Is Old Music Killing New Music?

@aewarren 

New music is killing new music.

My first thought too. 

The monotony. The simplicity. The same three chords over and over again. The way almost all cars look the same because of aerodynamics for gas mileage regulations, and SUVs and trucks all look the same for utility is the way music has become. It's very formulaic. Songs are now written by committee, so they're dumbed down to a common denominator. It amazes me that you need seven writers to come up with the same old three minutes of "boots and cats" computer-generated rhythm overlaid with fake auto-tuned vocals. And don't get me started about rap, which is much more literature than music, and even more monotonous.

@tgilb 

Top 40 music may be controlled and commercialized but I wouldn’t say that about the music out of the mainstream.

Agree. With the ease of recording nowadays, the selection is gargantuan. The problem is sifting through all the crap. It requires work to find them. As always, the Top whatever lists drive the marketing. Those don't require sifting and are therefore favored by people less obsessed with music. Just go to the Spotify Top Ten and hit Play.

Speaking to your "out of the mainstream", metal has seen a similar negative shift in quality. If you go to Spotify's top lists the metal is either unoriginal, unimaginative, monotonous or not metal. There's even a song called Call Me Little Sunshine. Can you imagine a metal song being called that? Even worse, it has never-ending repetitive lyrics just like pop.

You will never walk alone
You can always reach me
You will never ever walk alone
You will never walk alone
You can always reach me
You will never ever walk alone
You will never walk alone
You can always reach me
You will never ever walk alone

And the even more out of the mainstream extreme metal has gone from having groove and melody to favoring dissonance. It's like they're doing the opposite of pop and trying to be so different that they've left the realm of listenable. So the quality issue may be generational and not limited to pop.

@limomangus 

I dont believe the statement that buy age 30 your set in your musical choice

I do. I'll go so far as to say by age 22 or so. I think you and I are outliers. I don't know of or have heard of anyone middle age or older in my local sphere, at work, at the gym, or really anywhere except the Web who listens to new artists.

There was a thread here recently called "Share albums where EVERY SINGLE song is good". I commented that almost every album mentioned was 45-50 years old. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

Occasionally you'll see audiophiles scoot into some other genre on a temporary adventure, but it doesn't suddenly displace their favorites. You rarely see experimentation with non-audiophiles.

You also see "getting stuck" as I call it, in the guitar community. You'll see guitarists consistently stuck playing songs from a 5-7 year period that aligns with their late teens and early twenties.

This isn't just about music. Look at technology. How many people over 40 outside the computer profession (and even inside)  understand things like cryptocurrency or the internal workings of blockchain? Blockchain is the future. Eventually all immutable documents will be stored on a blockchain. All your contracts, your deed, your loan agreements, etc. will be on a blockchain. Yet no one over 30 outside work knows what the heck I'm talking about. At most they think blockchain is Bitcoin.

One of my theories for "getting stuck" in the music of your youth is personality type. Without getting too deep into clinical terms or study citations, it's well known that some personality types are more curious than others. For instance, Sigmas have a very strong curiosity trait. Elon Musk is probably the most famous Sigma. No surprise there. Sigmas will do stuff like start new technology companies, dream up high-speed tunnels, commercial space travel and even have the cojones (or naivete, or both) to think he could start a successful car company where all others had failed. But Sigmas only make up 6% of the population.

Is breaking out of "getting stuck" in the music of your youth only limited to Sigmas? Could Sigmas be the outlier in this regard?  Or might it have something to do with people who work in professions that require constant change develop an immunity to fear of change? Or something else? I don't know. But I do know that I've tested as a Sigma and I'm one of those people who never got stuck.

@femoore12 

I wonder if this also affects how we select the equipment in our systems? Something else to consider. 

Hmmm ... don't know, but somehow I doubt it. I think you'd have to start with whether this trait makes you objective or subjective. That has a great deal to do with your system criteria and priorities.

@fleschler 

An interesting response to ponder. First, I'm sure you have an above average IQ. As for being a *Sigma, I can't tell from a short post. On the surface, you seem to have some traits, and a streak of curiosity to a certain level, but not to the obsessiveness of a Sigma. Sigmas don't tend to dabble in things. They become immersive. For instance, I've literally read 250+ books on economics, finance and trading. Sounds nuts, but that's a Sigma for you. And that has been just one of my many immersive hobbies. Sigmas would never say "I don't know what I'd do if I retired." Not having anything to do just doesn't register as being a realistic possibility in a world filled with a seemingly unlimited number of things to do.

I can't speak for streaming in your favorite genres, however I thought it would lack with some of my obscure preferences, but it doesn't. So I sold all my LPs and all but a handful of my CDs. I haven't listened to physical media going on two years.

On YouTube, Rick Beato (a former record producer) does some interesting analysis of new music quite often. To say his audience is less enthusiastic than he is is an understatement. But even he has to admit often that new music lacks creativity. His latest Grammy nominees video is a case in point.

*Sigmas can also be determined by the  Myers-Briggs INTJ test result, which I took in my early twenties.