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In reply to the discussion: Is the music of today worse than it was 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years ago? Or am I just old? [View all]paulkienitz
(1,296 posts)Last edited Fri Nov 16, 2018, 01:15 PM - Edit history (1)
I've appreciated music from a great many times, from medieval chants to Mozart to Minor Threat, and I think I can state objectively that music has gone downhill since the nineties.
In both Jazz and Rock, there are cycles where popular music gets stale and repetitive, but then is replaced with a new sound that revitalizes the genre. In rock this happened on a surprisingly regular schedule: 1951, 1964, 1977, 1991, ... but in 2004, it never happened. When the old sound got stale and commericalized, nothing new came out of the garages to replace it.
It is not an aesthetic opinion, but an objective fact, that commercially sold music is now far more than before a product of digitally automated studio production lines rather than of actual musicians playing for love of the art. I think it's also pretty objective to say that a lot of the music that becomes popular and gains listeners is a product of surprisingly little human effort, with little grounds to describe those who make it as musicians. And I think it's also objective to say that less music nowadays is really about something beyond simple aggrandizement of the singer. Given these facts, I don't think I'm putting all that much subjective spin on it to say that the result of these changes is music that sucks.
Lack of music education in the schools is one factor. Nobody learns to play instruments in their youth anymore. Another big factor is that real musicians can't make real money anymore, thanks to services such as Spotify which suppress their royalties to absurdly low levels, doing more harm to creators than piracy ever did.
Musicians who are happy to live with touring can still make an adequate income with live shows, but they now have nowhere above that level to aspire to. When's the last time anyone became a rich star by playing guitar or piano? It doesn't happen anymore. Pop and rap stars who are willing to totally embed themselves in the mass production machine are the only "musicians" who make good money anymore.