Why Music Sucks Now

#5
#5
n_huffhines said:
No. This is like being an old guy in the 70's and saying the distortion pedal ruined music.

Most of the time you can't even tell when autotune is used and the times you can tell are not that common. Probably in genres you don't like in the first place?
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My point is, there are now so many who  need autotune rather than those who use it to enhance. I am all for using it to enhance a sound, but if you just suck at your craft but you look good onstage and autotune makes you sound good...does that make more sense?
 
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#6
#6
superdave1984 said:
My point is, there are now so many who  need autotune rather than those who use it to enhance. I am all for using it to enhance a sound, but if you just suck at your craft but you look good onstage and autotune makes you sound good...does that make more sense?
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Did Bob Dylan suck? I don't think he did. Music is more than being an awesome singer or classical musician. How it sounds and what it means should be far more important than how it's produced.

I love Kanye's music. When he chooses to sing, he definitely needs autotune, and it makes it all work.

I agree that autotune is over-used and can be annoying, and I appreciate natural singing more....but I get all of it. I get the good singers and I also get Kanye in this autotune world. Autotune can be misused but it can't ruin music as a whole.

It's like the guy in the video says...he's arguing for quality over quantity, but I say give me quantity and I'll find the stuff I like, not the filtered stuff the music industry thinks is quality. Rock isn't dead because the man decided it costs too much to record. Rock bands are recording themselves. It's dead because there is not much demand for new rock bands. If there were, bands like War on Drugs would be huge.

Also, the guy in the video thinks there is less collaboration and creativity now. There is no fkn way that is true. Collaboration is easier than ever. Metro Boomin' just made one of the sickest beats ever and put it on Sound Cloud for any self-proclaimed rapper to put their vocals on. This is the world we're living in now.
 
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#7
#7
I think there is good music today, it is just on the fringes and harder to find. It won't be the soulless pop that the industry puts forth.
 
#8
#8
I don't think it does. I would say that we live in a time where it's very accessible to find something to listen to - as well as to create. We're overloaded with people who make music to the point where it's just more difficult to find the gems.

Also, I have a hunch that people have a very narrow sphere of influence when it comes to what they listen to or how deeply they explore.

Modern day music critics also haven't really caught up. Leonard Cohen spoke about this once and I tend to agree:

"Most music criticism is in the 19th century. It's so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. It's still based on 19th century art - cows beside a stream and trees and 'I know what I like'. There's no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he's probably the most sophisticated singer we've had in a generation. Dylan's a Picasso - that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music."

It doesn't suck, we're just being smothered by it. Which is to some extent what he is talking about. The accessibility and the pace of technology.



Speaking of "smothering". This is a song called 'Don't Smother It' by Skeletons. A song that only has 2.2k views. And in mind much more interesting than what has millions of views these days. Because hey, I can't tap my foot to it and I don't hear a singer who sounds like what I hear on the radio.

 
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#9
#9
He makes some valid points about the ease of tools and how it’s eliminated quality studio musicians. The financiers will always find ways to cut the labor out.

At the same time it’s given amateur artists the tools they need to create more. Whether it’s good or bad, I think young people are able to push their creativity a little further because they have these tools at their disposal.

However, I listened to a podcast a year or so ago about how streaming has also changed how new music is made. Because of the payment model is based on plays the average run times have shrunk by almost a minute. The days of slow build ups are over too. They go straight for the hook. On top of that, popular music all sounds so similar because people like the familiar (which a similar reason Hollywood appears to rely so heavily on remakes and franchises).

He blames streaming for devaluing music but really that is the internet in general. Once downloading music became a thing, what you actually spent money on became a little more choosy. Streaming just legalized it and recovered some of that revenue for artists.
There is a really good book (which I think was recently made into a doc on Paramount+) called “How Music Got Free” which links almost every “new” album that hit Napster/Limewire to one dude that worked in a CD factory in Durham NC.
 
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#10
#10
n_huffhines said:
No. This is like being an old guy in the 70's and saying the distortion pedal ruined music.

Most of the time you can't even tell when autotune is used and the times you can tell are not that common. Probably in genres you don't like in the first place?
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Can you point to any old guy saying a distortion pedal ruined music? Never heard that being an old guy myself.

Guitar distortion goes back well beyond the invention of the distortion pedal (just as an example)
 
#11
#11
volinbham said:
Can you point to any old guy saying a distortion pedal ruined music? Never heard that being an old guy myself.

Guitar distortion goes back well beyond the invention of the distortion pedal (just as an example)
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It was just a hypothetical archetype, like a character in a Twisted Sister music video. I wasn't trying to invoke some historical fact about somebody who famously had this opinion.
 
#13
#13
K-town Vol Fan said:
Doesn't every generation think the new generation's music sucks? I think it's just part of getting older. That being said, todays music sucks.
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Lol . . . It's sad but true. I was on the golf course the other day and noticed my play list struggled to have anything post about 2010 and realized I'm now my Dad driving around listening to the the Beach Boys on the Oldies station.
 
#14
#14
K-town Vol Fan said:
Doesn't every generation think the new generation's music sucks? I think it's just part of getting older. That being said, todays music sucks.
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If you let yourself be that way. Plenty of music sucked when I was a kid. Plenty of music sucks now. Plenty of it sucked before I was born. And there's good stuff sprinkled throughout, too. Don't be a conformist precious about your old man era.
 
#17
#17
n_huffhines said:
If you could only listen to one decade of music, what would it be?

This is so hard. 70's, probably for me.
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It’s clearly the 80’s for me given my SiriusXM time on that channel and 1st Wave. But my playlist is mostly 2010’s or whatever bucket you’d put the following in:

The Head and the Heart
Mumford & Sons
Vance Joy
Lord Huron
Houndmouth
The Lumineers
Nathaniel Rateliff
Caamp
Vampire Weekend
First Aid Kit
etc
 
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#18
#18
95 Vol Alum said:
It’s clearly the 80’s for me given my SiriusXM time on that channel and 1st Wave. But my playlist is mostly 2010’s or whatever bucket you’d put the following in:

The Head and the Heart
Mumford & Sons
Vance Joy
Lord Huron
Houndmouth
The Lumineers
Nathaniel Rateliff
Caamp
Vampire Weekend
First Aid Kit
etc
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I'm not married to any newer artists really, but there are a lot I love just a little bit. For example, I would love your playlist but I'm probably not doing a deepdive on any of those guys (at least the ones I know). I've listened to 4 songs by Beach House 100x each, but I've probably only spent an hour listening to the rest of their catalog. I got all these songs I have no idea when I first heard them or how I heard them (probably youtube and pandora) and I love them and I never put more than a tiny bit of effort into discovering the artist*. It's so weird, but that's just how I do music in the digital era.

*like this one, for example

 
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#19
#19
n_huffhines said:
I'm not married to any newer artists really, but there are a lot I love just a little bit. For example, I would love your playlist but I'm probably not doing a deepdive on any of those guys (at least the ones I know). I've listened to 4 songs by Beach House 100x each, but I've probably only spent an hour listening to the rest of their catalog. I got all these songs I have no idea when I first heard them or how I heard them (probably youtube and pandora) and I love them and I never put more than a tiny bit of effort into discovering the artist*. It's so weird, but that's just how I do music in the digital era.

*like this one, for example

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I have an Amazon playlist that when played for an extended period becomes "and similar artists." I usually find "new" stuff that way or listening to The Spectrum on SiriusXM. New stuff is often from the last decade, though. As an example, I recently came by Houndmouth's Sedona that way and discovered it was actually released in 2015, lulz. My youngest (18) has similar taste which kinda freaks her out - she raids my playlist.
 
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#20
#20
For me, the major problem with music today is that it's so LOUD and brickwalled to death. Digital production and mastering causes so much high end and no depth to the sound. There's an old phrase that goes "if it's too loud, you're too old". I've been feeling that for years.

I think the best music is 80-90s, especially for hip hop. Most current bands/artists I listen to are underground.
 
#21
#21
Newer stuff I listen to:
Childers
Sturgill
Isbell
Stapleton
Bryan
Goose
Madeon
Phantogram
Phantoms
Chainsmokers
Above and Beyond
Tool (both old and new)
Halestorm
McLemore
NF
.Paak
Weeknd
Kendrick

That being said, when I surf Spotify, 98% of new releases are crap.
 
#23
#23
Godfatha said:
I think there is good music today, it is just on the fringes and harder to find. It won't be the soulless pop that the industry puts forth.
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I'd say it's almost the inverse.

Tons of great music and it's there for anyone willing to easily find it via Sirius, Pandora, Spotify, etc.

Anyone still finding music through traditional radio, that's on you at this point.
 
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