pop music, so to try and stay relevant they play some newer stuff. I can't think of any other reason than for that.

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Rock has mostly been taken over by hipster "indie" bands. "Indie" music, as a musical genre, started to become really popular around 5 years ago or so. Now it dominates the rock scene. It's good in the fact that actual rock bands besides Nickelback are becoming a bit more popular, but bad in the fact that, yes, these bands have little to no edge/aggression to them. Maybe the rock scene needs another "grunge"-like movement ala Nirvana/Pearl Jam etc. in the early 90's to bring back some real rockers and bury the posers.

 

Also consider that the "hard rock" scene has been fucking murdered by mainstream corporate rock radio stations who have played absolute SHIT bands like Nickelback and their clones for years and won't stop playing Kings of Leon hits.

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