why is music today so ****e

HansHolzel · 21-09-2013 11:50PM

Reeling in the Years displayed the problem in a stark fashion.

The muzak to the Noughties version is f*cking truly dreadful.

The mine in America that provided/inspired the good stuff from the 1950s to the 1990s is now exhausted.

djflawless · 21-09-2013 11:56PM

the_syco wrote: »

Radios are paid to play stuff to get it sold. Maybe try and find an internet radio station that plays the sort of music that you like?

Flirt fm-the "choons" 4 u

Look it has to be said, dance music has and will have its revolutions

dancs has had its ups and downs

but its what people crave at the time,
Like all the artists that have figured that the best selling music at the min is 90% electro

just look thru imro records the past 3 years!!!
Dance pop (i fckuing hate most of the crap) is thriving atm

4-5 months time, a new "genre" of dance music will be chart toppers

another stat to prove the uprise of dance music....oxegen and the picnic headliner changes the past 3 years

AtomicHorror · 22-09-2013 12:49AM

whirlpool wrote: »

Because it's more disposable today than ever. There's no commitment involved anymore. You pay 99c for a piece of crap on iTunes. You used to be charged 4.99 for a CD single, or 15.99 for an album. And if you were gonna fork out that much money, you wanted quality. Not like today.

Ah yes the good old days. Don't kid yourself, you were not paying for quality. You were paying for the record label, factory, shipping trucks, distribution centres, shops and hundreds of other middle men between you and the artist. Music is cheaper now because it's not dependant on these things anymore.

If the "quality" has genuinely dropped off in some sense- and I don't even know how we'd determine that- it's got nothing to do with the price of music.

djflawless · 22-09-2013 12:54AM

With the influence of the interweb, finding new, raw artists has never been easier

Godeatsboogers · 22-09-2013 12:56AM

Is music ****e today? I dont think it is, I think youre listening to sub par radio stations.

FatherTed · 22-09-2013 01:01AM

There is some good rock music out there by new bands, you just have to forget the mainstream radio and find the music that suits you.

But really on this day and age I don't know why this is even an issue with the amount of music you can store on your phone/listening device and how easy it is to buy and use it. Not to mention Pandora/Internet and satelitte radio where you can pick and choose the stations that play the music you like.

Dicky Pride · 22-09-2013 01:04AM

I can remember listening to the bee gees "you win again" in 1987. I was 7. I heard it today and it brought back a lot of memories. And then it hit me...that song, and all those other great 80s hits...was a chart song. We think of it as an oldie but sometimes forget that it was a piece of chart music like Miley Cyrus and Justin bieber. Is it any wonder why nostalgia is so popular?

eyeball kid · 22-09-2013 01:10AM

rob316 wrote: »

Yes no decent rock music is a tragedy I cant stand this indie stuff killers, snow patrol and all these other bunch of old mans arses.

Snow patrol and the Killers are indie? Not sure about that. They're about as mainstream rock as you can get these days but not really indie.

I honestly don't think I've ever heard a song by 1 direction or Justin Beiber or anyone like that. I find it pretty easy to avoid all that kind of stuff and just listen to the music I want to generally.

B.A._Baracus · 22-09-2013 01:14AM

I think the problem with mainstream music is demographic. Think about it. I am a dude pushing 30. No way Justin Beibler for example would appeal to me. I am not a teenage girl. But the biggest market out there is the teenage audience.

So as we get older we push away from mainstream music. My two cents anyway.

fryup · 22-09-2013 01:15AM

because we've run out of keys and chords

i'm not technically musical but i persume theres only so many musical arrangments (notes & chords) you can put together and at this stage there nearly all been used up esp in pop music....can anyone confirm this??

22-09-2013 01:16AM

eyeball kid wrote: »

Snow patrol and the Killers are indie? Not sure about that. They're about as mainstream rock as you can get these days but not really indie.

I honestly don't think I've ever heard a song by 1 direction or Justin Beiber or anyone like that. I find it pretty easy to avoid all that kind of stuff and just listen to the music I want to generally.

Always best to keep an open mind, otherwise you could miss out on something that's completely awesome, or just avoid a load of shiít

AtomicHorror · 22-09-2013 01:16AM

HansHolzel wrote: »

Reeling in the Years displayed the problem in a stark fashion.

The muzak to the Noughties version is f*cking truly dreadful.

The mine in America that provided/inspired the good stuff from the 1950s to the 1990s 2000s is now exhausted.

Corrected for 2023 edition.

AtomicHorror · 22-09-2013 01:17AM

fryup wrote: »

because we've run out of keys and chords

i'm not technically musical but i persume theres only so many musical arrangments (notes & chords) you can put together and at this stage there nearly all been used up esp in pop music....can anyone confirm this??

Yeah, no that's horse****.

whirlpool · 22-09-2013 01:17AM

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Ah yes the good old days. Don't kid yourself, you were not paying for quality. You were paying for the record label, factory, shipping trucks, distribution centres, shops and hundreds of other middle men between you and the artist. Music is cheaper now because it's not dependant on these things anymore.

If the "quality" has genuinely dropped off in some sense- and I don't even know how we'd determine that- it's got nothing to do with the price of music.

No. My point was not that more money equaled better quality.

My point was that if you were going to be charged five times more, back then, for music than you would be charged today, then people were more likely to choose something of better quality.

The minimum you used to have to spend to purchase a song was upwards of €4. Today, that figure is more like 79c.

Today you don't have to spend as much as you used to to get a song, so people spend their money more flippantly without thinking about it as much as before. Less thought goes into the purchase, which leads to spending money on lower quality.

22-09-2013 01:24AM

fryup wrote: »

because we've run out of keys and chords

i'm not technically musical but i persume theres only so many musical arrangments (notes & chords) you can put together and at this stage there nearly all been used up esp in pop music....can anyone confirm this??

Yes, and only a small proportion of them are pleasing to the ear, copy them and you risk being sued by some established musicians label.

fryup · 22-09-2013 01:27AM

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

thats what i'm getting at

there's only so many chord & keys that can be used and after time its becoming more and more difficult to come up with an original arrangement that will be appealing and pleasing to the ear

AtomicHorror · 22-09-2013 01:37AM

whirlpool wrote: »

No. My point was not that more money equaled better quality.

My point was that if you were going to be charged five times more, back then, for music than you would be charged today, then people were more likely to choose something of better quality.

Sure, or at least that which is agreed to be so by word of mouth or music critics or whatever. Purchases were more selective, yes.

whirlpool wrote: »

The minimum you used to have to spend to purchase a song was upwards of €4. Today, that figure is more like 79c.

Today you don't have to spend as much as you used to to get a song, so people spend their money more flippantly without thinking about it as much as before. Less thought goes into the purchase, which leads to spending money on lower quality.

And why would that mean that poorer quality music becomes more popular overall? Granted, it means that more poor-quality tracks find their way to peoples ears. But the stuff that will spread by word of mouth and the stuff that gets repeat business for that artist will do so based on the same criteria as always. The question you haven't answered is whether the new ecosystem favours poor quality tracks over good quality ones. Whether the relative uptake has changed.

Here's the key thing: if good quality tracks also "do better" (more sales, more listens, whatever) in the new ecosystem, and if they do better to an equal or greater extent than poor quality tracks, then the increased uptake of poor quality tracks has no significant meaning. The radio stations will still play the quality tracks (assuming the radio stations play based on relative popularity of tracks), the charts will still reflect the better quality and the guy in your office who hums all the time will be humming a quality choon.

For your assertion to be true, poor quality tracks would need to be doing better relative to good quality tracks in the new ecosystem. I'm dying to know how you've established that to be the case (and how you've managed to define "quality" music).

Lightbulb Sun · 22-09-2013 01:41AM

fryup wrote: »

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

thats what i'm getting at

there's only so many chord & keys that can be used and after time its becoming more and more difficult to come up with an original arrangement that will be appealing and pleasing to the ear

Not true, that's where creativity comes into play. And it hasn't just magically run out as we've entered a new decade.

AtomicHorror · 22-09-2013 01:47AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes, and only a small proportion of them are pleasing to the ear, copy them and you risk being sued by some established musicians label.

A short melody of about 20 notes can be configured in 12 to the power of 20 different ways (3.83x10^21- a ****ing huge number), and that's before we add extras like harmony, tempo, time signature and dynamics (or say, 3 more minutes of melody). Sure, in the grand scheme of things, most of those trillions of melodies are going to sound like crap, but that's a subjective assessment that shifts over time with changes in culture. Most modern classics would sound horrible to a person from even just a century ago.

There's plenty of new music to be composed, and even copyrights die eventually.

fryup · 22-09-2013 01:50AM

Lightbulb Sun wrote: »

Not true, that's where creativity comes into play. And it hasn't just magically run out as we've entered a new decade.

but with time its becoming more difficult to be creative & original...and theres very few artists out there who seem to be capable of it

22-09-2013 01:51AM

Lightbulb Sun wrote: »

Not true, that's where creativity comes into play. And it hasn't just magically run out as we've entered a new decade.

Only if you can tweak it enough not to be accused of plagiarism, there are so many remixes, rewrites etc. but that is what's happening now, truly original stuff is quite rare today, until someone develops a new type of musical instrument or creates a new sound out of an pre-existing one.

Lightbulb Sun · 22-09-2013 01:57AM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Only if you can tweak it enough not to be accused of plagiarism, there are so many remixes, rewrites etc. but that is what's happening now, truly original stuff is quite rare today, until someone develops a new type of musical instrument or creates a new sound out of an pre-existing one.

That's because most genres have been mined, there are still opportunities in hybrid genres or fusion. It's not as if the individual creative possibilities of distinctly different songwriters and their ability to create good new music is undermined. I don't think this can happen and indeed hasn't yet.

22-09-2013 01:59AM

AtomicHorror wrote: »

A short melody of about 20 notes can be configured in 12 to the power of 20 different ways (3.83x10^21- a ****ing huge number), and that's before we add extras like harmony, tempo, time signature and dynamics (or say, 3 more minutes of melody). Sure, in the grand scheme of things, most of those trillions of melodies are going to sound like crap, but that's a subjective assessment that shifts over time with changes in culture. Most modern classics would sound horrible to a person from even just a century ago.

There's plenty of new music to be composed, and even copyrights die eventually.

yes I agree there are an almost infinite number of combinations of notes, but as I've already said there is a limited that sound pleasing to the ear (well some ears).
Music changes and repeats, as it has always done but with additional technology to add extra "value" to it. I can think of several songs that have been completely "refurbished" several times but they are still basically the same song as originally released in the 1960s.

fryup · 22-09-2013 02:07AM

Lightbulb Sun wrote: »

That's because most genres have been mined, there are still opportunities in hybrid genres or fusion. It's not as if the individual creative possibilities of distinctly different songwriters and their ability to create good new music is undermined. I don't think this can happen and indeed hasn't yet.

but will it be appealing to a mass market ?? have my doubts

personally i think there'll never be a return to the days of the pop/rock golden era of the 60s 70s 80s

thats why i go out of my way to see the likes of fleetwood mac, roger waters, neil young, springsteen, mccartney...cause we'll never have artists as talented and unique as them again (imo)

StupidLikeAFox · 22-09-2013 02:32AM

The Strypes!

Ace Attorney · 22-09-2013 02:42AM

Music is good today but the only ones that seem to get airtime are the ones aimed toward teenagers one direction and talyor swift and the like , the good stuff hardly ever gets airtime due to to a huge teenage fanbase

Penfailed · 22-09-2013 02:46AM

djflawless wrote: »

To be fair....thats bull
90's dance-revolution in music by anyones standards.if you cant think of at least 5 90's dance anthems that didnt have you thinking, "hey, thats not bad!" you have a serious upset mind

Says DJ Flawless...

greedygoblin · 22-09-2013 02:50AM

What I want to know is how in the name of Zeus did Psy and Gangnam Style become so damn popular? And wasn't there a song out about six months before that sounded almost exactly the same but better?

22-09-2013 03:40AM

rob316 wrote: »

why is music today so ****e

The Vulcan "Tuvok" in the stupid crap load of TV called "Voyager" once got allocated a line that was actually worth hearing.

His line was something like "How would one recognize the light if one had never seen the darkness?".

I like that line. It explains a lot of things. Including your question.

You should forget why "music today" is so bad... but use the bad quality of music today as a yard stick against which you measure music that actually is quality.

"The Concert" springs to mind.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 22-09-2013 03:55AM

Have to laugh at some of the local headers in my town listening to 'Gangsta' Rap. I reckon from an educated guess that 90% of them don't take too kindly to coloured folk in our little rural cesspool.

why is music today so ****e

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