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There is something very, very wrong with today’s music

digitalfrost

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Found this interesting article: https://globalnews.ca/news/9001083/why-older-music-more-popular-than-new-music/

There is something very, very wrong with today’s music. It just may not be very good.

On warm summer nights, the park across the street from my house is filled with people playing dribbling soccer balls, playing volleyball, or engaging in aggressive games of Spikeball.

Nearly all of them will have music playing through Bluetooth speakers, usually from the Spotify Top 100. And if I’m honest, none of this music is any good. All I hear is mumbled lyrics tunelessly rendered (well, except for the overuse of Auto-Tune) and beats so quantized that they could be substituted for an atomic clock.

I just re-read that last sentence. Harsh stuff from someone who doesn’t understand the music of today’s youth? Or am I scratching the surface of a problem facing the recorded music industry?

Consider the following:

- Kate Bush’s 1985 song Running Up That Hill hit number one on the U.K. singles charts and has reached the top five in other countries around the world. Hounds of Love, the album which spawned the hit, peaked at #8 on the Canadian charts earlier this summer.

- Metallica’s 1986 track Master of Puppets has been given such a boost by its appearance in Stranger Things that it’s currently in the U.S. Top 40. This eight-minute metal song is competing for attention with the latest from Lizzo, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, and Cardi B.

- Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours is one of the top-selling albums of the year so far. It’s number nine in the U.S. Rumours is also one of the top-selling vinyl albums of the year so far.

- The Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen from 1977 is the top-selling vinyl single of 2022. Further down the list, you’ll find that the Clash’s Rock the Casbah (1982) is the eighth best-selling vinyl record.)

- This past week, Queen’s Greatest Hits (1981) just became the biggest-selling record of all time in the U.K. with seven million copies sold after more than 1,000 weeks on the British charts. Last week, it was number 24 in Canada, a couple of positions ahead of Yer Favourites, the Tragically Hip’s greatest hits collection.

Older music is certainly having a moment this summer and much of this interest is not being driven by nostalgic oldsters but by the same kids playing Spikeball across the street.


Luminate, the company that monitors music consumption for the record industry, noted in its mid-year report that “current” music (identified by the industry as material being less than 18 months old) isn’t just losing market share. It’s becoming statistically less popular among all demographic groups. Looking at the United States, the metric known as “Total Album Consumption” of “current music fell by 1.4 per cent in the first half of 2022 compared to a year ago. Meanwhile, “Catalogue” music — material more than 18 months old — is up by 14 per cent.

We can go even deeper. The market share of “Catalogue” music in America is 72 per cent so far this year with “Current” music sitting at 27.6 per cent. That’s a market share decline of three per cent.

To put it another way, “Current” music is becoming progressively less popular when measured by the number of streams and sales. Whatever is being released today just isn’t resonating with the public the way it did in the past. People are showing a growing interest in listening to older music instead.

This obviously requires some unpacking. Why isn’t “Current” music resonating? What’s with the uptick in interest for older material?

Some will point to the lack of so-called “high-impacting” new releases in 2022. If, for example, Taylor Swift or Adele had new records, these numbers might be different. But as it stands, only 102 albums have debuted in the Billboard Top 100 this year (the definition of “high-impacting”) compared with 126 last year. This might relate to calculations by Music Business Worldwide that show the 10 most popular tracks on streaming services have been listened to over one billion times less than they were over a similar period in 2019. Both point to disenchantment with what’s being offered up as new today.

But maybe, just maybe, the answer lies in artistry and creativity. In recent weeks, numerous posts have appeared featuring laments about the quality of today’s music. Here is an example.

Others have weighed in, complaining that too many of today’s wannabe stars are simply celebrities making music with laptops. Older music recorded in old-fashioned studios with real instruments sounds richer and more interesting. Far too many songs are fast fashion: get ’em out, squeeze everything you can out of the tune, and then forget them. (One critic, pointing to how The Beatles’ Yesterday has been covered more than 3,000 times, asks how many covers there will be of Cardi B’s WAP in the future. He has a point.)

More theories: A lack of genuine storytellers in the vein of Carole King or Jackson Browne. Musicians who buy ready-made beats online and then sing/rap over top and then release the result. A desire to be famous rather than pay their dues learning their craft. (Blame all the TV talent shows for that.) Record labels that don’t nurture and develop artists, resulting in ultra-short careers consisting of one or two songs. A lack of people willing to pursue true mastery of a musical instrument with years of practice. Too much perfection in the recording process, an obsession that strips all the humanity and soul out of a song. (Compare anything from today’s top 10 to a Motown hit and the difference becomes obvious.) Formulaic songwriting (I’m looking at you, Max Martin.) Algorithms which just push more of the same.

I’m not done. Thanks to technology, many of today’s artists are having hit songs without ever playing a single live gig. That means they’ve never had to sweat it out in front of strangers over long tours. That boot camp experience is essential to becoming a better all-around musician. You need that experience if you’re not just going to compete with your heroes’ music on the world stage, but also with your heroes’ heroes’ heroes.

And there’s still more to consider. Cast your mind back to 1962. Music that was thirty years old then sounded old. Not only was modern pop music still developing, but we’d barely begun to use things like electric guitars and proper amps. Effects pedals hadn’t been invented yet nor had synthesizers. Recording studios were primitive things compared to today, capable of only producing material in mono. But then starting sometime around 1969, the sonic quality of recordings reached new levels. A song recorded in 1972 sounds every bit as good as something recorded this year. (In fact, you can make an argument that because of over-production, digital technology, and too much compression, older records sound better than what we have today.)

Now let me twist things around. This is happening because today’s young people — and remember that youth is always the driver of what’s happening in music — recognize bad music when they hear it. They’re smarter than to fall for what passes as hit music today.

Thanks to streaming and smartphones, we have access to somewhere north of 80 million songs. Within seconds, we can call up virtually any song recorded in the history of the human race. Why wouldn’t you source out the best of the best of the best?

Unlike previous generations, today’s music fans are far more ecumenical in their musical tastes. If you have a teenager, ask them to show you the last 25 songs they streamed on their phone. I’ll bet you’ll find everything from Drake to AC/DC to Matthew Wilder (specifically a song from the 1980s that became a weird TikTok phenomenon). To their credit, all they care about are good songs, irrespective of genre or era. That’s healthy.

In other words, the kids are alright. It’s the people running the star-making machinery behind the popular song that aren’t.
 
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Godataloss

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Kate Bush's music was central to the latest season of Stranger Things (Metallica as well). I don't think musicians were substantially more 'creative' 18 months ago. I think it has everything to do with the algorithms that streaming services use to recommend music to consumers. I'm sorry, but your post reads like another boomer's lament.
 

Robin L

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I'm pretty sure the last 25 tracks I played were Bach, but in any case, this Boomer would like to say:


56792fe20ff9388d7c022ee6758405e6.jpg
 

Vini darko

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I see ways of looking at it.
1. we are past the peak of our culture and the stagnation in the entertainment industry is indicative of this.
2. We are just having a lul inbetween explosions of creativity that will catapult our culture into the future.
 

abdo123

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And if I’m honest, none of this music is any good. All I hear is mumbled lyrics tunelessly rendered (well, except for the overuse of Auto-Tune) and beats so quantized that they could be substituted for an atomic clock.

Which is basically what all mainstream music ever was throughout history, I'm tired of older people going for this narrative when this has always been the case.

If you look at most of the Beatles music without the Nostalgia glasses you would realize that they're not very different than Justin Bieber (specially their early works) except that their music is outdated for today's standard.

The 'wall of sound' trend of just playing everything at the same time with little to no dynamics or breath has been a thing since the 70s (ABBA's waterloo and most of their works is a good example of this). Infact if anything trap and rap music the last decade has been steadily moving away from that.

Kate Bush is the exception, not the rule.
 

sergeauckland

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My interest is more for 'classical' music than pop/rock, and every BBC Prom season here I despair at the new compositions being performed, sometimes premiered, at each year's proms. Why do most modern compositions sound like someone throwing a piano down the stairs? It's all Pink-Plonk, Crash, Screech, Bang. No melody or tune one can whistle or hum. Nothing remotely memorable except for its awfulness. It's not even a recent phenomenon, it goes back at least 50 years, but the lack of melody, the lack of a tune, seems to characterise contemporary 'classical' music. It's as if dynamics (as in crash-bang) and dissonance have taken over from creating a harmonious sound.

I can hum along to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, even modern composers like Walton and Elgar, but spare me mid-late 20th Century onwards.

S.
 

Matthias McCready

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As someone who has done a fair amount of crate digging, and exploring through older stuff... not all the music of yesteryear would be considered creative gems either.

----

Another thought is that the music industry has changed a LOT. Most artists I know don't make most of their money off of album sales anymore. One "pop artist" I know, not that I care for his music, is of the opinion that quality doesn't really matter, it is all about quantity. His producers hold him to a tight schedule of releasing singles and songs. The quantity of music keeps him "relevant," and he is able to make enough from streams to pay for rent and groceries, and to do a little bit of touring, which is what brings in the income for most Artists these days. While this is a current trend I dislike, is this really any different than pop music in the 50's churning out short songs, so they could "get more radio plays?"

----

Despite such trends there are a lot of fantastic albums being made today, that will stand the test of time. Turns out the music industry can, "walk and chew gum at the same time."
 
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Robin L

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My interest is more for 'classical' music than pop/rock, and every BBC Prom season here I despair at the new compositions being performed, sometimes premiered, at each year's proms. Why do most modern compositions sound like someone throwing a piano down the stairs? It's all Pink-Plonk, Crash, Screech, Bang. No melody or tune one can whistle or hum. Nothing remotely memorable except for its awfulness. It's not even a recent phenomenon, it goes back at least 50 years, but the lack of melody, the lack of a tune, seems to characterise contemporary 'classical' music. It's as if dynamics (as in crash-bang) and dissonance have taken over from creating a harmonious sound.

I can hum along to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, even modern composers like Walton and Elgar, but spare me mid-late 20th Century onwards.

S.
Now, dontcha get all modernistic on us!

Seriously, that's a century ago.

I'll listen to anything at least once. I think that was enough Walton for me.
 

Vacceo

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There has never been such an amount of amazingly good music as there is now. Probably back then it was meant to be played, but recording devices were too expensive or it was recorded and it's sleeping in some casette on a basement in Tajikistan or around.

Decades ago when I wanted to listen to something from discographics such as Deathlike Silence, Osmose or even Earache or Peaceville, I really had to sweat to even get access to their material. Now, discographics like Iron Bonehead, Norma Evangelium Diaboli, Eisenwald or World Terror Committee are just a couple clicks away and I can even listen to some singles even before buying. I can even get re-issues from very rare classics from Nuclear War Now! and get them comfortably shipped accross the ocean from Texas! Getting stuff from Angelcorpse in years ago in a tiny middle of nowhere Southern Europe town was night impossible!

Sorry, but when I listen to the trope about the music of the past being so much better, I remember the Beach Boys and I cannot help but laugh.
 
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Timcognito

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there was plenty of bad songs in the past also but they are forgotten.
Wait. Billy Don't Be a Hero isn't a good song?

Edit: Sorry for trolling.:facepalm:
 

Robin L

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Sorry, but when I listen to the trope about the music of the past being so much better, I remember the Beach Boys and I cannot help but laugh.
Obviously the esthetics of Surf Music and Deathmetal differ. In terms of musical skill there's no question the Beach Boys were ahead of the curve in their own time, when bands such as those you mention and favor could not exist.

I can listen to Spem in Allium and laugh the lack of musical knowledge of others, but nobody thinks alike now, do we? Let's not dismiss the past on account of said music of the past being so different from what we listen to now.

How does this work sit with you, all of you out there, listening to this?:

 

bluefuzz

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90 % of top 40 pop has always been crap. You've always had to dig a bit to find the good stuff. However, discovering the good stuff has never been easier (and cheaper) than it is now. And there's still plenty of great music to find - new and old.

Music isn't important anymore in the way it was in our youth. Too many other distractions.

Any music released today is not just competing with other current releases, it's also competing with all the other entertainment options as well as a hundred years of recorded music. There's simply more old stuff than there is new stuff. And let's face it there's nothing new under the sun. It's all been done before and usually better ...
 

Somafunk

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There is something very, very wrong with today’s music. It just may not be very good.

Sounds like “old man shouts at clouds” to me.

I’d say 90%+ of the music I listen to is created by very talented artists using electronics/software, my preferred genres are electronic/techno etc.
I’m not exactly young either at the age of 49 and whilst I listened and loved standards such as Led Zeppeliin and rock music back in the late 80’s I find the guitar/drums/singer format pretty boring and tired now and never listen to it at all. The turning point for me was a rave in a forest and a dose of mdma back in 1991, best thing that could have happened to me musically ;), saying that the explosion of the “Brit pop scene in the 90’s” was pretty good.

There’s more good music now than has ever been, I love it.
 

movehome

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In the metal genre there are some really good bands. Soen and Horrendous are two of my favourites.

In progressive rock, Big Big Train had a string of 5 or so amazing albums starting with "The Underfall Yard."

I haven't listened to much of the top spotify songs but I watched a Rick Beato vid on it in which there were clips played and his main criticism of the top 10 was they were all very repetitive, mundane, boring, and lacked and elements or surprise or anything really interesting happening.

 

Aerith Gainsborough

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There’s lots of good new music being made. It just doesn’t get played on the radio.
This. There are tons of soundtracks that are wonderful to listen to.
So there is a lot of contemporary stuff that know how to please the ear. That includes electronic music as well.

The mainstream music is .... well... not very good.
But I'm pretty sure that has been true at any given time. You need to look for stuff that fits your tastes.
 

bluefuzz

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I am fairly certain that creative expression through music peaked with the advent of the "banjo orchestra." :D:oops:

banjo_orchestra.jpg

That guy on the left with the guitar is never going to be heard! He could be playing a completely different tune and no one would notice. Banjos are LOUD ... ;-)

And don't forget that pinnacle of culture the mandolin orchestra:

blog-mandolins-053014-1423594009.jpg
 
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