I'd be a bit careful in ascribing too much meaning to the differences in music over the years. Remember that your parents probably said the same thing about your music, and their parents before them. We tend to lock in our favorite music in our late teens and early 20s, and while it's okay to have a preference it's kind of silly to ascribe immutable qualities of the music when it's probably just what you like.
Or, to paraphrase something pithy a former boss of mine said: they made the best music back when I was most emotionally vulnerable, and now it seems to have gone downhill since then.
Ah-ha -- but I happen to listen to largely the same music as my parents, so I can safely conclude that music has indeed gone to shit with my generation!
...actually, this isn't true. The reason older music is often seen as better is that time has filtered out the generic crap with no staying power. And so I second the recommendation to check out older music; it's easier to find quality stuff. And, like watching a TV series after it finishes airing, when you find something you like, you don't have to wait to check out the rest of it.
I can't say I agree with that. There is a lot of really good new music, just like there is a lot of bad old music. The difference is the bad old music has already been forgotten, but the bad new music is recent enough to still be somewhat memorable. For now.
The fact you are giving me band camp links only strengthens the point im saying. Rock is on life support at best, if all you have are bandcamp links to indie bands. People arent going to go through everything on bandcamp to possibly find a gem.
I clicked a few of those links they sound like any band from the last 20 years. New rock sounds for 60 years were mainstream music and accessible and progressive. That is no longer the case. Rock is not a major genre any more. Less people are getting into it. Guitar sales have been dropping, its not popular. For a genre to be healthy it needs innovation and new ideas.
I guess I took your "new" a bit too literally. My point was simply that I think there's a lot of great music out there being made as we speak.
Does it sound similar to what was made 20 years ago? Certainly not everything, but that's where I am with my tastes at the moment.
> The fact you are giving me band camp links only strengthens the point im saying.
I gave Bandcamp links because that's where I get all my music from, and because I think it's better for the artists to share Bandcamp links than to say Spotify.
> People arent going to go through everything on bandcamp to possibly find a gem.
That's why they have Bandcamp Weekly[1] and such, but of course there's lots of other ways.
> Rock is not a major genre any more.
Major as in there's not a lot of really big acts, ala say Kiss or Van Halen, then sure. Is that so surprising?
The affordability of audio recording and the internet means its much easier for smaller acts to find an audience. This leads to more variety, as people can make and find various niches.
> Major as in there's not a lot of really big acts, ala say Kiss or Van Halen, then sure. Is that so surprising?
This is what I mean, popularity of rock is dead compared to what it is has been. There is no innovation in genre, nothing is captivating. There is no new and modern sound to rock. Those bands did something different. There isn't an audience anymore to support that kind of band and there is nothing worth supporting like that out there.
If your going through bandcamp looking for indie bands that play 40 person bars with an audience of 3k likes on facebook, your not the typical listener. You seem to be either really into the scene or sound. metal fans might think there's new metal bands are good, but most people of have heard metal, the small differences between bands arent enough to captivate a new large audience.
Like for me, I don't want to hear another band that sounds like blink182, or nirvana or pink floyd or disturbed or anything other style I listened to death already. Rock now doesn't provide anything fresh.
> its much easier for smaller acts to find an audience. This leads to more variety,
Idk if you can make that assumption, there might be more punk bands then ever before but if they all sound the same, who cares?
> I think there's a lot of great music
I think your thinking of something different then I am. I'm not saying everyone out there are talentless hacks. Like jazz or like I said in the other post disco, some of it is even enjoyable and might have a gem or two. There are lots of talented musicians, but they're not really evolving the genre.
People will always be making music but that doesnt mean the genre is thriving. Maybe bands needs to go underground for a bit for a new sound to emerge. Or the 4 person band with a guitar and drums is going to go the way of jazz bands and younger generations grow up listening to rap and electronic.
Depends what you call « rock ». Radio-friendly indie rock had its 15 minutes of fame in the 2000s and now it's out of the mainstream. So what ? Metal's sub-genres are on a seemingly never-ending expansion, psychedelic rock is doing great, new occult/hard-rock/doom/acid bands are seemingly popping up every day, you've got stuff like Saharian blues-rock giving us awesome music [1] etc. Plus the tropes of rock music feeding into new forms of instrumentation (ie. electronic music).
And music isn't restricted to bland rock, hip-hop or EDM archetypes. The spectrum of possibilities is infinite, and the spectrum of what comes out reflects it pretty well. Especially if you dare looking out of your little cultural fishbowl.
A lot of new genres, that aren't what most people would consider EDM, are hidden under both real and imagined EDM labels in some crazy subgenre. If you are avoiding all EDM because you don't like some shit trance or techno, you could be missing out on a lot of other music just because mainstream music giants don't like it. There are hundreds of electronic music streams going on right now that all have different genres and styles, but if you looked on like XM radio, there is only two streams and both are mostly trash house dance music.
I think a lot of people just don't get exposed to a lot of great new music just because they avoid the electronic label over assumptions of what it will be. But that label means it could be anything and isn't much better than calling it post 2000s music.
Rock is by no means dead. There are dozens of new releases on bandcamp and its still quite popular as far as I know. Sure I believe the genre has suffered during the pandemic, as many artists rely on live performance, but that would only mean that rock would be hyphenating. But its not. Artists still find ways to release new rock music as evident on their preferred platform.
I don't think indie artists trying to release music on bandcamp is a status of health. There isn't anything new or interesting happening in the genre. Rock in its current form, is nothing like it was for the 50s up to 2010s.
Music has always been extremely formulaic. That's its very nature : using tropes we're accustomed to to provoke an emotional reaction. But it certainly is less formulaic now than it was a few centuries ago.
Less formulaic now? Pop music is becoming more repetitive. [0] People like Max Martin producing an amazing amount of hit pop songs leads me to think it's more formulaic.
I guess it would depend on how you sample the music (i.e. from the top 50 hits playlists, randomly, by streaming number, by sold copies, etc.) and where you establish the baseline, and again how you compute forumlaic.
So if you are comparing top hits today with experimental rock of the 70s, and measure it in variance of chords, timbre and vocabulary. Yes it would be easy to show how music is becoming less varied. However if you establish the baseline during the late classical era (and limit your self to western music; as is often done) I’m sure you will find music today to be more varied.
If you sample randomly and make sure to include all of the experimental genres I’m sure you will find music today more varied then ever, and even if you go by top sales (and make sure you include music from around the word) I sure you might find that music is just as varied as it was back in the 70s.
Then there the question of how you measure musical variance. It is easy enough to do it by measuring (among other) the chord progression, or timbre, or proportion of the chorus, etc. but when people do this they often undermine many genres of music (e.g. minimalist music of the 80s and 90s) or hip hop, etc.
Max Martin is also a fantastic musician, originally a singer (this is arguably the most important part of pop), and has a deep understanding of music. From a harmony standpoint, his stuff tends to be a bit more interesting than most pop tunes. The dude is beast.
I find a lot of older music sounds very muffled and poorly mastered where as some modern stuff like Tipper are incredible experiences especially on high end headphones. Some of this modern stuff is completely unreal. But if all you listen to is old music and the top 10 pop songs I'm not surprise you would miss this.
Thanks for the link to Tipper, as a fan of Shpongle,I think I'll like a trip (possibly literally) through some of Tipper's catalogue.
But, incredible stereo effects does not equal great music. Great music may or may not have great stereo effects. Music may be muffled and grainy, but that's a reflection of the available technology, it says nothing of the quality of the music itself.
This is the sort of comment that I don't think belongs on HN. You can't trash something you don't understand and claim it a curious and contrarian view.
I’d be willing to believe there’s a kernel of truth in there despite the harsh wording. Maybe the songs that become hits today do sound different than songs that became hits in past eras due to the different ways people tend to listen to music in those eras, like what sounds catchy through an iPhone versus what sounded nice on FM on an old Hi-Fi?
I don't doubt that but I think it's in the non-hits is where you'll find the difference. Streaming services incentives short ear worms but also allows any John or Jane to put it's music in front of an audience it otherwise never would have. The music people listen to most won't change but the variety people listen to collectively is truly massive.
Or, to paraphrase something pithy a former boss of mine said: they made the best music back when I was most emotionally vulnerable, and now it seems to have gone downhill since then.