Why Music Has Lost it’s Charms (Article)

Returning to present streaming business model, and my statement "nothing inherently wrong with it".

Streaming business model could be many things, supply and demand are but one imposition on it, another important component would be artists leverage. In society where masses value artists highly, artists could pursue association, backed by masses, and demand higher remuneration. This leverage would be in the form of threatened or actively pursued strike by artists and/or boycotts by consumers. As things stand, owners of streaming services hold all the cards, and if not them record companies, distributors, etc.

Artists supply the content, based on how money presently distributed, you'd think many artists don't exist, like giving away one's labor for free while others profit. True upside down world! Value I receive from music is far more than my costs, and I give to my local student and university radio stations, and attend live concerts. I doubt physical media going to be future of music distribution, streaming business models will only change for betterment of artists if society values them more highly.

There is so much music available to us today. As music lovers, we are very fortunate to be alive at this particular point in time.

I'm 57, I laugh at this author just as I do with everyone else that believes this. The rate of good quality music being produced hasn't changed. The medium that brings it to our ears has, and it fills them with crap if we just turn on a radio or SiriusXM as our choices of content. 

I like classic rock, if somebody decides that's what they want to listen to, I'm perfectly fine with it. I grow tired of listening to familiar music, so, I choose whatever fits my mood.

I believe pop music has been ruined by Streaming and satellite radio due to the lack of fidelity in their modes of transport. When XM appeared in the stores as an accessory for your car, I was walking around Manhattan playing home recorded cassettes through a decent walkman and Koss PortaPro headphones. I came upon a Sony XM unit in a store, working, with a headphone jack, hmmm. I plugged in my headphones, found a music channel and "meh", tried another, and another, "Are they joking?!" The music quality was somewhere between AM and FM playing through a 9 volt handheld. Like mp3 recordings, weren't any better. I also discovered my wife and kids didn't care if XM or mp3s didn't sound as good as a CD.

On the road, the satellite radio is acceptable quality, but, I haven't found a single station I can tolerate for even an hour. The playlists are either boring or irritating. 

I've had a Pandora subscription for a few years. Their "Nusic Genome Project" provided decent playlists to start from. The player lets me look back on what played, vote yay or nay to tailor the list and also search out an artist for more music and more artists. They also added a stream quality option. I have it set to high and it's noticeably better than standard. When I use Bluetooth in my truck, it's better sound quality than SiriusXM. At home, my Yamaha receiver came with an external Bluetooth adapter, I've since upgraded the adapter to a unit with LDAC and it streams 96K/24 from my Samsung S22 Ultra to my receiver, which I set to direct (processing bypassed) to drive a Parasound A21 to AR303s. I also have music I purchased, stored on my phone, in flac 96K/24, that I can stream as well.

I've noticed the music quality streaming from Pandora is generally good, but the sound quality varies, from sounding like a low bandwidth mp3 that my daughter found on BearShare, to sounding as good as the 96K/24 Hi Res works that I bought from HDtracks. Since the Hi Res streaming services have made it to prime time, I decided to check them out. I discovered the same problem. It isn't the bandwidth limiting the sonic quality of the music anymore it's the engineering applied to the recording. I imagine it boils down to how much control an artist has while producing a record and how much they care about the playback quality delivered to the public.

Since I've discovered Internet and streaming, I've listened to many genres of artists, old and new, that I haven't heard before, and I really enjoy what's out there. I've been enlightened by vocals, Jazz, Blues, roots rock, Americana, folk, rockabilly, swing, and fusions of whatever. I haven't searched for classical (maybe someday). Most of what I listen to isn't played on the radio or SiriusXM.

So, if you think nobody makes good music anymore, you haven't really looked. 

@robones54 Agree with you on Sirius radio sound quality. However, streaming sound quality extremely variable depending on source and streaming equipment. I've had high end cd transports in past, my present streaming setup exceeds any cd playback I had, also exceeds pretty nice present vinyl setup. One can have both vast music selection and highest sound quality with streaming

. I also find it odd that some claim they have greater selection with physical media vs. streaming, I have at least 2500 cds and 3500 lp's, extremely rare any of this physical media not available with streaming. Much more likely, streams not available on any physical media, many releases will never be available on physical media, either due to being cut outs or having never been released on physical media.

I observe a  lot of disdain for more contemporary artists and releases due to disdain for streaming technology and perhaps the entire zeitgeist of contemporary society. There is a burgeoning 'culture of complaint' out there, many turn away, or purposely choose ignorance to avoid having to interface with new artists they assume are part of a culture/society they don't like. Too bad, so many wonderful messages and feelings evoked by many contemporary artists!  On streaming front, no media is perfect, avoiding streaming for unjustified prejudicial reasons denies one a wonderful musical experience.

'Some guy on the internet'  who wrote this:

We dont need "a flag to be proud of " to unite all those who, like larsman because they never had any musical education and evolution, think that their apparent "freedom" to choose the only musical world that they know is not unbeknownst to them, an direct expression of their own mental chains....

knows nothing about me but sure knows how to write long-winded, boring posts.