Algorithms, Copyrights, or Clueless Industry Executives: What's Killing New Music? (theatlantic.com) 256
"Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm." So writes Ted Gioia, author of the Substack music/pop culture newsletter "The Honest Broker". But it gets worse: "The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs. The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago....."
The signs are everywhere — including the fact that viewership for the music industry's Grammy awards plummeted 53% this year to just 8.8 million. "More people pay attention to streams of video games on Twitch (which now gets 30 million daily visitors)."
And even then, "When a new song overcomes these obstacles and actually becomes a hit, the risk of copyright lawsuits is greater than ever before.... Adding to the nightmare, dead musicians are now coming back to life in virtual form — via holograms and 'deepfake' music — making it all the harder for young, living artists to compete in the marketplace."
But in the end the real problem may ultimately be that "nothing is less interesting to music executives than a completely radical new kind of music." Who can blame them for feeling this way? The radio stations will play only songs that fit the dominant formulas, which haven't changed much in decades. The algorithms curating so much of our new music are even worse. Music algorithms are designed to be feedback loops, ensuring that the promoted new songs are virtually identical to your favorite old songs. Anything that genuinely breaks the mold is excluded from consideration almost as a rule. That's actually how the current system has been designed to work.
Even the music genres famous for shaking up the world — rock or jazz or hip-hop — face this same deadening industry mindset. I love jazz, but many of the radio stations focused on that genre play songs that sound almost the same as what they featured 10 or 20 years ago. In many instances, they actually are the same songs.
This state of affairs is not inevitable. A lot of musicians around the world — especially in Los Angeles and London — are conducting a bold dialogue between jazz and other contemporary styles. They are even bringing jazz back as dance music. But the songs they release sound dangerously different from older jazz, and are thus excluded from many radio stations for that same reason. The very boldness with which they embrace the future becomes the reason they get rejected by the gatekeepers. A country record needs to sound a certain way to get played on most country radio stations or playlists, and the sound those DJs and algorithms are looking for dates back to the prior century. And don't even get me started on the classical-music industry, which works hard to avoid showcasing the creativity of the current generation. We are living in an amazing era of classical composition, with one tiny problem: The institutions controlling the genre don't want you to hear it.
The problem isn't a lack of good new music. It's an institutional failure to discover and nurture it.
So while the author acknowledges that "The fear of copyright lawsuits has made many in the industry deathly afraid of listening to unsolicited demo recordings," far deeper than that is the problem that, "The people running the music industry have lost confidence in new music."
Yet if there's any hope, the author argues, it's that people "crave something that sounds fresh and exciting and different.... Songs can go viral nowadays without the entertainment industry even noticing until it has already happened. That will be how this story ends: not with the marginalization of new music, but with something radical emerging from an unexpected place...."
"The CEOs are the last to know. That's what gives me solace.... The decision makers controlling our music institutions have lost the thread. We're lucky that the music is too powerful for them to kill."
The signs are everywhere — including the fact that viewership for the music industry's Grammy awards plummeted 53% this year to just 8.8 million. "More people pay attention to streams of video games on Twitch (which now gets 30 million daily visitors)."
And even then, "When a new song overcomes these obstacles and actually becomes a hit, the risk of copyright lawsuits is greater than ever before.... Adding to the nightmare, dead musicians are now coming back to life in virtual form — via holograms and 'deepfake' music — making it all the harder for young, living artists to compete in the marketplace."
But in the end the real problem may ultimately be that "nothing is less interesting to music executives than a completely radical new kind of music." Who can blame them for feeling this way? The radio stations will play only songs that fit the dominant formulas, which haven't changed much in decades. The algorithms curating so much of our new music are even worse. Music algorithms are designed to be feedback loops, ensuring that the promoted new songs are virtually identical to your favorite old songs. Anything that genuinely breaks the mold is excluded from consideration almost as a rule. That's actually how the current system has been designed to work.
Even the music genres famous for shaking up the world — rock or jazz or hip-hop — face this same deadening industry mindset. I love jazz, but many of the radio stations focused on that genre play songs that sound almost the same as what they featured 10 or 20 years ago. In many instances, they actually are the same songs.
This state of affairs is not inevitable. A lot of musicians around the world — especially in Los Angeles and London — are conducting a bold dialogue between jazz and other contemporary styles. They are even bringing jazz back as dance music. But the songs they release sound dangerously different from older jazz, and are thus excluded from many radio stations for that same reason. The very boldness with which they embrace the future becomes the reason they get rejected by the gatekeepers. A country record needs to sound a certain way to get played on most country radio stations or playlists, and the sound those DJs and algorithms are looking for dates back to the prior century. And don't even get me started on the classical-music industry, which works hard to avoid showcasing the creativity of the current generation. We are living in an amazing era of classical composition, with one tiny problem: The institutions controlling the genre don't want you to hear it.
The problem isn't a lack of good new music. It's an institutional failure to discover and nurture it.
So while the author acknowledges that "The fear of copyright lawsuits has made many in the industry deathly afraid of listening to unsolicited demo recordings," far deeper than that is the problem that, "The people running the music industry have lost confidence in new music."
Yet if there's any hope, the author argues, it's that people "crave something that sounds fresh and exciting and different.... Songs can go viral nowadays without the entertainment industry even noticing until it has already happened. That will be how this story ends: not with the marginalization of new music, but with something radical emerging from an unexpected place...."
"The CEOs are the last to know. That's what gives me solace.... The decision makers controlling our music institutions have lost the thread. We're lucky that the music is too powerful for them to kill."
Let me say it first (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not music.
Now get off my lawn.
Re:Let me say it first (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly my first thought. Sure, all the other things are problems. But what kills new "music" is the new "musicians". As usual, some are really, really good. But the overwhelming majority is somewhere between meaningless and really bad and most people have realized that by now. Different from radio, if you do not like some music today, you just do not listen to it.
Too much music (Score:5, Interesting)
Too much new music is what's killing new music. Take a simple analogy with food: Eat too much and the excess nutrition turns into fat and cholesterol.
This was predicted decades ago in Future Shock [wikipedia.org], a technologically dated but still sociologically relevant book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler (with a cover that now appears lovely only to a retro gamer). To brutally paraphrase him, he writes that too much choice leads to non-choice.
There may well be a thousand Beethovens or Chuck Berrys today, but they never get noticed because too few are listening to them. Instead, the cutest crap get upvoted to No. 1 because they're the musical equivalent of junk food, tasty and easy to digest.
Melody is not in vogue (Score:2)
Tricky hooks are in vogue. And interesting moody rap with non brain dead thought is in vogue. Pop music is pathetic and algorithmic these days. It's seeking the earworm.
I think the key thing is Market segmentation means that it's better to have a small or brief audience that is sticky than go for durable classics. There no longer a sense of broadly shared music. But only music shared within a specific peer group.
As a result durable Melodie's lose out to the shiny and new much faster.
I can't say we're wo
Re:Melody is not in vogue (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet the quality of shows is som much better.
I realise its a matter of opinion, but I don't find new shows to be so much better. I actually find them all to be generally overly serious, too drawn out and tedious. People keep saying we're living in a golden age of television, but it doesn't feel that way to me.
I'm a child of the 80s. I liked shows that had a story per episode and can't be bothered binge watching 13x1hr shows to get a single story. I don't mind a bit of long term character growth and exposition, but a series per story is just boring. I want to sit down for an hour and get a beginning, middle and end.
Now get off my lawn.
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Eh, nah. "Mostly garbage" describes all content to a certain degree. Either you are too stuck up and stuck in your ways to care, or you just aren't willing to try new stuff. Which is perfectly fine.
But most people under the age of... 42? 45? somewhere around there. They grew up over the transition from analog to digital music, and they can absolutely tell you at what point they stopped listening to "new" music, and a lot of the time it's just "what new music?"
I'll give you an example. There is a song that I
Creative innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
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Recorded music is all about technology, and it killed innovation and sheet music. Instead of armies of musicians that would buy and innovate music, it produced a few stars like Bing Crosby that were able to
At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, this. Every decade has its good share of shitty music dominating the charts, but over the last 10-20 years "hit" songs are pretty much interchangeable - and forgettable.
Just compare, say, the Billboard top 10 circa 2000s vs today. There's a sharp decrease in quality. And this might be the grunge kid in me, but if you go further back into the 90s there simply no comparison between what was played in the radio today and what we get now.
Re:At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:5, Informative)
And this might be the grunge kid in me, but if you go further back into the 90s there simply no comparison between what was played in the radio today and what we get now.
It's that. Or more importantly, the last part: the stuff that gets played on the radio. The music that's getting promoted is crap designed to sound like music people already like. Actual new and different stuff isn't getting played on the radio or getting algorithmically promoted on streaming platforms.
That doesn't mean it isn't getting created, but it does mean you have to hunt for it, and the way the platforms are created, that likely means searching for it by name. So good luck with that.
And to answer the article's question, what's to blame? It's clueless industry executives. Or probably more accurately, spineless industry executives. They don't want to take a risk on anything new, so they limit what they release to things that are low risk, and that means things that are similar to what's worked in the past.
Which adds up to the only music we get to hear being derivative crap based on what's worked in the past. New stuff is getting made, but it's intentionally being hidden because executives think you'd rather listen to older stuff.
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Actual new and different stuff isn't getting played on the radio or getting algorithmically promoted on streaming platforms.
That doesn't mean it isn't getting created, but it does mean you have to hunt for it, and the way the platforms are created, that likely means searching for it by name. So good luck with that.
This! The streaming services' algorithms seem to be making it progressively harder to actually discover new music.
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, when I was a teenager, we used to discover new artists by swapping tapes and CD's, or getting personalized recommendations from music stores: "I kinda liked that album, but didn't like this about it." "Okay, here, listen to this one, it's probably more your taste." Pandora was awesome in the early years, you could have dozens of stations painstakingly crafted
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Nice. You are hitting it right on the head. I would like to add a twist to what you are saying:
The main problem is control. Music is being centrally controlled. The people who are in control, think they know what is best (for whatever value "best" is controlled for). Music can not be planned like this. The only thing that comes out is shit... which is far worse now than ever before.
Late 60s to early 70s, music was mostly wild and creative. Some amazing shit was created and LOTS of money was made. Well, the
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Billboard top 10 circa 2000s vs today. There's a sharp decrease in quality. And this might be the grunge kid in me, but if you go further back into the 90s
If that's your era, you might like Ava Max. She has the voice [youtube.com].
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Sadly, this. Every decade has its good share of shitty music dominating the charts, but over the last 10-20 years "hit" songs are pretty much interchangeable - and forgettable.
You say that as if the charts are the definition collection of new music. They aren't. What charts represents the tiniest rounding error of music produced. There's a shitton of great new music out there just waiting for you to turn off the radio and MTV, and go look.
Re: At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:2)
Well, the story is about mainstream music.
When we get another one discussing the rest, I'll see about sharing my thoughts on that.
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I'm an #oldfart, but IMHO, modern music is mostly just "pop". Back when I was growing up, there was a lot of "pop" too - really disposable stuff that hasn't aged well at all - and if it wasn't for a bit of "ahh, I remember listening to this at college" type nostalgia it wouldn't get any airtime (or streams) at all. These days I'd suggest a lot more is written by professional song writers, and they seem to all blend together into a song soup, but that might not be a true fact.
But, back in the day, there were
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I'm going to guess that you graduated high school sometime in the 90s. For most people (myself included) musical tastes tend to ossify about that time. Music can be roughly split into three categories: (1) The quaint, trite stuff your parents
Re:At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:5, Insightful)
Most new music is pretty much garbage.
No. Only most new music you know about is garbage. Turn off the radio and branch out. There's so much awesome music in the world.
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Most new music is pretty much garbage.
No. Only most new music you know about is garbage. Turn off the radio and branch out. There's so much awesome music in the world.
To a limited extent, yes. However, in my case, what usually ends up happening is I hear a good song (to me), look up the artist and start playing other songs and think, "Nope, not for me", and never listen to anything of theirs again.
For example, Carpenter Brut has "Hairspray Hurricane". I have that song bookmarked and listen to it a few times each week. Listened to Leather Teeth, Monday Hurt, Le Perv and so on, and I don't care for any of them. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with them, it'
Re: At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:3, Insightful)
Just look at what the media does for music, with reality junk like The Voice. Many who sing in that program are actually great singers, however they do not fit the this is what we, the judges, want to hear model and therefore, ends up being just the same style. Over and over and over.
Many musicians have already voiced their dissatisfaction with this show. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters fame once said he would never step into that show, neither he would think musicians such as Bob Dylan would even qualify for an
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What are you looking for?
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What are you looking for?
I'll know it when I hear it. That said, high paced, upbeat music. Dragonforce, many songs from Stratovarius, Flogging Molly (only Drunken Lullabies and Speed of Darkness albums), Green Day (early albums), and individual songs from Dav Drelleon, Monowoman, Red Marker, Everdune, The Abdukted, Hoffman Cruise, and a few others. Throw in Metallica's "All Nightmare Long" (and a few others) and 88% of all the songs from this list [youtube.com] and that should give an idea of what I'm looking for.
Then I'll throw you for a loo
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Wow, modded down for pointing out there's awesome indie music out there. I guess completely deaf people have modpoints too and got triggered or something.
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No. Only most new music you know about is garbage. Turn off the radio and branch out. There's so much awesome music in the world.
I know, and i do, but you're missing the point: mainstream music quality took a nosedive. It's all gridded, autotuned and packaged into the exact same format, track after track.
Spotify's top 10, right now, lists Ed Sheeran (which sucks, but actually cared to sing in the past), Gayle, Lil Nas X, Kid Laroi, Justin Bieber and CKey. I dare you to tell their songs apart.
Re:At the risk of sounding like my parents, (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, and i do, but you're missing the point: mainstream music quality took a nosedive. It's all gridded, autotuned and packaged into the exact same format, track after track.
This isn't new, it just seems to be that there's less significant breakthrough cases these days. Have you ever heard of Mike Smith? In 1962 he ran commercial tests at Decca Records. He auditioned a completely unknown guitar band, 4 people, and very quickly flat out rejected them. His opinion was that guitar bands were on the way out and a commercial dead end, that their music didn't fit he popular music format trends that their marketing team had come up with. Shortly after Ron White at EMI didn't even give them the time of day for similar reasons, rejected without even listening to the music based on the description of the band alone.
There's always been dumbfuckery in the music industry where major players gatekeep entry based on what the marketing machine tells them pop music should sound like. Anyway The Beatles ultimately signed with Parlophone.
I think the only thing that's changed is that there's less smaller players out there taking chances on young talent.
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Luckily we seem to be heading toward a world where new talent doesn't have to rely on record companies anymore to get a career going. It is certainly a lot harder to become a super star without a record company, but I think it's probably healthier for the industry in general for the era of super stars to die away. I can think of at least half a dozen bands/musicians that I follow and support online that I'll probably never hear on the radio, but they are out there supporting themselves on their music work a
You got it wrong, child. (Score:2)
"Most new music", no. "ALL new music", yes.
Why? Because you commit less discrimination by error in the generalization at the second case.
Most music is pretty much garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
Sturgeon's law, 90% of everything is garbage.
The result of "70% of music now being old" is simply expected, given enough time, once we developed high fidelity digital recording, allowing us to endlessly release exact copies. As well as digital media like TV and films, which has slowed and reduced the lingual shift.
So if we take the best 1% of music from, say, the 1950s, 1960s, (Context has changed, technology was still primitive)
2% from 1970s,
3% from 1980s
4% from 1990s
5% from 2000s (90% is still crap no matter what, and some stuff may not be crap, but not have staying power).
5% from 2010s
If we're considering this on an annual basis, IE "New Music" is less than a year old, we're already at 200% for music produced over a 60 year period. To be fair, maybe 5% is a bit high, a lot of music doesn't have staying power, and if you're looking at a market, people probably already have the older songs, creating a bias towards newer songs.
And yeah, the radio stations playing the old stuff 90% of the time doesn't help.
Hell, even online streaming has this problem. Last time I dipped my toe, it was difficult to get the algorithm to play me anything but the songs I specifically said I liked. I mean how hard should "Here's a list of songs I like, play me stuff I haven't heard yet(or at least listed) that I might like." be? Netflix was quite good at finding shows I might like for a while.
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Perhaps 90% of everything is crap, but it seems like the autotune revolution along with the advent of the lifestyle of the act has meant that actual creative writing and performance quality has taken a back seat.
In some respects I blame Cher's, "Believe," but the problem long predates that particular song. The "wall of sound" phenomenon and multitrack recording meant that most acts cannot produce a live show that sounds like their studio work. "Believe," did one thing that I don't care for though, it trig
Re:Most music is pretty much garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't blame Cher for this. She used the vocal alteration as a creative tool to do something different. She certainly didn't need autotune to force her vocals into tune. She used autotune like Frampton used a talk box. Hers was one of the few cases of not abusing autotune.
As for those following, I'm not sure which is worse, the ones that NEED autotune to be in key and try to pretend they don't (they don't seem to know that we can hear the autotune effect) or those that give up hiding it and lay it on thick so we'll think it's an artistic choice rather than a necessity (not working!).
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Beatles could have used autotune.
As a signer, if you don't have breath control, use compression.
If you don't have pitch control, use autotune.
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OTOH, they seem to have done OK for themselves as-is. Too much autotune might have made them forgettable.
Re: Most music is pretty much garbage (Score:3)
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but it seems like the autotune revolution along with the advent of the lifestyle of the act has meant that actual creative writing and performance quality has taken a back seat.
A good video [youtube.com] about autotune and how to visually detect it when it's being used (when it's not completely obvious). Also helps in hearing autotune in music once you understand what it's about.
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Perhaps 90% of everything is crap, but it seems like the autotune revolution along with the advent of the lifestyle of the act has meant that actual creative writing and performance quality has taken a back seat.
I was _kind of_ hopeful with the advent of autotune. I thought it might be somewhat democratizing for music. I mean, I have an awful voice. I can't hold a pitch worth crap. I played various instruments from middle school through college, I have a good sense of pitch, I've done some fairly rudimentary composition, but I just can't sing at all.
Maybe autotune could help similarly poor singers break into the industry?
Nope, we just get crap.
TBF, I understand that T-Pain is an excellent musician and singer, even
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Hell, even online streaming has this problem. Last time I dipped my toe, it was difficult to get the algorithm to play me anything but the songs I specifically said I liked. I mean how hard should "Here's a list of songs I like, play me stuff I haven't heard yet(or at least listed) that I might like." be? Netflix was quite good at finding shows I might like for a while.
Isn't it fascinating? My experience matches yours exactly. I've gone through the set up routine of listing rough genres I like, a handful of songs, and then the algorithm either gives me exactly what I listed or crap present day chart top stuff. It's very, very rare for me to find something new I enjoy. Honestly, genre radio stations give better results.
The other thing that's annoying is that when last I tried there is no option to say, for instance, NEVER play rap / hip hop.
Netflix was good at finding show
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The real problem is, there is too much (new) good music. I can say, if I had access to Youtube when I was in high school, I would have been in heaven. However, when I had a "album" in high school, I played it until I wore it out. There is so much good music on YT that even when I find a fantastic song today, I may only listen to it once or twice. Every week so much new stuff is dropping that it is possible to only listen to something new every day. It's great for me.
However, for an artist, just getting to s
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Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
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This might be even worse for new songs and new musicians. They would have to work for free to get a chance at all.
Re:Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps new musicians should find a different job, then. Wanting a specific job does not entitle anyone to be able to make a living from it.
LOTS of people want to make a living making music, because the work is soul-satisfying. Well, TO BAD! If the money isn't there, that is objective evidence that your efforts are not contributing to the world something it actually needs. The world PAYS for what it actually needs. So, these aspiring musicians who have bills to pay should adapt, and find a job that actually pays, thereby contributing something the world actually needs, just like everybody else does.
Is this harsh? Yes. Just like reality. I am not the least bit happy about harmful laws that might be abused to deny my access to classic music just because a buncha kids want me to pay them for their music instead. So, let's not put harmful laws in place in order to force a planet-wide game of "lets pretend like old music doesn't exist." Let's just accept the the world has changed, the amount of new music that it needs is lower than ever before, and focus our efforts on more productive activities.
It's better that way.
Re:Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing destroys a culture more than an MBA min-maxing it.
Your ideal capitalist reality isn't the only reality. In many other realities we subsidise creative arts as we know the value of it and aren't happy that a few rich conglomerates are ruining it.
Does that sound unfair to you having your taxpayer dollars used like this? I agree, and we can consider dropping that just after we stop subsidising fossil fuels or anything else which we subsidise in support of our cultural and economic needs that aren't met by pure capitalism alone.
Re:Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
... In many other realities we subsidise creative arts as we know the value of it and aren't happy that a few rich conglomerates are ruining it.
Does that sound unfair to you having your taxpayer dollars used like this? I agree, and we can consider dropping that just after we stop subsidising fossil fuels or anything else which we subsidise in support of our cultural and economic needs that aren't met by pure capitalism alone.
Thanks for saying that so well. I would add that as a society we wouldn't have to subsidize creative arts if powerful elites hadn't for many decades a) robbed and impoverished the creators and b) used advertising and various other kinds of propaganda, (including public education), to drive society's aesthetic tastes toward the lowest common denominator.
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I'd go for something like ten years past the lifespan of the youngest paid direct-contributor to the work. This would apply for printed materials, movies, television shows, and music.
There is new music. Today's channel is Patreon (Score:3)
You just have to find it.
The classic channels are just not providing it, which does not mean it is not there.
They are not on the radio, barely on youtube, barely on Spotify, barely in CD-stores.
This is an era of word to word. Have you heard of this new great band?
The new musicians work their work typically through Patreon.
It will give them a decent income far easier, while keeping the freedom to make the music they want to make.
Make the world a better place: search a few nice artists, and sponsor them.
Second that (Score:2)
The new music is alive and kicking
You just have to find it.
The classic channels are just not providing it, which does not mean it is not there.
They are not on the radio, barely on youtube, barely on Spotify, barely in CD-stores.
I'll second that.
I've been to Burning Man numerous times, and each time it seems I find two or three new artists or bands that I really like. Hang out in center camp to see a continuous stream of new artists. I once randomly happened upon a music competition (at BM) and sat in to listen to a whole bunch of really good artists.
The Burning Man radio station is also a source of really good music, and available over the internet for non-attendees.
If you're not finding good new music, it's because you're only lo
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This. There'splenty of good music being made. It's just you won't find it in the easy places to get music. You have to go and see bands to find it. I recommend music festivals.
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Make the world a better place: search a few nice artists, and sponsor them.
Why pay when you get it for free on PB or on a torrent? Who pays for music anyway? It's all free at this point.
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Is this a US media conglomerate issue? (Score:2)
The new music is alive and kicking.
You just have to find it.
The classic channels are just not providing it, which does not mean it is not there.
I second that.
There seem to be, internationally, several vibrant music scenes, with giant concerts and such, that don't show up on US media all (except for postings on YouTube). For instance, I didn't hear of Avicii [youtube.com] until he was dead, nor the entire "Symphonic / Operatic Heavy Metal" form until someone linked Nightwish's Ghost Love Score [youtube.com] in a reply to one of my Sl
Marketing (Score:2)
The industry is hell bent on marketing garbage music. I've given up on much of pop music. Definitely in team Indie music now. There's so much awesome new music available that will never get the time of day on the radio or anything that the MAFIAA tries to shovel down our earholes.
Couldn’t it just be longevity of digital med (Score:3)
Physical media wears out. You have to buy a new copy of an old work if it is on physical media. It might not be in stock, or even out of publication. But with digital, there’s no time limit on how long your recording lasts. Thus new music is no longer just competing with contemporaries for sales. New music must compete with the whole history of (recorded) music. You have to be REALLY good now to have a hit. Big sales at physical stores required new releases. Big sales at digital stores only require a new generation catching on to any given song/artist/album.
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I have never worn out a professionally-mastered CD, DVD, or Blu-ray that was properly handled and stored.
Sure, consumer-recordable media has stopped working at times because of the use of organic dyes, but those aren't professionally-produced media.
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Re: Couldn’t it just be longevity of digital (Score:2)
Yeah, but plenty of people have scratched up CDs, left them in sun, lost them. They *can* be cared for but frequently are not.
Reality is... (Score:2)
... time and attention is limited. There is an oversupply of good music and the internet accelerated people being able to find songs they want to listen to rather then accept what was fed to them by industry since the beginning. Music is being listened to, just not stuff being predominantly pushed by said industry.
Black Country New Road (Score:2)
Srsly. Check it out.
I miss mp3.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Also I just found out about the sex pistols or a fake band formed to push a clothing brand and that punk rock by and large wasn't anti-establishment but was just a invention of corporate America. As the YouTuber who pointed out to me put it it was a way of claiming victory while accepting defeat.
Is it killing new music or the music industry? (Score:2)
Clearly the music industry does derive more of its revenue from the oldies. But does that mean there is no new music?
There is PLENTY of new music. Musicians seem to just no longer care about major labels. They produce their music on twitch, get funded in patreon and release straight to youtube and spotify.
So if you look at the record, yes they are probably getting their income fromoldies because new artist are telling them to stick it!
It's the production (Score:4, Insightful)
Veteran music producer Rick Beato put out an insightful video on this subject here:
https://youtu.be/rYX1YFiQTDw [youtu.be]
It has mostly to do with the music companies and cultivation of new artists.
It's not a lack of good new music.
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Rick's channel is definitely one to follow. His knowledge of music theory itself is incredible.
CORPORATE music is fading: Musicians are doing OK. (Score:3)
The musicians I know no longer view streaming or record deals as a means to make a living. The musicians see an ever-smaller slice of the pie. Instead, many musicians now release their work freely, such as on YouTube, leveraging its potential to attract online advertisers.
The only way to make a living is performing with minimally decent ticket prices (above $20). The shared recordings also serve as self-advertising. I have friends who rehearse at local pubs for a $5 cover, where they lay out their creative and collaborative processes for all to see.
It is CORPORATE music that is fading away. Contemporary music will survive just fine without it!
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It is CORPORATE music that is fading away
And good riddance. The world will be a better place.
Industry Consolidation (Score:5, Informative)
Music died in the mid 90s in the US when they dropped the regulation prohibiting owning more than a small number of radio stations. Clear Channel bought up the majority of radio stations, and everything was programmed out of one building in Texas. That eliminated the possibility of local artists getting airplay.
Now with streaming, the services could tweak their algorithms to encourage new artists, but apparently they don't. We have a small number of gatekeepers, and we can blame their algorithms.
Side note: Frankly, I'm a bit surprised none of them have launched their own record labels and tweaked their algorithms to favor their own content (which probably wouldn't be a good thing except for their business, but it couldn't be much worse than the current labels).
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I rather think music died in the 70s with advent of Disco (anyone remember Disco Duck?). That taught the music industry that they didn't have to fund anyone with actual musical talent. Good bands were still producing (Jethro Tull, ELP, etc.) but they were not being promoted.
In a way, the music industry learned the wrong lessons from the 60s. They learned they could manipulate musical tastes when they glommed onto the Summer of Love.
Now, it seems the music industry only promotes mush. Good prog rock still ex
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It's been a long, slow decline, and we can point to a number of key turning points, so I think it's fair to say that we're both right here.
As to new good progressive rock, for example, it would be easy for a streaming service to stream new artists in the mix to listeners who ask for Rush. They could even have a local artist bonus, where a Boston band is slightly more likely to be streamed if you're listening in Massachusetts. They can adjust their algorithms to help listeners discover new artists.
Critical point (Score:2)
"The radio stations will play regularly only songs that they are paid to play by the record labels."
Fixed that for you, because it's an element part of how we got here. Pay-to-play is a manipulation of "what's popular" by people with the money to pay radio stations to put their dreck into heavy rotation - far too many of which, one could argue, are owned by one company [wikipedia.org] in the U.S. after we allowed the laws that prevented this sort of thing to be done away with.
If you want radio airplay, you'd better have
Google's music algorithms are pure garbage!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you click on an Artist with a 40 year career, they'll pick only songs when they were most famous. If you like a song from last year from that artist, they won't find contemporary equivalents, they'll just find songs from their most famous era.
For example, I love the Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails. They were huge in the 90s, but still released music I liked until a few years ago. Every recommendation is from the 90s. And yeah, you're welcome to think my taste in music sucks, but regardless, most of my likes are their recent albums and all the "If you like this, you might like..." choices were from the mid-90s, maybe early 2000s.
I tried Spotify briefly and they weren't much better. There are a million datapoints from my music listening history and likes that would help you pick songs I'd like, but you go with the laziest metadata queries an intern could have written in the early 80s with a remedial RDBMS.
Even on Spotify, which I assumed would be better, I'd see, you liked "Rebel Radio" from 2015...OK, well, it's from a band classified as "electronic" who had a platinum album in 1997, so let's show big hits from 1997 and other songs with the lazy metadata tag "electronic" They don't analyze the tempo, the BPM or any waveform analysis of the music. They simple use lazy metadata, that is often wrong, and possibly they base it on what other people who liked that song also like....so at best, they can recommend really popular music everyone has already heard, oh yay, the Chemical Brothers from 1997...boy, I've never heard those songs!!..thanks Spotify!! Glad you're using all my data for good.
A music recommendation algorithm engine using all the data available is a dream come true. I'll happily give as much data as possible to help them find music I've never heard of, especially from up-and-coming artists who have a similar sound, especially those from a differently classified genre or artist who hasn't toured with my favorite artists. However, the streaming services dropped the ball.
Re:Google's music algorithms are pure garbage!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The recommendation algorithms are clearly designed to push people towards music that makes the most money for the people who actually own that music (i.e. the record companies), not the music that's actually what listeners might want to listen to.
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The recommendation algorithms are clearly designed to push people towards music that makes the most money for the people who actually own that music
That would be ideal for Google or the record companies, but I don't think they've reached that ideal. Their recommendation algorithms just suck.
They don't even push commercial music! (Score:2)
The recommendation algorithms are clearly designed to push people towards music that makes the most money for the people who actually own that music
That would be ideal for Google or the record companies, but I don't think they've reached that ideal. Their recommendation algorithms just suck.
Agreed 100%. The laziness of the engine even thwarts that. First of all, for paid subscribers, I would imagine listening is an expense, not a source of profit, so if anything, they'd steer me away from major record labels and independent upstarts.
However, say I'm wrong...I could totally accept them recommending popular music, but please don't be so lazy. If you show me mainstream music I like, I'd thank you. I usually hate most mainstream music, but I am eager to be proven wrong if good tunes are the
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The worst is when it gets stuck in a loop, recommending the same three or four songs over and over.
It's not just music (Score:5, Interesting)
I have created a revolutionary new kind of data management software that does a bunch of things many times faster than conventional databases and file systems. I am surprised at how many people refuse to even consider it simply because it is not a 'drop-in replacement' for their current solution.
Re: It's not just music (Score:2)
Classical's problem is partly different (Score:4, Interesting)
While yes, there is a bit of programming for same-ness when it comes to all musics, and 'classical' seems like no exception, there's actually another factor at work: royalties.
Classical stations have very low profit margins right now. Most are listener-supported today, rather than commercially supported, like PBS stations. As such, they need to save money however possible.
One of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of the royalty payments to the publishing companies - ASCAP, BMG, SOCAN, etc. By limiting their playlists to mostly music in the public domain (which can go as late as the 1940s now, give or take copyright renewal history for a particular piece), classical stations can reduce their royalty payments to almost nothing. This has actually been a very important aspect that is keeping them alive at all. If they were paying out what a classic rock station pays, they'd have all gone broke ages ago. The market isn't there.
Industry executives. (Score:2)
It really doesn't matter what the underlying cause for any industry failing because it's always the fault of the industry executives for failing to adapt. It doesn't matter if it's music or garbage collection, not adapting will cause your company to fail and if every company is doing it then the industry is failing. It could be that your business model is no longer viable in the current environment and the fact executives overlooked it is their own fault.
So yes, a failing industry is always the fault of t
Re: Industry executives. (Score:2)
The real problem is business "ionnovations" (Score:2)
The real problem is business "innovations" Ever since the super groups of the '60s and '70s, the business people in the record industry have been working to make sure the balance of power never again shifts to the artists.
The business people have NEVER liked innovation or any sort of novelty. We got it anyway because a group that did well enough for their first couple albums gained enough power in the relationship that they could actually insist on putting something different on the third album (sometimes e
Welcome to the long tail (Score:2)
I say, welcome to the long tail, enabled by technology. In the past few days I've listened to songs whose performances span more than a half century, and whose compositions span ~350 years.
New artists are now in competition with hundreds of years of music. And they're now competing in a space where most people are renting their music, where people don't have their childhood libraries already purchased; new music competes with old music for money via stream nums.
No variety (Score:2)
I know that a lot of music is streamed... but I do miss the radio stations we used to have.
When I was a kid, is was not uncommon (1980's-1990's) to hear new music from all of these on the radio - on the same station. AC/DC, Beastie Boys, Madonna, Def Leppard, Marvin Gay, Journey, Van Halen, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, The Police, Judas Priest, Boys2Men, Springsteen, The Scorpions, Prince, Queen, Garth Brooks, Run D.M.C, Tom Petty, Bon Jovi, U2, TLC, and so much more.
Just look at the top songs for any ye
Re: No variety (Score:2)
Looking back... (Score:5, Interesting)
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When is the last time you saw a truly original movie or tv show?
Jungle Cruise was fresh and revelatory. You're just too old, only seeing the past.
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When is the last time you saw a truly original movie or tv show?
It is my understanding that Hollywood has been on a mission to "fix" issues [poptopic.com.au] in TV shows.
I don't know if that applies to music, however.
What's killing music (Score:4, Insightful)
Autotune.
No singer left behind. (Score:3)
Plus the market is saturated, new music that is unique will just get harder to produce unless Bag-Pipes become all the rage.
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No more forced new music (Score:2)
The real change is we are no longer forced to listen to new music. In the past most people listened t
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...older music focused on love and happiness has been replaced with music from people bitching about how bad they have it.
Do you mean like the rap & hip-hop of the 80s? Or the jazz & R&B from the 50s & 60s? Or the blues from the 20s & 30s?
Re: (Score:2)
Logical fallacy (Score:2)
TFS is begging the question, making an assumption & asking us to reason it through. It's like asking you, "Why haven't you stopped masturbating in public yet?" - to engage with the question at all, means accepting the underlying assumption.
So, to whoever wrote this trite, "Fuck off" music ain't dying or becoming ossified. Yes, the music industry tends to be quite conservative as a whole but it always has been. It's growing, changing, & developing at its own rate & in its own way, which apparentl
Stop producing McCrap (Score:3)
Maybe it's the industry's insistence of treating music like fast food that's killing it off.
Have the execs eaten their own dog food lately? A ton of souless autotuned crap that is massed produced and only to cause a quick dopamine release in it's listeners, rather than being art with substance. Noise that is pumped out like cheap trinkets.
Yeah, they can't scream "piratez" for this mess.
This Isn't New (Score:3)
Rewind 20 years ago before there were music streaming services. It was still pretty hard for new recorded music to be successful. Is a "Classic Rock" station going to play an edgy new song? No, they're going to play Stairway To Heaven again, because everyone in their demographic loves that song, so they can sell ads targeting that demographic. There were radio stations focused on new music, but the dominant format was "Top 40," which still made it hard for a new artist to get noticed unless they could create a really big hit.
I would be amazed if new releases were getting anywhere close to a majority of plays. Wake Up Little Susie, Jailhouse Rock, and Johnny B. Goode are all 65 years old, but they're still great songs. Every new year of recorded music has even more recorded music to compete with for attention. Pick any year since 1973; Dark Side of the Moon outsold 99% of new albums released that year. 20 years ago there wasn't an effective way to measure total play count for a song, but I'll bet that most people played more old music on their CD/tape/record players than they played new music, because they still had all their old albums on the shelf, but only bought a few new albums per year.
thy cup runneth over (Score:5, Interesting)
Algorithmic suggestions are self-reinforcing (Score:3)
My sister switched from Spotify to Apple
Music recently to be on my family plan, and she is finding more music on AM than Spotify because of two things:
1. Spotify's recommendations are just good enough to keep you listening, but they're bad at novelty
2. Apple Music has more human-curated playlists.
Most algorithms rely on recommending music based on what other listeners of a song ALSO listened to. They don't work off of any stylistic cues or similarities, just on what a similar listener to you would like. But that just reduces everything to a meagre middle-ground. Super average.
Humans don't enjoy music like that. My tastes span a broad range. I love Canadian folk music, 90s grunge and Chiptune. My playlists have Taylor Swift in them (musically I find her very ordinary, but lyrically, she's excellent if you've ever been in a relationship that you need to process), Monster Magnet, Zoe Keating, Crash Test Dummies, Bitshifter and lots of other bands that bear no similarity to one another.
Streaming services with algorithmic playlists are the inevitable end-point of an industry that always resisted any changes until they absolutely had to.
The great music is out there, though. Get onto Bandcamp, talk with other people, look for human-curated recommendations that interest you. There has never been a better time for interesting music, just don't expect Spotify's playlists to deliver it to you.
Books? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are also more old books than new books. We just find this less remarkable because books have been around a lot longer than recorded music.
There's a vast, easily accessible library of music now. Why should newer music be favored?