Anyway there's going to be co-causation: did Gen-X college-grad hipsters fuel the rise of alt-rock, or did the boom in alt-rock bands conform to the tastes of Gen-X college-grad hipsters and their increasing wealth (via the boomm in tech companies), and how much of that was mere social signalling about trying to be cool, vs musical tastes and intentional curation?
Where did you get the idea that Microsoft caused REM? All I said was they followed similar trajectories.
You think the radio, tv, live concert and record industry made billions selling a product people were only pretending to like?
There’s a lot to be explored in the social currents of the 80s-90s and the business of the music industry but you’re not going to get there from that angle.
Noone suggested Microsoft caused REM. I agreed with you that their separate rises happened to have similar trajectories, your observation was interesting, and I suggested there's not much to it beyond a loose correlation.
Anyway there's going to be co-causation: did Gen-X college-grad hipsters fuel the rise of alt-rock, or did the boom in alt-rock bands conform to the tastes of Gen-X college-grad hipsters and their increasing wealth (via the boomm in tech companies), and how much of that was mere social signalling about trying to be cool, vs musical tastes and intentional curation?