Sure.
Let's just forget all about r&b, country, folk, the British Invasion in the mid 60's, Flower Power/Youth Rebellion, heavy rock, art rock, etc. And not a word about jazz.
Sure.
We were talking about the 90's
That "blip" as you referred to it changed EVERYTHING both in and related to, the music business in so many ways.
By the mid 80's there was a HUGE underground of bands, and subcultures related to those bands, in North America, Europe and Japan who were selling tons of album, and cultural merchandise, without any radio, and without direct involvement from large record companies. Yet these records showed up in stores all over the world. Their clothes and trinkets were being sold all over the world. Even whole networks of reciprocating club circuits were lucrative without any major's help.
Radio stations and record companies, who's real jobs are to sell listeners to advertisers realized they were missing a HUGE chunk of potential income. To a lot of people, even MTV was for the background at parties, and when you drove home you popped in a cassette of the bands you really liked, whether or not they were majors.
The whole entertainment industry, first in a little trickle, but then as a flood had decided this couldnt go on, they needed those listeners, those consumers. Its hard not to be cynical here, but they brought out what some considered undergound, and which seemed underground enough to be "legit" (this would be paralleled in RAP later in the mid 90's). The most famously probably being Nirvana. A whole theme was put out that independants were taking over the mainstream, that big money had gone away and radio was playing the underground, and it was enough to pull enough people in to truly shut off and kill all but the most die hard subcultures. Each subculture was given its own radio station in most markets. It divided people up, making advertising easier, but in a way brought them all together, into the light where the money could see them.
Advertising companies like Clear Channel started buying up venues and radio stations, with the eventual result that if you wanted to play ANYWHERE you had to follow their rules.
It occured to a lot of people, "why bother hoping to find entertainment that sells by scouting entertainers off the streets, why not *grow our own, from a pool we already have and control?"
And the Nickelodeon to MTV express was born. It was an easy bet to take an already familiar child actor, and as the kids who watch them were growing up, move the actors in as bands. This led to the now familiar requirement to be VERY young in order to "get signed" and the need for video more than songs, talent, or even fans from shows (no kidding here).
Of course the guys who had originally given all the market to the above board business couldnt be too happy about all this, as they were already "old". The alleged independant, alleged "screw the system" meme had grown and was believed full force. Except for a handpicked few, they wouldnt be getting giant chunks of record company money for recording and promotion so many had to get creative.
The Seattle and "alternative scenes " in general had to pretend that what they were doing was "organic", "not overproduced", "live", and other silly words that were mostly lies, but were what they were trying to sell. Recording technology had to catch up with the speed of album releases, and the general lack of money with such a huge explosion in the numbers of bands.
The Seattle "blip" got a LOT of very smart people, VERY involved into Digital Signal Processing, analog to digital conversion, and data storage.
The quality standards of recordings had to be DRASTICALLY lowered to make these recordings possible, while the bang for the buck of the equipment, and the overall quality of "hobby" equipment had to JUMP a giant technical gap...the two met somewhere in the middle.
This was the birth of the situation we have today, known as "good enough", as in "I guess thatll have to do". There needed to be a piece of technology to embody "good enough" and that was the Alesis ADAT. This was the first truly cheap digital multitrack recorder. While it was a horrible sounding, unreliable piece of total crap, it sounded WAY better than anything in its price range should, and created the "project studio" revolution along with some other names like Mackie. All of a sudden you had a HUGE number of "studios" and a gigantic glut of bands who had finished albums, ready to sell that were "good enough"
This created a backlash by other "indies" who wanted "real", "organic" "live" types of sound. Here was the beginnings of the Chicago "analog scene" (not so big back then, but really today the only survivor today and doing well), but in a far more noticeable fashion, the Tempe scene. Here was a "return to 2 inch analog" (as if the big studios had ever left the professional formats) but by new and up and coming producers and engineers. If you were trying to sell yourself as indy, and "real", Tempe was the place to be.
Both of these competing scenes led to a huge arms race in technology. A lot of the nifty features you see in your consumer products today. BBE on your car stereo, affordable home surround, 3d audio, ambience processing, and yes the miniaturization of analog to digital circuits and digital to analog circuits in your ipod.
Before these "blips" the quality of the devices we ooh and ahh over today would have been for the most part, unacceptable, but now we consider the sound of an mp3 "good" and thats how it happened.
Now in the 00's all this "indy" stuff has faded away, without any real resurgence in a lucrative underground (though certain styles are doing reasonably well, like a new type of "harmonic death metal" and a steadily growing hardcore punk market). Now we reap the child actors of kids shows as they become the bands of today. And of course you see the "promote from within" being carried on by the "reality TV" shows as well.
Those little "blips" created the entire situation for how entertainment is sold today. Look at the trend of symphony orchestras playing with "alternative bands" that hasnt happened in any real way since WAY back to Deep Purple, but noone is surprised when metallica goes on with some symphony now. A whole new world.
For better or for worse that little blip has had a huge effect on entertainment
