I couldn't tell you the date, though I sort of feel like it was somewhere in the late 90s, music shifted from music to entertainment. Sure there had been boy ba

I couldn't tell you the date, though I sort of feel like it was somewhere in the late 90s, music shifted from music to entertainment. Sure there had been boy bands prior, there had been musicians that were more schtick than music, but something palpably changed. Yes, many will call out "autotune" but it feels more like that was a symptom than the disease. My gut feeling is it came down to money - music producers / distributors realized they could separate the working musicians from the pretty face. As far as I'm concerned, this is the basic problem with movies too - the majority of movies are just a vehicle for whatever flavor-of-the-month pretty face they need to splash on a billboard. There's very little artistic about either music or movies, they are just "new" and industry expects us to eat what they feed us. That isn't to say there isn't great music out there, and I'd argue it is the golden age if you are someone who wants to produce anything creative and take it directly to an audience. It just means that there's a breakdown between the "mainstream" and the "good".