Beatles transformed the music industry

So KXOK was playing The Beatles, The Kinks, The
Hollies, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Beach
Boys, Jan and Dean, Leslie Gore, Chad and Jeremy,
Petula Clark, The Kingsmen ("Louie Louie"),
Herman and the Hermits, Freddie and the Dreamers
(a forgotten British Invasion group who I liked),
The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones -- it was a golden
age and we didn't know it.

I'm glad nobody told me at the time that I was
going to be listening to that stuff for the
rest of my life :)

Being young, I assumed that I'd be listening
to new hits like that week after week for the
rest of my life.

Yet 1964 to through the early 70s were a
period like no other in music and like no
other ever will be or can be, no matter how
talented the musicians involved.

See, as I've been stressing, rock and roll was
very low on the musical totem pole in 1964. The
industry itself was much smaller than now.

The Beatles and all the other groups that
followed into the early 70s boosted the industry
in size and scope to a huge degree. Both
financially and socially.

And inevitably a formerly nonexistent degree of
market segmentation ocurred. Hard rock grew into
heavy metal and thrash etc. Country music is
now more popular than ever. Rap, etc.

They're a huge number of local radio stations
playing pop music of various kinds.

So nobody can ever do to the industry what The
Beatles did, for the simple reason that The
Beatles have already done it. Made rock
evolution take a huge quantum leap in both
quality and quantity and variety.

Megastars and hits still come along and will
continue to - but they can't transform the
industry as The Beatles did.