Today myself and a musician friend of mine were trading stories of bogus gigs, mostly pretty standard- playing to empty rooms, dickhead sound guys, beautiful women who watch your set but vanish once your gear is packed up and you are ready to talk to them.

It was fun. Swapping shitty gig stories is always fun. Its what I imagine the camaraderie is like when cops get together and talk about raids they’ve made and people they’ve busted-the same basic stories, but wrapped in different locations with different characters. If there’s a common denominator among musicians, it has to be the bad gig.

Anyway, my friend is what you would commonly call a singer-songwriter, by virtue of the fact that he sings and plays guitar, often at the same time. Maybe it was insensitive to have said this outright, but as he was describing a recent discouraging performance, I said something to the effect of, “yeah, well it must be extra hard for you, given the type of music you play”.

I wouldn’t normally make a sweeping statement about an entire genre of music, but I really do think being a singer-songwriter at this point in time is unbelievably difficult. Why? To say simply “because there are so many other singer-songwriters out there” would be remiss, but still the beginnings of truth. It is how this soaring number of singer-songwriters is affecting the way we hear and judge music of this genre.

The Internet changed everything. Ugh. I will never say, “the internet changed everything” again, because it should just be assumed that, in any discussion pertaining to music nowadays, the internet did in fact change everything. The ability to create, distribute, and promote music is within the grasp of just about anyone. What does this mean?

It means we are graduating from the withering model of big-label A&R manufactured talent, but are still lost is the chaotic musical populism of the Internet. Myspace, youtube, and inexpensive home recording setups have given the tools to just about anyone, but we still lack the critical infrastructure to keep up with all this damn music.

Why target singer-songwriters? There’s nothing more basic and accessible musically than guitar and voice. But I’ve heard so much singer-songwriter music, that I honestly have trouble differentiating the good from the bad. By giving a venue to everyone, our collective standards have gone down. Because we are inundated by mediocrity, it has become harder to recognize true talent when we see it. It has caused a widespread degradation of our expectations.

But we are catching up. Music discovery services. Those are the buzz now, right? Sites such as thesixtyone.com are helping us wade through the masses of independent music online right now, and identifying which may be worthy of our time. Pandora is great, but doesn’t help us tackle the indie jungle as well.

As far as the singer-songwriters I’ve offended, the same argument can be used for a lot of the music out there and DIY music culture in general- anybody with a condenser microphone, a Pro-Tools rig, and a desire to objectify women can be a hip-hop artist now. And to further appease the SS people, I’m listening to Bon Iver right now and he makes me want to quit my job and spend the rest of my days on a dirt farm. A few chords and a voice can still do it.