[fb03]

While I really like what music streaming services gave me (an opportunity to explore quickly lots of new music), I think it is also coaxing, pasteurizing and generalizing music to the 'most added value possible' or 'most hype created possible per track', to which the epitome of this concept is called 'lo fi hip hop music', which now everyone making mainstream music tries to emulate or incorporate.

I know this will sound harsh and obtuse, but if you notice, all 'dope' pop music now for kids is some variant of alternated trap-like rhythmic hihats and a really sloooow beats with a looong, bassy kick tail. to fill that huge nothingness pocket between the stuff, add some nice lush vocals (saying whatever, it doesn't matter much) and that's it.

or maybe i'm just getting old and cranky.

[yowlingcat]

> or maybe i'm just getting old and cranky.

I think there's an additional dimension to it, which is the songwriting and composition itself. The lo-fi hip hop flavor that you note is part of the production style. However, you could just as easily produce a song with a different style and it will still be the same song.

Perhaps what you are irritated by is that there's no substance to the song underneath the style. That seems to be pretty common with pop music today, sadly. But while that is true, it was equally true one, or, two, or three decades ago.

[oblio]

> or maybe i'm just getting old and cranky.

Quite likely. There are a lot of studies that show that we're "programmed" to like music we listened to as teenagers. Even though we like other kinds of music we listen to as adults, they don't trigger the same level of response in the brain.

[BLKNSLVR]

There's liking music and then there's nostalgia. I think they're two different things but they both sound the same.

If a person only likes the music of their generation then they don't like music, they like nostalgia.

There's music I liked as I was growing up, loved in fact, but listening to it now is like listening to myself talking about "what I want to be when I grow up"; it's a child's narrow perspective of the world. Some music that I liked I'm embarrassed by, although I understand it was a journey to my musical appreciation of today, and so I'm deeply thankful for its part in that journey.

I'm not a particularly nostalgic person, so I'm immune to that effect of music, so I think I can offer a somewhat more objective viewpoint.

[fb03]

I can agree, but what makes me doubt it is that "back in the day" (oh shit) we had lots of mainstream music that was different between themselves. we had the hiphoppers, we had the people that craved fast "whitney houston remix" level high energy dance stuff, we had the "hey i'm mean" rockers. all sharing the top charts.

if you take the medium bpm between the top 100 billboard tracks right now it must be somewhere between 69-80bpm and with the characteristics i mentioned above - and it's all a smear between "i'm depressed" and rhythm and blues.

i still can't quite confirm but yes, i am also getting old and cranky :)

but srsly, don't you feel music is just becoming a pasteurized smear of the 'same' ?

[BLKNSLVR]

> but srsly, don't you feel music is just becoming a pasteurized smear of the 'same' ?

Yes, but only the 'popular' music that's forced on me at every opportunity. It's a great big smear that bleeds in and through itself unless it's just one big scab with slightly different colours in slightly different areas.

The music I choose to listen to, both old and modern, both the new to me and also the familiar, is widely varying. I feel like I have ADD when it comes to musical taste. In creating a 'playlist for right now' I'll get bored of a song that's up next because I've scrolled on to a different artist and already started playing their songs in my head and want to listen to them NOW instead of the song I choose three minutes ago. World music, rock, jazz, blues, electronic, psychedelic, I love music crossing all these boundaries and want to fit them all in.

As such, I truly don't understand the acceptance, by seemingly most of society, of the bland sameness (smear) of the 'top 40'. But it's human laziness and 'better things to do'.

'They' obviously don't feel it in their souls like I do, like we do. And I pity them what they're missing.

[daniellarusso]

I have noticed the lower BPMs recently.

Maybe 2020 was just not a good year for energetic, uplifting music?