I'm here to talk again about the problem with music these days. I'll scatter some musical moments among my writing as seriously good recommendations if you're looking out for some talent.
But, it's a tired trope now when a person over a certain age says 'music these days sucks!'
I've always been one to disagree with this, because realistically...
It's the way we discover music which sucks.
Mainstream music is, admittedly, barely even music anymore, and in most cases it's hard to argue it's anything more than a corporate product which has been R&D'd so intensely that it has had all the humanity boiled out of it, and distilled in a laboratory down to the most absolutely necessary features that maximize profits and minimize risk.
This is why, for example, you don't hear any rock bands in the charts. I'm talking huge bands selling 10's of millions of records: Linkin Park, Metallica, Nickleback, Guns n' Roses, you name it. They're too risky. They're too human, too many variables.
As Rick Beato points out, the consolidation of the music industry by the major industry leaders such as Sony, Universal, Warner, meant that they would only sign the biggest successes for guaranteed profits - and by 2012, rock was essentially gone from the mainstream entirely. Inevitably, rather than having people go out and search for talents, they instead unleashed lab-enhanced music entities; humans with some kind of weird attitude or tattoo, things that are visually stark; Billie Eilish, Lizzy, BTS - but no actual musical value.
Now, there is a surprising amount of talent among a small handful that made it. Lady Gaga for example deserves some credit as a legit musician, as does Charlie Puth. Adele's vocals could arguably be considered unparalleled (minus Celine Dion of course).
But this is not what they market anymore, it's merely a happy side-effect. Instead, shock value - human degeneracy - is everything; think WAP. You certainly saw similar shock value in rock and metal - Ozzy Osbourne and his bat eating springs to mind, as does Slipknot's satan-inducing aesthetic - but this was not their entire schtick. Ozzy and Slipknot were extremely talented and created timeless music in their respective worlds. But this does not fit in the formula anymore.
So when we listen to the radio, or background noise in a mall or a TV commercial, all we hear is the pre-approved formula over and over again. We might find some unique feature or whiff of talent in a Billie Eilish song but ultimately, she panders entirely to the approved style. If she wants to destroy her humanity in the process, more power to her as this will get great coverage on social media. But the music must remain within the lines.
This means musical complexity needed to die. Some of the most powerful moments in music over the decades were in moments of key changes which are perfectly designed for that exact purpose. Think Celine Dion's famous 'All By Myself' moment, in which the key change was so powerful during a live performance, she couldn't even finish the rest of the song because she burst into tears overwhelmed with the emotional hammer she just smashed into her own face.
Well, we don't do those anymore:
Too many variables.
Now, I could go on all day about how music has been simplified, but we all know this already if we ever listened to music before. The point is, the state of mainstream music is depressing and appeals not to one's taste in music, but one's ability to consume it for a price. Next step will be whether or not it can be cut into 15 seconds for tiktoks. Can you do a lazy, low-energy meme dance to it?
Stay Positive
But as depressing as this may be, it's not like incredible music ceased being created. In fact, I completely maintain my position that music now is greater than it's ever been.
It's just harder to find.
Like self-checkouts in a supermarket, it has become our job to do the job of the music industry at our own expense. Apps like Spotify have surely enabled this, and you can cater them to exactly what you want, but for all but a fraction of people, it's simply a case of playing the most popular playlists so you can drive in your car without hearing your own brain. What that music actually is, is irrelevant. Some might find music to appeal to their emotions such as during a breakup, but this is again microscopically dissected and had the extract of 'sad music' sucked out and spit arbitrarily all over the place. Nevermind a song poetically lamenting about one's beauty slowly fading, drifting away like ripples in a pond or something, just sing about breakups. It works.
But, in contrast, if you actually want to discover new horizons, seek new emotions within yourself, and just generally be blown away by an art form constantly persecuted into extinction, you can find it, and there are more people than ever churning out these tunes - some of which actually make it pretty huge even though they still could never be considered 'mainstream'.
Jacob Collier is a great example of this. Largely considered one of the most talented musicians history has ever conjured, he is an absolute monster of a pianist, singer, theorist, all-round instrumentalist and improviser.
An AI rendition of Jacob's bedroom
He has written albums with so many influences from orchestral jazz to some kind of African isicathamiya, that he defies all genre labels. His influence is so profound that when Coldplay stumbled across him, they immediately hired him for help with their next album, transforming it into its own realm of musical wonder the likes of which Coldplay had never before been able to attempt.
In fact, he is friends with, and collaborated with, many mainstream artists. And yet he himself, would not be considered as such. Too many variables. In fact, his collaborations among the mainstream are usually not like his influence on Coldplay, limited to his famously thick vocal harmonies, barely audible, in an otherwise dull mumbling corporate music.
These invisible musicians are indeed everywhere - except on your radios and TV's. Look, for example, at Snarky Puppy. Their live performance of Lingus is almost impossible to believe it was live at all, having an improvised solo by Cory Henry so profound and complex that scholars and musicians worldwide haven't stopped analyzing it with flabbergastation (coining the word) ever since.
But unless you happen across the video on YouTube's recommended algorithm, probably because you're a musician, you'll likely never have heard of the name until just now despite being legends in their own musical corner. They don't sing, there's no lyrics about breakups and relationship abuse. Not worth the investment.
This is why, I think, there are people out there who bizarrely say 'Oh I don't like music'. This statement in itself makes literally no sense. It's like saying 'I don't like food'. It's a pretty damn broad net you're casting there buddy! But people do indeed say this of music.
But it's understandable somebody would say that nowadays. These people have likely never really heard music in its finest form, with the exception of some cliche, overused Beethoven or Mozart Riff in the back of some dishwashing soap commercial. They've never 'found' music to their liking, only ever hearing what is essentially shitty pop music. No wonder they don't like music.
It now takes effort to find good music. Effort nobody has time for anymore, like finding a decent author. Nobody goes out and finds random books anymore to discover a new talent. They just pick up the first book on the front page of Amazon because other people say its good, regardless of what style you personally enjoy to read.
But I can promise to anyone out there who wants to find something to their tastes which is fresher and more interesting than ever before - it's out there. Hell, even if you're into something bizarrely specific like... Beat Boxing. There's something out there that goes so far beyond the TikTok viral videos of making interesting synth noises, you wouldn't believe - Take Tigran Hamasayan's uncomfortably complex use of mixed metre and polyrhythms - While playing piano.
Here we go again with the AI
Ultimately, it's my belief that AI will do a fine job at replacing the mainstream music creators. Having nothing to offer musically, they will be relegated to the back seats, only finding relevance as increasingly degenerate TikTok influencers, who also by the way try and do some music or something.
It is their personalities which will be their last stand. But the music itself will - if not already - be churned out thousands of times per second by a single home computer, with a second computer selecting those created which most optimally cater to the pre-defined parameters that maximize sales.
Perhaps this will actually be a benefit to the musical world. Somebody could hack into the system and add a third chord, maybe even a key change.
One can only hope.
And since I'm on the ol' Hive Blockchain, I do wonder if, at some point, music can be helped out by this whole Web3 stuff. I'm mighty ignorant in this area, but from my experience, every time a music-based blockchain opens up to help creators, I tend to never hear from it again, and they did little to help discovery
What can be done?
Nothing?
[Obviously AI images were made by AI]
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I love this music room, it looks so beautiful. Music is my life and I really love it, doing a good music requires a lot of dedication and making people love what you do, it requires effort. Thanks for sharing this .
Jacob Collier's room is better than the AI version, mind you. He created an entire album himself just in there:
Thanks for dropping by!
Wao!!! This looks so lovely. I love it so much.
Excellent post. I wonder how long it will be before artificial intelligence produces a No. 1 hit single, or even a platinum album. Keep up the good work!
Maybe... it's happened...already😯
Has it? Which list?
I'm just being ominous, maybe we'll never know, was my point XD
One of the challenges of music is that the commercial prevails beyond creativity and the beautiful aesthetic. Today's industry rarely dares to do something new. The music can be a set of excerpts from songs that were already successful in the past, that's why many songs look alike and have similar elements. The revolution occurs within social networks and can even occur in Web 3.0 when a stranger comes out and launches a song and hits it. Then the new prevails.
!LUV
I think one of the unavoidables is that there's simply too much. It's not only a saturated market, but accessibility is practically infinite and free.
Historically speaking, concerts were something only for the wealthy and for special occasions, often hiring now famous composers to go to their house and perform if they were truly elite, but it was, regardless, a special event.
People had to be able to play instruments or know somebody who can just so they could hear music at all.
Nowadays we don't even think about it, it is no longer cherished, like everything else in abundance now XD
I am not sure how Web3 will fix that. But then, I don't even know what Web3 even is tbh.
@mobbs, @yisusth(1/10) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community |
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