One of the unexpected consequences of the technological revolution is the death of the popular music industry. The sale of physical content has just about disappeared, outside of the vinyl subculture. Even if you count downloads, the gross sales of music decline more than ten percent per year. On a per capita basis, popular music revenues are a little more than half of their peak fifty years ago. The biggest drop in sales started with the introduction of the mp3.
Unlike the newspaper industry, which thought they could make money giving their content away on the internet, the music industry always saw technology as a threat to their business model. They famously fought the introduction of cassettes because it would make it easier to record and transport music. If you could copy that album and give the copy to a friend, the music industry reasoned, there would be no reason for the friend to buy the album.
The music industry went to extraordinary lengths to protect their cartel, but they simply could not hold off the flood of technology. They treated downloaders like the Israelis treat Palestinian civilians, but it failed to deter people from downloading free copies of the song they wanted. Eventually, the industry gave into reality and started selling single copies of songs, but by that point, the horse had left the barn. There are too many ways to get a copy of a song free of charge.
The hope was streaming services would stem the bleeding. Instead of loading up on free music maybe people would pay five bucks a month to have access to everything all the time from anywhere. That did seem to work for a while, but then it just further cratered the music sales side of the business. There is also the fact that the public does not listen to as much pop music as in the past. Part of it is demographics, but part of it is the collapse in the quality of content.
This is starting to damage the last area where money could be made in the music business, which is the live show. For the first time in a decade, excluding the Covid years, live shows are in decline. The popular excuse is to blame the ticket sellers and the secondary market for pricing people out of the events. The claim is the ticket sellers are gouging the consumer with demand-based pricing, which is like saying no one goes to a restaurant because it is too crowded.
One reason for the decline of live shows is Covid. A weird thing happened during Covid and that is people discovered that they could live without things they suddenly could not have due to the panic. Restaurants never fully recovered from Covid because people got used to not going out to dinner. Something replaced it. Live events are another thing people did not miss as much as expected. Pro sports have had to work hard to regain their crowds and college sports never fully regained them.
Another reason live music is struggling is the quality of the product. As the industry relies more on technology to create listenable content, the less able they are to stage compelling live shows. This is not a new problem. In the golden age of pop music, they often used studio musicians to record the songs. The “band” often could not play their own music at all. This limited the “band” to doing studio shows where they could lip-sync to the recorded music.
This changed in the 1960’s when bands could play their own music and insisted on recording their own music. They also did live shows where they could actually play their stuff and not sound like a bag of cats. Technology has reversed this so that the performers are no longer able to produce the songs live in any way that sounds like the recorded material. Technology has made it easier to make music, but that has resulted in fewer acts that can do live shows.
Here is where you see the damage done by hip-hop. This is content easy to create in the studio, but it is hot garbage when performed live. In a small venue, the tight spaces and use of drugs can result in a good time for the audience, but in an arena it is often hilariously terrible. It looks like that homeless guy who yells at passing cars got on the stage and is yelling at the audience. Whatever the merits, there are none, hip-hop does not make for a compelling live show.
Another issue for live music is young people are not being socialized in the meat space, so live shows fall outside of their comfort zone. A generation used to interacting with their peers through internet platforms is not going to see the live show as an opportunity for socializing and dating like the old days. They would rather hear the music while cartoon characters perform the concert online. For a generation that prefers the indoors, the outdoor music show may as well not exist.
Of course, the music business was always a racket. The golden years of pop was when the music companies ruled with an iron fist. They could make you buy the album when you wanted just one or two songs. They forced radio stations to play the songs they wanted played. Most important, they we free to rob the music acts. Technology nibbled away at the music cartel eventually freeing the consumers and the music creators from the clutches of the music companies.
One result is there is probably more music available now than in the golden age of popular music. Creators can make good stuff from their bedroom and make it available to the world via the internet. The other side of this is the days of the rock star are coming to a close. Taylor Swift is probably the last mega star and her fame is mostly due to her general weirdness. Her songs are popular because she is popular, not the other way around. Her music is secondary to her act.
Otherwise, the golden era of popular music, especially rock music, will be viewed as a strange artifact of the American empire. A generation from now that music may sound as weird and alien to young people as Chinese opera. They will not understand it, because the people and culture that produced it are as alien to them as the people and culture of China. The concept of the rock star will disappear with memories of phone booths and quadrophonic sound.
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Another problem is that rock music is generally too masculine for this limp-wristed age of ultra-feminization. Anything that bears even a whiff of testosterone scares people.
More accurately, white masculinity. Whiteness plus masculinity equals toxicity for the pomos and sundry other hysterical cowards and nut-jobs.
Exactly. Black testosterone is extremely heavily promoted.
Thuggish masculinity permeates today’s culture, along with sluttishness. Good, honorable, decent masculinity is condemned, along with decent femininity.
I never understood the appeal of post-WW2 American popular culture and music as a child, although I tried to fit in and listen to what was at the time the all-consuming balls-out longhair power rock of the 1970s and 1980s. I despised it. In 6th grade I mocked Led Zeppelin in class and was accosted on the playground afterward by two morons, both of whom now live in Florida selling real estate. In 12th grade I wrote an op-ed for the school paper running down the Grateful Dead and the 1960s in general, and had the same unpleasant experience with… Read more »
I hear you. Most of my cohorts listened to Van Halen and Aerosmith; and I was listening to Maynard Ferguson and Jeff Lorber Fusion. But I did enjoy power rock from time to time. I had to be in the right mood for it.
My conversion to rock took place in fall of ’79 when I discovered what I later learned was called “prog rock” (ELP, Yes, Genesis, etc.) on the album oriented rock station in my city. I had never heard of prog rock before and found that I liked it as much as fusion jazz.
Interesting to note that Phil Collins had a side project called Brand X which played fusion jazz.
JLF’s “Wizard Island” is one of my very favorite jazz albums. It is one of those rare record that is both unabashedly cheerful and musically formidable.
I am very much a fan of classic rock–and classic pop, generally–but I cannot gainsay your points. Culture, and perhaps music especially, may well be the leading indicator of what’s to come in the political realm.
prunes like Robert plant tour with whoever krause and charge too much. Grace Slick was correct, “rock stars over 50 look stupid”. Witness mellonhead and shitsteen they look like old women.
Aside from the swifties, its the classic rock shows from the 1970’s that make the real money touring. As long as boomers are willing to pay several hundred dollars for a seat, classic rock will continue to tour. Some of these guys are getting too old for the road. Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry starting putting on a lackluster show 15 years ago. I think they have retired from the road now. Mick Jagger had some sort of medical issue last year, resulting him in retiring from the road. I think the Stones are really out of it now. I… Read more »
Reminds me of my buddy remarking about seeing a super geriatric Frank Sinatra in Vegas and how it was humiliating for everyone involved.
Pop culture stars rarely bow out with dignity. They’re so addicted to their celebrity that they hang onto it long after their looks and talent have declined to sad levels.
I never understood the appeal of that assholes music. He was/is nothing but an overgrown bar band on steroids.
have you ever actually listened to him sing?
If so, he certainly fooled millions of people. I suppose you think he sucked as an actor too.
I think Plant is slightly overrated, but he did have something close to an ideal voice–and diabolical scream–for heavy metal.
My standard observation to my wife when I see some superannuated singer or band is going on tour: “He/they ran out of drug money.”
Rock stars don’t age well for the obvious reason that they lived so hard in their youth. Strangely enough, however, and excepting those killed in plane crashes, they seem to be fairly long-lived. The fact that Keith Richards is still alive and kicking is surely one of the great mysteries of this century.
besides the insane ticket prices, a lot of popular acts use recordings to lip sync while on-stage. so for your $500 ticket you don’t even get a live performance. poor milli vanilli, they were just ahead of their time…
Ha ha! You amused me with your Milli Vanilli reference. Technically those clowns didn’t even use their own recordings on-stage; they used recordings performed entirely by other musicians and singers. You could definitely credit them with being innovators in the art of fakery.
I blame it on the rain, myself.
I remember the Milli Vanilli fiasco in summer of 1989. I also remember one of the reasons it blew up was due to a father who was dragged into taking his ‘tween daughter and her friends to the outdoor concert that took place. He really did not want to be there in the first place and was in a critical state of mind when the recording jammed and he, along with everyone else, saw the performers were not singing at all. It was this father who went to the media and then sued the concert promoter. That’s how all of… Read more »
Fake and ghey has been with us for quite some time.
Let me flip this around, what has gotten better in the last ten, even twenty years? Not much
Time will tell, but learning languages maybe.
I have friends who refuse to learn Spanish because their cell phone can translate live. They don’t see the need for learning. In this way I think learning and mental tasks will go the way of manual labor.being knowledgeable will become as rare as being physically fit. “What’s the point? My phone can do it”. And obesity will be joined by ignorance (more than is already the case).
I think there is a movie that came out some years ago where everyone is stupid and obese and the machines do all the work.
Movies – Nope.
Cars – Nope thanks to federal regulations designed to eliminate them. They spy on you and all of them have 2.0 liter turbo four-pots that will blow up 100k or less.
Music – Big nope.
Sports – The quality of play is awful and the politics that have been inserted into something that was once a distraction from life have made them unwatchable.
That’s why I like fly fishing, deer hunting and camping. All of those things remain great, even in this age of awfulness.
We’ve been in freefall for close to 60 years. But because the West was at such an empyrian height, the decline went on for decades before even sensitive people really noticed. Now it’s only the very young and the very obtuse who don’t recognize that we live in the outskirts of Hell.
I saved for a nice Pioneer system when I was a teenager and used my vinyl albums as masters to record cassettes I could listen to in the car.
As for live shows, we saw our favorite bands playing big colosseums. Today I would rather see an indie band playing greasy blues at a local dive bar.
I agree. A few of my friends and I saw Asia on their 25th anniversary tour at a small club – 200 seats – and it was a fantastic show. They not inly did their own material, but they threw in some King Crimson and a few songs by Yes as well.
I did the same and used to make cassettes for my gf. Eventually, she decided she would keep the cassettes but not me. Such is life.
I suppose technology has also killed the garage band, as well, which, of course provided the raw talent for rock. Today, an aspiring guitarist can get online and play with a bassist from Japan, a drummer from Brazil and a singer in England. He’s not forced to find some local kids to play together and learn how to be a band like normal humans, in the same room, and play live in front of others with a human feedback loop instead of social media comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUrHVWa3s2Y&ab_channel=FlakyKakes
One thing you are leaving out is that this pop music is pumped into every public place all the time. Every retail store blasts mostly 20-40 year old pop music at its customers. Sporting events have it playing constantly when there is not live action happening. The quality of newly produced music is way down and it is noticeable even to the average person. They have oversaturated public spaces with bad music and people want a break from it.
Yea, i got some free tickets to a pro baseball game last year and thought that i could have a beer and talk to my buddy while watching the game. Nope, they blasted negro rap crap on the loudspeakers with a heavy bass between innings. Never again, not even for free tickets.
Same thing in football. Never again!
In the past, bands used concert tours to promote record sales. The ticket would only be 2 or 3 times the cost of the record. Now they record music to promote the very expensive concert tickets.
These giant mega-tours are another vestige of boomer culture that is on its way out. Believe it or not, the Rolling Stones were a top-3 band in terms of concert revenue as recently as 2021. They’re now dying off and just getting too old to keep doing it. Bruce Springsteen’s wife has a particularly insidious cancer that will unfortunately keep him off the road. Aerosmith had to call of its touring, permanently, because Steven Tyler’s voice is shot. While these concerts were filled with the young and old alike, it’s not like the old are going to now spend that… Read more »
Boomer nostalgia is the fuel of live pop/rock music now. The wife and I plead guilty on this count. She says she will swear off nostalgia, but she keeps making exceptions for acts we missed the first time around. Personally, I’m ready to retire to the basement and clean my guns while listening to Bach.
We stopped in a store in a nearby tourist town a few weeks ago that advertised ‘rock’ t shirts (younger son is into ’70s – ’90s metal). Every single shopper had gray hair (with the exception of our son and the sales girls). The whole era of ‘following’ a band and obsessing about its music is a totally boomer phenomenon these days. I was never as into music as a teen as were my peers. I went to a few concerts in the ’70s, but the crowds and the huge indoor venues did nothing for me. My older son took… Read more »
As a Boomer, I was used to major changes in pop music every couple of years: Elvis, the Beatles and Stones, acid rock, prog rock, punk rock and disco, etc. But since rap “music” started taking over five decades ago, there have been no changes. Come to think of it, even new innovative jazz and classical music died around the same time.
Every decade had “new” music starting around 1910. The 2000’s was the first decade that had no “new” music. Same for the 2010’s. It was about 7-8 years ago I gave up hoping for new music.
Jazz declined dramatically in the early 80’s. I’m not sure why this happened. Only smooth jazz survived. Smooth jazz died in the late 2010’s.
David Sanborn was at one time a neighbor and he hated going far away for gigs but he did many in Japan ($$$) as they loved any kind of jazz-real or smooth.
David Sanborn was good. I used to listen to him as well. He and Tom Scott. I believe David passed away just recently. Tom Scott is not active these days. Jeff Lorber is definitely active. I bought his last album (mp3 really), The Drop. It is quite good.
Jazz died because it requires actual musical talent.
With Taylor Swift, I’m sure that a tremendous amount of the appeal is because of the media hype. That has actually probably been the case since “pop music” began, although some big, hyped performers such as Bing Crosby, Elvis, and the Beatles actually did have loads of talent, and deserved the praise. Someone like Springsteen, though, was hyped through the roof, way beyond his abilities. I remember in the 70’s when the media seemed to do a coordinated Springsteen blitz. I know, he’s supposedly a great performer, etc., etc., and I know that some of these evaluations are subjective, but… Read more »
Even the classic acts like the Beatles are way overrated. St. Peppers is a good album. But I don’t care for any other Beatles music. You are 100% spot-on about Bruce Springsteen being way overrated even by the standards of being overrated.
I honestly do not understand why Taylor Swift is so popular. This is a complete mystery to me.
Of course it is hard (for me, anyway) to objectively evaluate Sprinsteen’s music because he’s such an asshole. I admit that there are four or five songs of his that I like, but they’re all covers, my favorite being “The Fever” by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, which kicks ass.
I remember that media blitz, like when Springsteen made the cover of Time in 1975. WTF? No one had ever heard of the guy and suddenly he’s being portrayed as the next Bob Dylan. Had to be a psyop.
Yes. And he made the cover of Newsweek around that same time. He had already been performing and writing for a while, with a few albums out, and Somebody on High decided he was the next big thing. It wasn’t due to talent.
Technology, hip hop, and lazy people made it easy to destroy popular music. The 60s/70s white pop or black soul/R&B artists worked with excellent songwriters and excellent musicians did the recording sessions. Rap and disco put an end to that. And Pop was always different than Rock. Most rock bands had very good musicians even if they couldn’t read music. For the most part, the only modern musicians capable of reading music charts are horn sections, keyboard players and orchestras and it’s hard work and takes a long time to be proficient. Any idiot can make “music” now.
Black music (Earth Wind and Fire, Commodores, etc.) was good. In fact, the black music was better than most white music, excepting for prog rock of course.
I wouldn’t go that far, but sometimes… yeah. In any case, yes, black music used to be good. And then you had Ella Fitzgerald who wasn’t strictly speaking a “black music” singer. Her vocal range still amazes me when I listen to her stuff with Louis Armstrong.
I’m one of the old dinosaurs who still buys CD’s. As with digital books, I don’t have confidence that there will be a long-term availability of certain kinds of digital music, including classical. Until recently, at least, if you “bought” a digital book, you still didn’t own the full, permanent rights to it. Considering how much our Betters disapprove of everything from our ancestors, and the continuing statements from people like Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry about what they think of free speech, I would much rather have hard copies of books and music, even if they are… Read more »
This is a good idea with movies, as they now remove original funny lines from the digital versions because they are politically incorrect.
Yes. And Gone With the Wind has been altered in recent DVD printings. In at least one instance, Pork, a black slave who is sympathetically portrayed (like most of the blacks in GWTW), has his speech censored.
I still record my old cassettes onto CDs with my aged Sony CD player/recorder. It finally died and I discovered that such units are no longer made. I was able to find a little company in Arizona that reconditions old stereo equipment and they had a repaired model of my old Sony. I’m back in the recording business.
I’d pay to see a Zman live stream from a hip hop concert.
“Taylor Swift is probably the last mega star and her fame is mostly due to her general weirdness.”
TS found that maintaining even the schlockiest fake “country” image was way too difficult in terms of peer pressure. Poof! She quickly caved into the conformist’s ideal. Plus being a bureaucrat class worshipper pays far better. (She could be far worse of course, but reading her diary to some repetitive tones isn’t exactly musical genius.)
There seems to be some channeling of feminist anger these young ladies find instructive.
She is a product, perhaps we don’t like music anymore because most of it is just that.
https://youtu.be/_Aqr_tuQa24
Taylor Swift seems to have been molded for decades to be the perfect bugwoman. She started as a country star, got some fame, moved to NYC, started extolling the virtues of the city life instead of the hick country world, started getting pumped and dumped by prominent celebrities (both chad and bugmen), and then as soon as needed she was activated and started pushing for globohomo liberalism and abortion.
The “democratization” of popular music, a major consequence of technological change, ironically led to a massive decline in quality. Despite all the anecdotes about evil record labels, their executives risked a lot of money signing acts and producing records. Failure had career consequences. The editorial function worked in that era. Now, the lowest common denominator gives us Taylor Swift and an entire generation of no-talent hacks.
The most popular acts have also moved to the biggest venues. Now they are playing football stadiums with 60,000 seats. It is generally a really crappy experience watching a live band in a football stadium.
Yes. Mrs W and I went to see Kenny Chesney at a football stadium recently and he sounded like he was playing in a dumpster. Added to the fact that the stadium itself is a large dumpster, it made for a very disappointing, expensive evening. Never again.
Went to a stadium show once – the bands were playing in a different zip code. Never again.
Saw Chesney last year in an arena and he sounded very good.
I assumed that the Jews running the music industry decided they don’t want the kids listening to rock.
I do find it weird that rock is basically dead while country music is doing fairly well with young artists releasing new music. I’ve been to a couple of country shows, usually the act does a rock song or 2. I think many of them would rather be making southern rock if there were still radio stations that would play that stuff.
My understanding is that country has been popular since the early 90’s and continues to be so. Since I don’t listen to country, I have no idea of its happenings.
I found a website last night that, for 10 bucks a month, generates a 3 minute song in whatever genre, with whatever lyrics, that you own a commercial license to.
People are already using this technology to create hour long mixes on YouTube. (Egyptian metal, bubblegum rock, folk calypso, etc.) There’s also at least one guy creating a fake pop-star account with the technology.
LLMs might just make the musician themselves obsolete.
Not just musicians. In ten years you pay five bucks, say a few key words, like “Indiana Jones meets Tarzan”, “snakes and aliens”, “black magic, blonde heroine”. And fifteen minutes later your home screen slows a feature length AI created movie around your keywords
Ultimately, this might be a good thing. Performers will return to the relatively low status they enjoyed before mass media, and their product will be cheaper, and in some cases maybe better.
The likes of Taylor Swift should not be influential cultural icons, to say nothing of Diddy.
That stuff has really started to crack me up. Better than the original sounds it’s based on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FizOyEt7QWk
That was fun
Not just the musicians, but the record companies and recording studios as well. If the song you want can to hear be synthesized for you from existing materials, most of the entire music industry becomes obsolete.
I guess it’s a mixed blessing. I’ll never forgive the industry for forcing hip hop on everyone, when almost no one wanted it. Now, even country music is incorporating it.
Music is suffering from the lack of people who can play a musical instrument. In the 50’s and early 60’s the Detroit pub schools had a great music program. They produced the raw material that made Motown. The same thing led to thousands of garage bands spending all their free time learning to play guitars, drums, and bass. And rock was born. Rap is a response to a lack of ability to play an instrument. Just synthesizers and screaming to a background beat. It is amazing how the songs I listened to in high school and collage are making up… Read more »
In my blue-collar city back in the 60’s and 70’s, there were loads of opportunities for kids to learn music, in and out of the public schools. One of my big regrets is that I passed up a good opportunity to take piano lessons. It would have been very affordable too.
From my perspective, a streaming service like Spotify is all I ever wanted from music. $10 a month for all the music I ever wanted to listen to, by anybody? What’s not to like? I used to have to spend that much on one LP or CD, and it often turned out I didn’t like 2/3 of the songs on it. If that’s tough on the record companies, that’s not my problem. But it turns out that the majority of what I listen to on spotify is 50 years old. Because…. “Rock” always had a limited life span, because it… Read more »
The streaming services are the only bastion of music industry that still exists. People do not even buy mp3’s off of Amazon any more.
I’m baffled as to why Swift is so popular. She must’ve sold her soul to Satan.
Last good concert I attended was Porcupine Tree at the MGM Fenway a few years (!) ago. Not too big or small, and even has a skybar that overlooks Yawkey Way.
They have all sold their soul to get into that business
“Otherwise, the golden era of popular music, especially rock music, will be viewed as a strange artifact of the American empire. A generation from now that music may sound as weird and alien to young people as Chinese opera.” It already does. It belonged to the golden age of the empire, when the young had a future full of promise, money was easy to come by. blue collar jobs were well-paid and plentiful, and there was some semblance of working-class culture. That’s all vanished in the post-industrial wastelands of the USA and satellites such as Britain. I’m reminded of Bifo… Read more »
I don’t know much about the music industry but, with the availability of recorded music, new music has to compete with already-produced music that listeners can access according to their own tastes. Insofar as concerts are concerned, aside from the “crowd experience,” why listen to several hours of songs when you can get the ones you like on Yourube or other platforms? I remember hearing Al Stewart (Year of the Cat, Time Passages) complaning about the lack of sales.
Being around young people because of my kids, I almost never hear them talk about going to a big concert. They will go to smaller events, music or otherwise. If they do go to a big concert, it’s an old act, like really old. They don’t have anyone from their generation that they seem to care much about.
But, again, smaller events are more popular than ever.
But, again, smaller events are more popular than ever. You beat me to it. There has been a nationwide proliferation of small venues, and these tend to feature rock or country with their implicit masculinity and whiteness. Excellent music is being produced as a result. This is a true green shoot. The tickets tend to be quite inexpensive and kids actually socialize in meat space. In the old Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, the same happened prior to the communist implosion. I won’t claim those two were related directly (they may have been), but dissent often first manifests in popular… Read more »
In my area, local music festivals have become very popular in the summer months. Most of the performers, while semi-professional (I.e., they have day jobs), are good, obviously enjoy themselves and bond easily with the audience. Off-site, the nearby bars will engage musicians as well, offering free admission to ticket holders for the main stage. It’s a lot of fun. Sure, my wife and I might drop $200 at one of these festivals, but it takes a whole afternoon of music, food and beverage to do so, as opposed to some large event with a big name act, where $200… Read more »
The crowd at the Hammerfall/Sabaton show I saw was aggressively White and aggressively masculine (I saw one black guy and one asian woman). I was one of the few oldsters (in my late 50s at the time). And everyone mingled, knew all the lyrics and sang along enthusiastically. I jumped around with the best of them, as much as possible given the crowd and tight space.
Smaller music venues sell tickets for shows for $20-$30, it’s more intimate, the acoustics are better, the booze is cheaper, it’s easier to get in and out of, etc. Yes the music is different, but ultimately you’re paying for an experience, even if you never heard of the band, if your friend likes them maybe you find something good you never would have thought of. And for $20, even if the band stinks, it’s a few hours out. The Black Keys got egg on their face earlier this year for canceling their tour due to low sales, while I like… Read more »
I could never imagine spending triple digits to be packed in like a sardine in uncomfortable chairs to see anyone ever. It’s not as if that’s the only way to hear the music. Obviously a lot of people see it differently. In my youth it was more like $15 and that was justifiable in a town where there wasn’t much else happening on Friday night.
Taylor Swift is worth close study in a lot of ways, and yeah, I know how that sounds, but it’s true. There seems to be an entire business model of “Instagram influencers” trying to be pop stars now (e.g. Addison Rae). The prototype isn’t Swift, but Justin Bieber, but still, that’s one interesting attempt to re-energize pop music, and Swift has certainly shown them the way to do it. The problem, though, is that Swift pretty much IS the Millennial-and-under archetype. She’s it. There’s no money to be made by being a cut-rate copy of Taylor Swift, because she’s everywhere.… Read more »
Some of the best music comes from 60’s garage bands. These guys did this for fun and had small, local followings. Unfortunately, the Vietnam draft caused a lot of these bands to dissolve.
There are a few good modern songs, but most are commercial and boring. Rap music is torture, and a lot of Country Western is just silly. I can’t listen to Kenny Rogers while driving, I start nodding off and falling asleep.They should market his music for insomniacs.
I remember growing up in the 1980s and 1990s and rock, be it the Sunset Strip variety that became a self-parody or the heroin-fueled sludge from Seattle, ruled the roost. New bands popped up and became a part of your tape or CD collection. Cities had music scenes where musicians hoped to get the big break and get a record deal while playing dive bars and clubs. Now, it’s just shitty cover bands. Then rap became the predominant music, even for young whites. It’s just guttural, profane, rhythmic grunting over a looped drum beat without melody or substance. I I… Read more »
Like everything in post-America it is reliant upon the lowest common denominatorization of the magical people’s culture. It is also bent on pushing their so-called music everywhere. Just as the ads, show hosts, airport jobs are all geared toward worship of that one demographic, their music is pumped out of every soundhole in the imperium: airplanes; airports; rideshares; restaurants; cinemas; parking lots; supermarkets; bodegas; hardware stores; lobbies; retail counters (rental car, national park …); bathrooms; … … It is a pleasure and a relief to hear silence. I now own earplugs that I wear everywhere I go, and aside from… Read more »
Zman,
Reread your article, replace covid with economic collapse, fixed it for you. Stop blaming covid, covid was hype, fear and the flu. Economy started to blow up late 2018, repo crisis late 2019, and on demand virus in 2020. Economy still sucks and nobody even thinks about covid anymore.
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-systemic-collapse-and-pandemic-simulation/
And for music or enterntainment in general, people are sick of rich, mediocre hacks lecturing them on how to live life, who to vote for, and the god damn message they’ve been sending in their media since 2016.
He’s talking about the cultural impact of music. I’m not sure why everything has to be tied back to economics.
ha are you serious? Wait wait wait, how many comments here will rant about jews in t minus 5 4 3 2 1
If you don’t understand why everything comes back to economics, i don’t think you’ve been paying attention.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gPoiv0sZ4s4
Talk about….pop muzik!
Who be sayin’ decline, yo
Now I Ain’t Sayin’ She A Vote Rigger
https://youtu.be/K-jI43pyLro
or
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/10/16/fulton-county-judge-blocks-georgia-state-requirement-to-hand-count-paper-ballots/comment-page-1/#comment-11200386
Lots of people noticing and contemplating the same phenomenon lately: https://brianniemeier.com/2024/10/how-rock-and-roll-lost-its-groove/
My older brother (with whom I have not spoken in over 20 years) had/has literally thousands of LPs (his and our late father’s, rock/classical). Presumably worth a fair amount of money. Hubby and I still own a handful of cassettes and have some CDs. One of the many reasons we recently bought a pre-2020 vehicle was because it still came with both a CD player and an auxiliary jack (for my ancient MP3 player).
i subscribe to Qobuz for $13 a month. all cd quality, too. millions of songs and albums to choose from. absolutely no reason to buy individual cds. i do however, buy used vinyl. what is peculiar to me is people are fine buying re-issues that involve a digital source (that is converted to analog for pressing)?! what exactly are you listening to at that point…
I read just the opposite earlier this week – that live music is enjoying a resurgence. The author was a jazz writer so he was looking at jazz venues but I think this holds for all sorts of out-of-mainstream music genres. Pop music has been splintering into all sorts of sub-genres for decades, and I think we have so many people now that don’t care for the mainstream crap that real alternative musicians are finding an audience.
A topic for unlimited columns: “The Decline of ______(fill in the blank).”
I gave away my LP’s years ago, the cassettes are worn out and I really don’t need the cd’s when I can go on YouTube and listen to just about anything plus see them perform for free. — I know of a local band of young guys that does quite well playing 50’s -60’s songs to the Boomers. My class reunion had them and it wasn’t all that bad but it was a long, long, really long way from actually being young and electrified by that music.
Lurking in the background off stage or in the studio are the gatekeepers and minders who manipulated musicians who sold their souls to try to get a few minutes of stardom. The 8×10 glossies of old got supplemented by the incriminating videos showing just how far people would go make a buck.
Do this or else. Takes away from the purity of artistic creation.
Music is part of the larger entertainment world, now experiencing its own revelations.
Most of the “golden age” performers were actually lefties before they became musicians, unlike today, where performers are lefties because it’s a requirement to be allowed into what remains of the game. These days, the energy that would go into the creative endeavour is instead channelled into the two minutes hate from an early age.
Before rock, lots of performers were very patriotic at least, and today would be cancelled for their views. Elvis was thrilled to meet Nixon in the 70’s. And, maybe outside of the Rat Pack, lots of big names hated the socially liberal crap.
Just bring up again the conversation I had with a local who remarked that her grandson got to go see Tool. WTF, like the same so-so act from when I was in high school? Yes, the young people’s dream act is a whose best song was released before decades before they were born. Just to expound upon your technology point. Even for “normal songs” in the modern era a close listen will reveal heavy mixing, i.e., the only way the music could possibly be played live is with a lightening quick guy working the mixing board. Industrial Karaoke is much… Read more »
I noticed a surprising number of teenage girls walking around in Nirvana shirts the last two years. I thought the reason was since they had no rock bands putting out music today they were going with one that was popular when their dads were teenagers.
Every time I see a young person wearing a Nirvana shirt, and yes it’s quite common, I wonder if they actually like the band’s music or just the aesthetic. No judgement either way, it’s just interesting how they seemed to land on that.
Which wasn’t even that good- punk and metal bands had far cooler aesthetics than Junkie McSweaterface’s terrible band. The Misfits come to mind.
There quite a few kids walking around in Led Zeppelin and Rush shirts. When they are complimented on their good taste, they say “Oh. I just like the shirt, never heard of the band.”
It’s a shame that the only crap available to them is hip hop rap trash.
I feel sorry for the young. They don’t have an aesthetic of their own. I see a teenaged kid wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt, and do the math, and realize this would be like me wearing an Al Jolson t-shirt in the seventies.
I’ve read that the Ramones won the young-person-tee-shirt lottery, which is odd for a one-joke band, but they won for graphic design, not for music. Old hipsters love to ask the youngsters what their favorite Ramones song is, which is a bit cruel.
I hate to say this, but this is one of those topics where our host, most of his readers, and even I show our ages. Basically, we sound like our parents did when we were young. Thus, it has always been… Like a lot of music enthusiasts, I get bored. I refuse to listen to “classic rock” stations, because I don’t want to hear the same songs I’ve heard thousands of times before. Even stuff that I absolutely love, if I’ve heard it too many times, I am only receptive to on rare occasions. I never go to nostalgia shows… Read more »