Interesting article on how old music is more popular than the current stuff -

[www.theatlantic.com]

My theory why? The old stuff is better - more real, more melodic, more soulful, more human.

Drew

This old Luddite holds digital recording party responsible for music losing some of its soul over the last three or four decades.

[It may on the other hand be just that I'm getting old ]

Old people continually promoting old music is also killing the chance for new music to be heard and develop in the way old music did.

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Spud
This old Luddite holds digital recording party responsible for music losing some of its soul over the last three or four decades

Agreed. As just one example - years ago, Elton John switched from working on tracks with a live drummer in the studio to using a drum machine. His music immediately lost its swing and swagger.

Drew

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His Majesty
Old people continually promoting old music is also killing the chance for new music to be heard and develop in the way old music did.

Probably true ...and perhaps partly because older people maybe love music more than many younger folks . In our day music, records , gigs etc were for many of us the centre of our lives.

Music is still a big love and interest for may young folks...but often after social media, gaming and other related interests.

Music just isn't as big a part of cultural life as it once was . [sadly]

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His Majesty
Old people continually promoting old music is also killing the chance for new music to be heard and develop in the way old music did.

Perhaps, but there were loads of old people promoting old music in the old analog days too. The new music and the new audiences were too powerful for them.
There is lots of new music that is good in different genres, but there isn't the same audience there once was that approaches music as a source of magic and faith and almost a religion as opposed to being a background or style accessory. I think the audiences have changed, along with the technology, and the music itself is prey to both those forces. What can possibly survive algorithmic streaming? Nothing but the streamer's profit, alas.
My daughter's 23 and she and her friends tend to listen to old music much more than new - in fact she saw the Stones at Twickenham, Charlie's last UK gig with them - working in hospitality at one of the boxes, and loved it. Her major gig before that was Sabbath's last stand in Brum, when Ozzie could barely stand ... she was therefore amazed by the Stones' energy....

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drewmaster

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Spud
This old Luddite holds digital recording party responsible for music losing some of its soul over the last three or four decades

Agreed. As just one example - years ago, Elton John switched from working on tracks with a live drummer in the studio to using a drum machine. His music immediately lost its swing and swagger.

Drew

"Drum machines" today are software with samples of the sound of real drummers who have recorded real drums.

However, there is no doubt about something getting lost in the process using that software, compared to live drumming with other instruments.

No.

Make better music. Music as a 'gets in your bones' kind of thing is over. Other than the occasional boy band, like BTS, no musical group really grabs the attention. I really like the Foo Fighters, saw them live blow the Police off the stage as the opening act, but I've never bought a Foo Fighters recording. I can't name more than one song.

Music used to be like journalism, it chronicled the times. That ended a long time ago. I remember thinking isn't anyone going to make a song about the Iraq Invasion back in '91? Likewise, isn't anyone going to make a song about the Iraq War in 2003? Or Covid? Sure, the Stones did, but come on, somebody under the age of 70?

Popular music had about a hundred year arc where it was part of people's lives. That's over with. And those few who do want music that speaks to their lives, will unfortunately have to look backwards, which is not a great thing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-01-25 22:49 by 24FPS.

I was talking with a studio engineer recently and I was floored at what he said in regard to bands like Maroon 5 and some other names I didn't recognize - what sounds like a guitar is from a computer.

Think of the term "driving beat". It implies forward movement. It's not static. Street Fighting Man from GYYYO! is a perfect example - it continues to drive, it changes. It speeds up.

There are still a lot of artists/bands the use instruments. It's not the recording medium so much as how it's done. Drums, electric guitars going through Fenders or Marshalls... sound great on a digital recording when done correctly - just like tape.

It's the mastering (and remastering) that ruins everything when done poorly.

While there are some talented people out there - Adele, Alicia Keys, Bruno Mars, etc. - the 1969 roster at Motown was unreal, for example.

Not any Lennon/McCartneys or Jagger/Richards types around either.

Lots of feeling is gone from modern music.

There aren't big stars that bring people together like they used to, the audience is more splintered. It's not necessarily better or worse, just different.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2022-01-25 19:10 by ryanpow.

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drewmaster
Interesting article on how old music is more popular than the current stuff -

[www.theatlantic.com]

Drew

Thanks. It's a good read.

Absolutely not. Anyone who thinks differently is living in a bubble wrapped fantasy world.

In a similar way and in a nutshell, one could ask "is old music from their heyday killing new music from The Rolling Stones"?

"Make better music!" - yes, well, as if it is actually as easy as it may look on surface.

With such a vast array of excellent music from the past, it's getting increasingly difficult for any artist to add something that could create a similar lasting impression. The world of popular music is simply oversaturated imo. What's left to add apart from just more?

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retired_dog
With such a vast array of excellent music from the past, it's getting increasingly difficult for any artist to add something that could create a similar lasting impression. The world of popular music is simply oversaturated imo. What's left to add apart from just more?

What if musicians thought like that when Bach was the latest thing? New music will continue being made for better or worse. Sure, I also miss the sounds of times gone by and feel like they were the best ever, but there is gonna be a lot more to add in future that we cannot even imagine.

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skytrench

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retired_dog
With such a vast array of excellent music from the past, it's getting increasingly difficult for any artist to add something that could create a similar lasting impression. The world of popular music is simply oversaturated imo. What's left to add apart from just more?

What if musicians thought like that when Bach was the latest thing? New music will continue being made for better or worse. Sure, I also miss the sounds of times gone by and feel like they were the best ever, but there is gonna be a lot more to add in future that we cannot even imagine.

wow...we do agree on some things!

It may be true in the states but I don't think it is like that in Europe. Certainly not here in Sweden. The leading radio stations here play all the new hit songs mixed with 80/90/00s hits.
You rarely hear anything older than that unless you tune in a golden oldie channel.

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Stoneage
It may be true in the states but I don't think it is like that in Europe. Certainly not here in Sweden. The leading radio stations here play all the new hit songs mixed with 80/90/00s hits.
You rarely hear anything older than that unless you tune in a golden oldie channel.

Kind of makes sense...those were the early days of disco/new wave/techno/rap/hiphop all the stuff that has continued to be successful 40 years later.

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skytrench

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retired_dog
With such a vast array of excellent music from the past, it's getting increasingly difficult for any artist to add something that could create a similar lasting impression. The world of popular music is simply oversaturated imo. What's left to add apart from just more?

What if musicians thought like that when Bach was the latest thing? New music will continue being made for better or worse. Sure, I also miss the sounds of times gone by and feel like they were the best ever, but there is gonna be a lot more to add in future that we cannot even imagine.

Well, the world of Classical music is a pretty much closed shop, what we see nowadays is artists performing the great work of past's centuries.

We are now in a world where Rock is pretty much a niche market. There's still new music created in this field, but it will more and more slow down until almost full stop in the coming decades. It will go the way of Classical music, if anyone in a hundred years will still be performing Rock, it will be covers of the greatest tunes of this genre, and I doubt that anything from recent years will be part of it.

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retired_dog
Well, the world of Classical music is a pretty much closed shop, what we see nowadays is artists performing the great work of past's centuries.

We are now in a world where Rock is pretty much a niche market. There's still new music created in this field, but it will more and more slow down until almost full stop in the coming decades. It will go the way of Classical music, if anyone in a hundred years will still be performing Rock, it will be covers of the greatest tunes of this genre, and I doubt that anything from recent years will be part of it.

Sad, but true, for Rock music.

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MadMetaphoricalMax

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His Majesty
Old people continually promoting old music is also killing the chance for new music to be heard and develop in the way old music did.

Perhaps, but there were loads of old people promoting old music in the old analog days too. The new music and the new audiences were too powerful for them.
There is lots of new music that is good in different genres, but there isn't the same audience there once was that approaches music as a source of magic and faith and almost a religion as opposed to being a background or style accessory. I think the audiences have changed, along with the technology, and the music itself is prey to both those forces. What can possibly survive algorithmic streaming? Nothing but the streamer's profit, alas.
My daughter's 23 and she and her friends tend to listen to old music much more than new - in fact she saw the Stones at Twickenham, Charlie's last UK gig with them - working in hospitality at one of the boxes, and loved it. Her major gig before that was Sabbath's last stand in Brum, when Ozzie could barely stand ... she was therefore amazed by the Stones' energy....

i'm not much older then your daughter

and i've listened to new music and it just doesn't do anything for me

but the stones or bessie smith or howlin' wolf or billy holiday or hell even tom jones now that's different

and now i'm sure there is great music being made out there

but why would i want to but in all the effort of sorting thru the crap when almost anything i pickup and listen to from 20's thru the 70's gives me that thrill that i'm after

and there is just so much music to listen to from that 50 year period with so many interesting characters, mythologies, drama and intrigue built around them that i could continue to delve into it for the rest of my life and always have something new to discover and listen to

but hey thats just me

This doesn't happen only in the music business. Young artists in general (poets, painters, film directors, photographers, writers etc. etc.) have a hard time to break through.

There are many reasons, I think. The main one is that to produce and distribute art, in many cases, is much cheaper nowadays, so the offer is really huge.

Add that thanks to internet language, and distance are no longer issues, while in the 80s and 90s the great majority of pop music came from the US or the UK.

Also the subject matters of all this new art seem to be less generic and more fragmentated. Artists, and this might be also related to the particular times we are living, tend to be more niche artists.

C

Funny, I don't listen to a lot of the music I grew up listening to, anymore. Over the years I've been selective in what 1960s/70s tunes I'll put in my ever growing mix while on the lookout for anything new that has a beat and doesn't sound like it was put together by an AI robot. My daughter keeps me abreast of newer bands/performers, some of whom I've come to like a song or two, but even she finds Motown, The Beatles, The Stones, Aretha Franklin, top 40 hits from back in the day, etc., a better listening experience. (On a side note, she doesn't get Dylan at all, but I'm working on it.) I guess the best way to comment on old music versus new is that it has always been thus - the world changes, new cultures and ways of artistic expression emerge, and those in power cling to their ways until they can't. Me, I'll take the late Charlie Rich's advice regarding contemplating things - "Keep on rolling with the flow".

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ProfessorWolf

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MadMetaphoricalMax

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His Majesty
Old people continually promoting old music is also killing the chance for new music to be heard and develop in the way old music did.

Perhaps, but there were loads of old people promoting old music in the old analog days too. The new music and the new audiences were too powerful for them.
There is lots of new music that is good in different genres, but there isn't the same audience there once was that approaches music as a source of magic and faith and almost a religion as opposed to being a background or style accessory. I think the audiences have changed, along with the technology, and the music itself is prey to both those forces. What can possibly survive algorithmic streaming? Nothing but the streamer's profit, alas.
My daughter's 23 and she and her friends tend to listen to old music much more than new - in fact she saw the Stones at Twickenham, Charlie's last UK gig with them - working in hospitality at one of the boxes, and loved it. Her major gig before that was Sabbath's last stand in Brum, when Ozzie could barely stand ... she was therefore amazed by the Stones' energy....

i'm not much older then your daughter

and i've listened to new music and it just doesn't do anything for me

but the stones or bessie smith or howlin' wolf or billy holiday or hell even tom jones now that's different

and now i'm sure there is great music being made out there

but why would i want to but in all the effort of sorting thru the crap when almost anything i pickup and listen to from 20's thru the 70's gives me that thrill that i'm after

and there is just so much music to listen to from that 50 year period with so many interesting characters, mythologies, drama and intrigue built around them that i could continue to delve into it for the rest of my life and always have something new to discover and listen to

but hey thats just me

I'm with you however taking the contrarian position, embracing new music means that the evolution continues and today's artists have a chance to thrive and make their mark and we get exposed to new variations (non-covid in nature).

As much as I mostly listen to older music - so I'm admittedly guilty of this - it would be negative I think if we ONLY looked to the past for our entertainment because it was 'better'.

There's great music being made right now...I just don't know how you easily find it, which is I think partly your point as well.

A friend of mine is a big name in the HipHop scene in Germany for decades. Last time we met he told me that he had a chat with a 'more current' HipHopper.
My friend said: I envy you for your million clicks on Spotify!
The answer was: I'd rather sell 100,000 cd copies (his record from the 1990s is close to 900,000...) like you than have a million clicks...

- There's a finite number of hooks: how many great I-IV-V chord progression songs are there?

- Technology is really bad for the way records sound and also the way people pay attention and listen: every new song is insultingly simple it seems.

- The further rock gets from being directly influenced by the blues, the worse it gets.

- rock isn't new or shocking anymore. Once Led Zep is used to sell Cadillacs instead of making parents mad, something exciting is lost.

- The death of the record business has killed incentive and also disabled the marketing machine that made people aware of new music

- Art tends to get made in clumps all at once: the great 70's film directors, the great composers, the heyday of jazz, the impressionist painters, Russian novelists. It's just the way of things.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-01-26 18:13 by Send It To me.

There is lots of great new music and artists but making it big is harder than ever. The generic crap has a wider appeal through social media and the mass market today. I also think (my opinion) is the older artists worked harder to become successful than today. They had to release new albums frequently rather than a song at a time and tour excessively to make it. I may get to see them once a year. There are a bunch of newer bands that I like who tour but play 60 to 100 gigs a year. Many older artists still do that after 40 years on the road and back in the day they were playing double that. They would play two shows a night, get in the bus and do it all over again. How often do newer artists do that? It isn't as if they are doing 3 hour shows either.

There`s a lot of old music to choose from. Who needs music by new acts?

Think of the big catalogue of Neil Young and Bob Dylan, whooo-hoo what a lot of music! Even by The Stones there is much. Then there is "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and all that, (acts with a sparse catalogue).

Norway`s big retailer in home entertainment, "Platekompaniet" (vinyl, cds and movies), had to close their department in our 3rd biggest town. The market is saturated!

A friend recently got Greta van Fleet's whatever... she asked me what I thought of them.

I was kind: they're a fantastic yet weak Led Zeppelin wannabe, mainly because of the singer. The band is awesome, otherwise. But if you like them, great. That's all that matters. I don't care for them.

She laughed. She understood.