What happened to music?

[TheDestinatus]

They discovered that they could make people sounds "better" with machines thus increasing the number of recycled trash thats pumped out monthly, than individuals realised they could just replace instruments with tones, beeps and bUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHppss. That's why there's no good music, because there isn't actually much real music its just noises strung together by machines.

[Santura]

Then look for music you like. I'm picky about my music and even I manage to have Spotify folders filled with plenty of tracks. Music changes consistently and it's subjective. But, music is also timeless, you can always find old music. And if that's all you like, then that's what you listen to. That doesn't make current music shit.

[callipygoustp]

You're the one who is more interested in what other people like than what you enjoy and I'm being lectured? Hilarious stuff.

If you didn't get it after the first clarification either you're being disingenuous on purpose or you lack the ability to comprehend simple statements. I'm betting you're being disingenuous on purpose. Thumbs up!

[Eazy]

I'm not going to lie - I have the same problem.
Though there were always good and bad music(just as it is now), but back then the good music was more popular.

music is subjective.

I kinda agree... but I think that music is not that much subjective as I think. What I mean is this that some lyrics have deeper meaning, while other are just bullshit. Some melodies are complicated and their rhytm is smooth. Some music uses plenty of well integrated instruments, some uses one repetitive beat.

[Pull My Finger]

Contrary to what people are inclined to tell you - no, there's actually not a lot of good music out there, even if you "go out and look for it".

Many factors to that. The lifestyle of our current times facilitates certain things and hampers others. Good music isn't one of the things that are likely to come out as a product of the current cultural tilt in the society. Many, many sociological, technological and economic reasons for that.

[Lex Icon]

uuh.. i feel like there's too much good music out there. i don't even have time to listen to it all.
if you say otherwise you're probably not really interested in music and you are the same as those you whine about listening to crap today. you just listened to the crap stuff of an earlier time.

[novinwebsite]

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
Victor Hugo

[Stormcall]

Contrary to what people are inclined to tell you - no, there's actually not a lot of good music out there, even if you "go out and look for it".

I don't listen to rap/hip hop, so if you want good examples of those, I can't help. If you listen to metal or country though, I can give you tons of examples of good music out there.

So yes, in fact, contrary to your statement, there IS a lot of good music out there if you go out and look for it.

[Deleted]

I died a little bit inside when I found out people actually listened to Drake, for a long time I thought he was a standup comedian who made trolls songs (kinda like what does the fox say).

I hate feeling like it, but I do feel people who think that is actually good music should be erased from the world. I mean, what the actual fuck...my faith in humanity took the biggest hit when I found out.

- - - Updated - - -

They discovered that they could make people sounds "better" with machines thus increasing the number of recycled trash thats pumped out monthly, than individuals realised they could just replace instruments with tones, beeps and bUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHppss. That's why there's no good music, because there isn't actually much real music its just noises strung together by machines.

EDM isn't topping the sharts though and hardly is mainstream media. I don't know a whole lot of people who listen to nothing else than EDM, they usually always are very flexible in their music taste.

Personal anecdote though.

[Bigbazz]

My grandmother thinks music went to shit in the 70s and 80s, I think it's just called getting old.

[Deleted]

Wintersun new album 2 days ago so your whole argument is as invalid as my crippled grandma

[NihilSustinet]

The current popular music always sucks to people who grew up on what came before it. Whatever artist you think is so much better than today's music, if you go back to those days, there was some old man saying how shit it is compared to what he liked. This is true for literally all music. There were people who thought Beethoven and Mozart were evil devil music ruining the day's youth. seriously. look it up.

[Thetruth1400]

There always was a ton of shit music, you just remember the good bits. I feel sorry for you if you can't find anything or don't bother looking for something you enjoy that's made these days.

Pretty much this. The classics / oldies / good old days of music / whatever you want to call them, people only remember the greatest hits.

The Beatles sang 409 songs, wrote 237 of them themselves, had 65 top 100 songs, but only 33 of them hit top 10. Chances are, there aren't many people that knew they wrote so many songs, let alone sang even more. Frankly, if people are asked to name Beatles songs, chances are the majority are going to be from their top 100, probably even more so the top 10 hitters.

The lesser known songs, forgettable ones, or downright crappy ones just go away over time. Just look at how many one hit wonders are out there; almost all of them released more than one album yet the only thing they're known for is literally their one song. In other words, the rest of their songs were "crap" and forgotten to time as a result. That's just how it is.

That and most of the music created today most likely isn't written to appeal to you as you're most likely older, so there's that as well. Sway away from the Top 40 and you might actually find something you enjoy.

[Shiny212]

Music has always been shit, you just remember the good parts along the way.

[Heathy]

I still listen to hardstyle/hardcore/gabber occasionally liquid dnb. I don't mind most music. i have no real problem with it even if i don't personally get anything out of it, but I like basslines upbeat tempos, kicks, breaks and distortion. that'll probably never change for me. I was into rock music when i was a teenager but i just grew out of it i guess. guitar riffs don't have the same effect on me today that they did back then. its low frequency bass all the way.

I don't think all old music sucks, you just have to be in the mood for it, a good example is fallout 3 and NV with their 1930's-40s jazz blues, a lot of ppl rediscovered that music being as most of us weren't alive when it was released. I liked a lot of the music they put into those games even if they did become annoyingly repetitive.

I don't really like most modern hip hop i feel like its moved too close to rnb. I like some of the older hip hop.



to me that is hip hop, the beat makes it. the lyrics are secondary to me when listening to a hip hop track its all in the beat and flow.

if i listen to hip hop it has to have a beat like that. I can't get into the new age rnb stuff.

[Pull My Finger]

I don't listen to rap/hip hop, so if you want good examples of those, I can't help. If you listen to metal or country though, I can give you tons of examples of good music out there.

So yes, in fact, contrary to your statement, there IS a lot of good music out there if you go out and look for it.

I have no clue about Country, so I can't comment on that. I'm a Metal buff though. Still, can't share your sentiment. I'm really struggling to find genuine interest in all this stuff people are into now. Most Metal is incredibly vapid and some of it complete garbage. Either absolutely incompetent and clichéd or extremely construed, pretentious, very try-hard and fake. All in all, most of it is very artificial. It works as "fun" music I guess, and something people put on while doing shit, but that's about it.

[Deleted]

Agreed. Even a lot of the bands i liked, went downhill in the early 2000's. Music is obviously subjective, but god dahm.

R.I.P In flames

[Wildtree]

I had a conversation with someone about this. I had come up with the theory that we don't have that great musician of the new century. The closest we might come to is Lindsey Sterling. Musician in the way I am talking about is someone who can play an instrument like no other. We have one exceptional vocalist in Adele. Sure we have a lot of great entertainers, but very few great individuals.

This is what has been the consumption of mainstream music for a long time. I mean, Dave Grohl, Tom Morello, Slash and Carlos Santana are still around. But the current generation hasn't produced anyone to replace them.

I do enjoy hip hop and EDM as well. But both of those genres require a catchy beat.

It's telling that you had to mix Grohl and Slash into an attempt of a list of outstanding musicians. Both aren't.
Slash, he even judges himself as a rather mediocre guitarist. And he is. He is technically rather limited.
Grohl is an excellent business man, for once. He is creative in a way. On those two things he excels. On craftsmanship however, not so much.

And nope, Adele isn't the only one exceptional vocalist either. She's just the one that was pushed by the music industry the most. As we know, her days might be over now already. But, no, she is certainly not the only one. Especially in the US is an army of outstanding female vocalists.

Now, you've mentioned hip hop and EDM.
For those two genres it's very true that nothing progressive comes out of them.
Hip hop is the music industry's money cow. It gets milked and milked and milked over and over. No one pushes the boundaries, since that would jeopardize revenues. Few exceptions apply, but they aren't consistent enough.
EDM completely misses the bus, since there's not any innovative progress made since the genre came to be, being a sub genre from the original roots EM.
It has been over 40 years that the likes of Tangerine Dream, Larry Fast, Kraftwerk, created and popularized the EM genre. The genre itself was an innovative progression, born out of the experimental music created by Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman. They both were actually friends and collaborators of Bob Moog. And without the invention of the Moog synthesizer, no EM, no EDM.

And both, Hip hop and EDM lacking the foundation on which exceptional musicians can come to be, can strive and evolve.
Both need next to no musicianship, no instrumental craftsmanship. Hip hop is a good soil for lyricists, and a few standouts are there. But that's it.

Which leads to the next consequence.
Music consume undergoes cycles. It's an up and down for high skilled performers regarding mainstream.
At times that music dominates, at times the equivalent of fast food rules. Currently we are in a fast food phase.
It will revert again, and skill will rise back up, and so forth.
Depends a lot on the consumer too. If you are not satisfied with easy digestible fast food style mass products, the market will react. It will bring better quality up, since it exists. Just not in the mainstream right now.

And to address two more things, that are obvious in the thread.
Apparently they're getting very much confused here.

Taste and Skill..
No, they are not both subjective.
Taste is subjective, 100% subjective even. Skill however is not. Skill is 100% objective and measurable to some extent.
There's a reason why you can study almost every instrument, but not taste.
You cannot become a professor for music taste. But certainly can become one for say, piano.
And it is indeed correct, that the skill level in the current music mainstream is significantly down.
Yet, this all started already with the Punk movement. Right there the skill decline started.
Punk deliberately pissed on the notion of skill. Grab some instrument, make some noise.
Fuck the system. Fuck the established norms
Similar on the Hip hop corner of things. Rap, didn't need musical skills.
Message > Musicianship
Social message is important. Very important even.
Last time musical skill was at the top, was during times when it was part of the protest against everything established. The parents of the boomer generation listened to rather simple mainstream. Skill was part of the protest. Skill rose to the top, it transported the message for several decades.
Right now, skill isn't needed to transport the message. Different times.
But the pendulum will swing the other way again, ultimately.

[Heathy]

EDM for me is all about the basslines that is what music is at its core, it goes back to the first cave man smashing a rock against another rock and creating a beat.

I like various EDM because of the differences, a lot of tracks have similarities, they have the same amount of beats per bar. they loop at 16 and 32 beats.

but to say there is no innovation there is plenty of innovation edm has changed from when i started listening to house and happy hardcore in the late 90s to the hardstyle rawstyle, ambient hardcore, industrial hardcore, frenchcore etc.

I think older ppl simply can't get over the fact that you can create good music without needing to master an instrument, or that electronic music isn't music JUST BECAUSE someone isn't wielding an instrument. or they don't consider a computer to be a musical instrument. which seems extremely short sighted almost luddite levels of ignorance. I don't even need lyrics in my music, all i need is a good beat, rhythm and melody. I admire edm for its ability to turn individual noises into a coherent tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQb5wogZqdU

listening to this recently its slow industrial hardcore under 150 bpm. I can't say i have a track that is like that, i have tracks that are faster, i have tracks with harder basslines, different melodies, but i don't have a track that is just like that track. every track is unique in its own way. I don't need some random person whining about lifes problems for a track to be considered good.

no innovation my arse. heres another one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oc6fRhyWBQ thats pretty innovative to me and i've listened to my fair share of edm. and if your still not convinced theres this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jKywGmlXno

I like these harder distorted bass tunes but i have to be in the mood, if i want to chill out i'd rather listen to something like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDI6HTR9arA

[Stormcall]

I have no clue about Country, so I can't comment on that. I'm a Metal buff though. Still, can't share your sentiment. I'm really struggling to find genuine interest in all this stuff people are into now. Most Metal is incredibly vapid and some of it complete garbage. Either absolutely incompetent and clichéd or extremely construed, pretentious, very try-hard and fake. All in all, most of it is very artificial. It works as "fun" music I guess, and something people put on while doing shit, but that's about it.

What kind of metal do you prefer? Power metal? Check out Sabaton or Dendera. Thrash? Look up Reign of Fury or Hexen. Doom? Okay, I don't really follow doom much but Pallbearer are good. Death? Check out Ouroboros or Psynonemous. Black? Okay, I don't follow black metal at all so I really can't help here, but you get the idea.