| It's a good point, but I don't think it's 'price'. Music is 'homogenized' for the same reason products are: labels are making 'lowest common denominator' for the same reason 'Transformers' has no plot whatsoever. Radio and Google searches, 'hype' are ironically more commercialized than ever before, ergo, music is more 'product'. There is actually 'more diversity' in music - but you have to actually expend a little bit of effort to find it. An I mean 'just a little bit' i.e. a search on iTunes or whatever. Most people do not consume music that way - they just don't care that much. They accept what's on the radio, or what their friends tell them and esp. for younger folks, they are influenced by marketers trends. Consider the parallel: there are more 'web sites' than ever before, and the web is far more diverse - yet - our time is more and more focused on a smaller subset of places i.e. FB, Amazon. A couple of nuanced things: 'Making music' is easier than ever, and what is considered 'music' is more broad - so anyone can spend a few minutes using off-the-shelf software to make a few interesting sounds and voila. Eddie Van Halen spent a decade nerding out in his basement practicing to develop his talent - now - you don't have to like Van Halen, but if you actually listen, you can respect the talent. 'Talent' is no longer necessary - so this is a problem. It completely blows me away that a lot of shows now are simply Kareoke - young guys were rapping over an mp3. Not very exciting to me, but even worse ... I saw something with 'Chief Keef' recently and he's not even rapping over a 'backing track' - he's literally just playing is regular release track and then drunk/high mumbling over top of the track. He stumbles around on stage with his buddies, and each of them mumble a few lines over top now and then. Which brings me to 2cnd nuanced point: it's not about the music (maybe it never was) it's about the fame. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are in the same business. One is more lyrical than the other. (FYI I think they are both geniuses in different ways, and I don't care for either of their fare but they are brilliant nonetheless). It's about creating a 'meme' - and wether it's instagram, or bits of acting, or 'music' or appearances, whatever - it's the same thing. It's almost impossible these days for a pop artist to be huge without having a very visual aspect. Taylor Swift's Instagram is at least as important as her albums. Her shows are massively produced spectacles. She and Beyonce are better described as pop-figure entertainers ... with a lot of music in the mix. So the focus on pop-culture, and the visual aspect, has truly and fundamentally altered things. Maybe some of you are old enough to remember: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' - since the social media revolution, this is further blown up. I love all genres of music - but every genre has been blown up with really low grade stuff, almost written by a computer and you can hear it. Obviously EDM is worse than others because of the nature of the 'E' of course, but it's bad. Final nuance: a great deal of the 'art' has shifted from classical musical paradigms, into the Engineering. So now, the 'producer' is in a way the 'chief artist'. We saw this in the late 20th century when U2 got popular. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanlois were producers on their huge hits - and you can clearly hear their impact. They were 'part of the band' in Bono's words. Radiohead has used the same Engineering guy forever and he's definitely a key ingredient in their secret sauce. Max Martin writes 100% of Katy Perry and other's hits and he, together with Dr. Luke basically own the hot-100 of known entities. And of course ... in the early 20th century if you wanted to hear music, someone had to play it really. You needed a full orchestra for good music. When the 5-piece rock and roll band came along 90% of horn players had to get other jobs. When Ableton/Steinberg/GarageBand came along ... well, you don't need any musicians at all to make music. Clearly there's a lot of intelligence even in the most mundane pop music, just as it's not actually easy to make 'Transformers' films, but the artistry is more focused on production than art ... and with so much 'noise' in the long-tail, it's exceedingly difficult for decent talent to break through. I was never a fan of Van Halen, but I happed to see them in an Arena concert several years ago and it was absolutely amazing. The music seems 'passe' and cheezy on the radio, but live ... it's basically exhilarating. They are the definition of 'Stadium Rock' and enormously talented. Imagine Dragon's doesn't hold a candle to them it would almost be comical listening to them side by side live. Edit: should not that the biggest money makers are the 'established brand' live acts, like 'Journey' and 'Bruce Springsteen' are making zillions more money than ever in 2018, 30 years after the fact - i.e. 'new artists' now have to compete with massive bands that are still truckin'. Check Billboard 200 album list, towards the middle you find: Nirvana's 'nevermind', Metallica 'black' and Guns n Roses 'apetite for destruction' on the chart for like the last 6 years (!) and might be for another decade (!) so 'new artists' literally have to outsell 20 year old Metallica albums to get listed. Rough! |
>> Obviously EDM is worse than others because of the nature of the 'E' of course
I don't think this is true.
I do think that the barriers to entry are the lowest in EDM - is the reason so much crap is being created there.
But those low barriers, that environment, is the ideal place for that lone creative genius, because, here it's all about the quality and quantity of great ideas.
No need for great band leadership skills. No idea will be "designed by commitee/band". No need for that great determination to learn technical stuff - maybe a quality less found in creative people. And it's relatively easy to form collaborations between geniuses, especially when everything is digital.
And at least if you love psychedlic music, the best EDM has to offer(say carbon based lifeforms or globular), is so much better than the best of what came before it(psychedlic rock, let's say pink floyd).