Is Old Music Killing New Music?

Coming back to Op's title, with benefit of hindsight I am not surprised that old music is more prevalent than new music simply because there is far less original material in new music (its all been done before).  Early indicators of this trend is when some time ago a few 'Rap' artists would use old hits to put in their own lyrics (or is it speech?), obviously no new originality.  There was 'Grunge Rock' which really was a poor man's version of Rock, I have more regard to Punk which tried to be more 'to the point' music without the frills, but the Punk artists fell in the trend of the time of trying to be offensive, bad boys and totally radical (sadly just an act).  There is a lot of modern 'good' music about, not original but certainly musical gems.  However music companies trying to nurture and invest in young talent have long gone.  Now focus is on more 'what will make it go viral' on internet.  Think of a tune which will 'hook' the listener on first time because otherwise listener will be instantly bored and has the instant access to other tunes.  Also there is a growing trend of artists just doing their own websites selling their own music without any band involvement eg Justin Johnson.  He is very talented guitarists but eventually the listener will get bored just listening him on his own doing eg remake of Stairways To heaven.  On rare situations when he does play in the band; musically it gets far more interesting!

Music of the 70's dominates today cause it is standing the passage of time. Too soon to see if it will conquer Bach and Beethoven, though not likely. Garcia made the comment that the Dead was just a dance band. Is it all about the rhythm? 

Is it all about the rhythm?   Interesting question from above it certainly ignited certain feelings in the listener and most likely increased procreation...!

PRAT ... Pace, Rhythm, and Timing. Listed earlier in the thread ;-)

@jjsmith

@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.

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By 22 I was already into the Beatles, Elvis, Dylan and was happy checking out the LPs featured in Paul Gambaccini’s book Critics Choice Top 200 albums (first ed 1978) as well as The NME Rock Encyclopedia (1978) as well as listening to the regular Top 40 charts.

All the bands I enjoyed listening to that came later eg Joy Division, The Pogues, The Smiths, U2, R.E.M. etc were basically a continuation of what had gone before.

I have never made any effort to check out any different music unless there was something catchy in the music. For example I only got into classical after hearing an old tape of Murray Perahia playing Mozart’s PC 21.

I did get into jazz for a while but it seemed a little claustrophobic after a while.

As far as patience goes, I never had much back then, Sinatra seemed so so slow. Somehow he seemed to have improved by the time I got into my 30s.

In one sense, all of the music I listen to can be put under the same umbrella of being called popular.

There is an untold amount of music that I will never get to listen to, nor do I want to.

It’s that hook, buzz, kick, heartmelt that I look for in music, and most of the current stuff I hear on the car radio just doesn’t do it for me. These kids of today just seem too knowing, just too professional in their career aspirations.

They don’t sound for real.

At least that’s my take.