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Have you noticed that young people use music less and less as a signalling device? That is to say they care far less about whether or not the music is cool a

Have you noticed that young people use music less and less as a signalling device? That is to say they care far less about whether or not the music is cool and signals their affinity to some kind of subculture... and more about whether or not they just like the sound. This is because access to music has become cheap. Discovery of music has become cheap. Signalling behaviours though rely on the costliness of signalling through a particular medium. Costly signalling is the theoretical framework you want here to understand what is going to happen to art if the tech is as good as it is currently being hyped. We like to think of art as this inherently communicative act - as the author says. But the main psychological motivation is signalling. We would not waste so much energy as a species on such behaviour if it didn't have some kind of evolutionary benefit. So I expect much of the energy that goes into the artistic signalling medium will be redirected toward more costly mediums.

mushufasa 4y ago
Yes, I think the tech evolution of music has a lot of parallels here. In the 60s-70s, production and distribution were expensive, so there was scarcity. In the 90s-early 2000s DAWs on laptops made it easy to self-record/produce, so there was a a lot more music made, then in the 2010s legal distribution became cheap through streaming. Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I think lower barriers to entry through creating art via AI assistance will mean more art available, but it probably will make it harder to make a living as a professional artist. That said, I don't think anyone who chooses to be an artist today is primarily motivated to earn money.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I’m not sure where you got the impression that the bygone era of the CD was so lucrative, or that its largess was more evenly distributed in a meaningful way. If you’re open to challenging that conception, I’d highly recommend reading Steve Albini’s article, The Problem With Music (also sometimes titled Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked; not linked because it doesn’t have a canonical link and I’m never sure which site reposting it can be relied on not to edit it). Anyway the tl;dr is this: to the extent there’s ever been a more even distribution of earnings for musicians, that certainly wasn’t attributable to CD sales. The article was written fairly early in the CD era, and those dynamics deepened through that period. I’m doubtful it was ever attributable to any particular sale of recordings on any kind of media. Then, as now (and probably since well before recording technology was available) musicians making a decent or better living by and large made the majority of it performing live. For what it’s worth, the article I mentioned factored greatly into my decision not to pursue a music career, even as I embraced the early availability of cheap digital recording (and intermittently still do). I’m sure there’s an alternate universe where I’d be thrilled that my life’s work would be playing music, but I have little doubt that my entry into the middle class would have been far less likely than by taking up programming.
astrange 4y ago
That happened a while ago, with Millenials. Subcultures were GenX only. The prior technology was Boomers' universal counterculture, where if you wanted to do one of being a hippie or join the new age or do drugs or go to concerts or have weird sex you had to do them all at once - that's why they seemed convinced that going to an outdoor concert was literally the same thing as saving the planet. Subcultures developed after people realized that didn't make any sense, and there was just enough communication technology to find people to get into your hobby, but not enough to mix and match them, so now your hobby life was often still defined by being a goth or punk or playing D&D, but it's less universal. The kids are capable of joining more than one group at once because they can do it all online. And nobody is in a band anymore. https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
- Pigalowda 4y ago
  I think there’s still emo and scene kids. I’ve seen a few! And if there’s still such a thing as death metal, grindcore, etc then there are kids out there in that subculture.
- int_19h 4y ago
  I am a millennial, and subcultures were very much a thing when I was a kid.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Were you in a band?
    - int_19h 4y ago
      I'm talking about kids. Like, 12 years old. It was a common thing to dream about for kids that age, though. I personally didn't, but mostly because my wishful thinking was about game dev. What difference does it make tho?
- a9h74j 4y ago
  > had to do them all at once Not entirely sure of this. "What's your bag" was a popular phrase. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/294306/what-does-the-phrase-whats-your-bag-mean https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/294306/what-does...
dogman144 4y ago
A lot of this makes sense until the end, and then it sounds like the usual engineering-centric evaluation of art. I don’t think you know a lot of artists. Artists, like the actual ones, do Art to create meaning and participate in the meaning making process. Assuming they do it for external signaling and the sort of implied “hey look at me” desire is off base.
- JellyBeanThief 4y ago
  > do Art to create meaning and participate in the meaning making process is just > for external signaling and the sort of implied “hey look at me” desire in a different light. You cannot participate in the meaning making process without signalling to other meaning makers, attracting their attention, and influencing their subsequent signalling. If you don't signal, then you haven't participated because you just didn't try. And if you don't attract attention, then you haven't participated because you had no effect on the proceedings. This is not to say that it's your interpretation versus their interpretation. It's to say it's both at the same time.
  - dogman144 4y ago
    Incorrect. Check this OP’s latest comment for what I refer to. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nbzso https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nbzso
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      In case they post other comments before other readers get there, here’s a direct link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32489833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32489833
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    > > do Art to create meaning and participate in the meaning making process > is just > > for external signaling and the sort of implied “hey look at me” desire OP didn’t specify “create meaning” for anyone else, or otherwise conveying art to others. One of the weird things about art is that it’s a form of expression that doesn’t necessarily have an audience. Quite a lot of art is more akin to keeping a diary, or singing in your head, than “look at me”. > You cannot participate in the meaning making process without signalling to other meaning makers I have ample evidence to the contrary which I have no desire to share with you, or anyone, other than noting its value to me having created it.
blueboo 4y ago
Keen observers might equally surmise that young people use music much more intensely as a signalling device, visible in particular by the searing intensity of fandoms and the currency of TikTok music microfads. The friction that endows signalling with its cost is simply opportunity cost — you can’t be a vocal fan of everything or go deep on every TikTok trend-strand. Also note that “discovery” here has been almost entirely mediated by TikTok or Spotify algorithms. If you’re tired of what those algorithms offer, in practice, it’s outlandishly difficult to do better than random walks to find something new you like….except through your friends’ signslling. That all said, I think you might be right. But I submit this radically different reading is plausible. My own anecdata suggest this.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > it’s outlandishly difficult to do better than random walks to find something new you like….except through your friends’ signslling. If you like niche genres there are plenty of catalogues though and the amount of wide known artists are not that big.
mikkergp 4y ago
> Have you noticed that young people use music less and less as a signalling device? Is this the result of some study, or where is this observation coming from? I have almost certainly not noticed this, in fact I might almost say the opposite.
- oraphalous 4y ago
  Personal observation - so indeed, feel free to ignore, reject on this basis.
- yoohoo123 4y ago
  Personally, I agree with original claim. This article doesn't cite any research per se, but has some anecdata from people in the industry. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/genre-is-disappearing-what-comes-next https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/genre-is-disap...
  - herval 4y ago
    Based on what I see, the concept of "genre" is gone for a few years - you just listen to whatever spotify or apple music or your app of choice recommends, and it fluctuates across a set of genres, but it's not as "fixed" as it used to be, in past decades. Fandom/identification with specific artists remains as strong as ever though - you see a lot of "Swifties" or fans of a specific rapper, for instance, and they use it as a form of identity. You see fewer "metal heads" or "classical music erudites". All anecdotal, of course. Would love to see studies on this.
    - sogen 4y ago
      Metal \m/
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Back in the 90s, DJs used to flex their record collections: cases and cases of obscure vinyl records that were both hard to find and expensive to buy. Owning specific items like KLF's White Album after the band nuked its back catalogue was a serious accomplishment. But now anybody with a phone can dial up millions of tracks in a split second with Soundcloud, Spotify etc, including those KLF releases that were once unobtainium.
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mushufasa 4y ago

Yes, I think the tech evolution of music has a lot of parallels here. In the 60s-70s, production and distribution were expensive, so there was scarcity. In the 90s-early 2000s DAWs on laptops made it easy to self-record/produce, so there was a a lot more music made, then in the 2010s legal distribution became cheap through streaming. Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I think lower barriers to entry through creating art via AI assistance will mean more art available, but it probably will make it harder to make a living as a professional artist. That said, I don't think anyone who chooses to be an artist today is primarily motivated to earn money.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
> Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I’m not sure where you got the impression that the bygone era of the CD was so lucrative, or that its largess was more evenly distributed in a meaningful way. If you’re open to challenging that conception, I’d highly recommend reading Steve Albini’s article, The Problem With Music (also sometimes titled Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked; not linked because it doesn’t have a canonical link and I’m never sure which site reposting it can be relied on not to edit it). Anyway the tl;dr is this: to the extent there’s ever been a more even distribution of earnings for musicians, that certainly wasn’t attributable to CD sales. The article was written fairly early in the CD era, and those dynamics deepened through that period. I’m doubtful it was ever attributable to any particular sale of recordings on any kind of media. Then, as now (and probably since well before recording technology was available) musicians making a decent or better living by and large made the majority of it performing live. For what it’s worth, the article I mentioned factored greatly into my decision not to pursue a music career, even as I embraced the early availability of cheap digital recording (and intermittently still do). I’m sure there’s an alternate universe where I’d be thrilled that my life’s work would be playing music, but I have little doubt that my entry into the middle class would have been far less likely than by taking up programming.

astrange 4y ago

That happened a while ago, with Millenials. Subcultures were GenX only. The prior technology was Boomers' universal counterculture, where if you wanted to do one of being a hippie or join the new age or do drugs or go to concerts or have weird sex you had to do them all at once - that's why they seemed convinced that going to an outdoor concert was literally the same thing as saving the planet. Subcultures developed after people realized that didn't make any sense, and there was just enough communication technology to find people to get into your hobby, but not enough to mix and match them, so now your hobby life was often still defined by being a goth or punk or playing D&D, but it's less universal. The kids are capable of joining more than one group at once because they can do it all online. And nobody is in a band anymore. https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history

Pigalowda 4y ago
I think there’s still emo and scene kids. I’ve seen a few! And if there’s still such a thing as death metal, grindcore, etc then there are kids out there in that subculture.
int_19h 4y ago
I am a millennial, and subcultures were very much a thing when I was a kid.
- astrange 4y ago
  Were you in a band?
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I'm talking about kids. Like, 12 years old. It was a common thing to dream about for kids that age, though. I personally didn't, but mostly because my wishful thinking was about game dev. What difference does it make tho?
a9h74j 4y ago
> had to do them all at once Not entirely sure of this. "What's your bag" was a popular phrase. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/294306/what-does-the-phrase-whats-your-bag-mean https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/294306/what-does...

dogman144 4y ago

A lot of this makes sense until the end, and then it sounds like the usual engineering-centric evaluation of art. I don’t think you know a lot of artists. Artists, like the actual ones, do Art to create meaning and participate in the meaning making process. Assuming they do it for external signaling and the sort of implied “hey look at me” desire is off base.

JellyBeanThief 4y ago
> do Art to create meaning and participate in the meaning making process is just > for external signaling and the sort of implied “hey look at me” desire in a different light. You cannot participate in the meaning making process without signalling to other meaning makers, attracting their attention, and influencing their subsequent signalling. If you don't signal, then you haven't participated because you just didn't try. And if you don't attract attention, then you haven't participated because you had no effect on the proceedings. This is not to say that it's your interpretation versus their interpretation. It's to say it's both at the same time.
- dogman144 4y ago
  Incorrect. Check this OP’s latest comment for what I refer to. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nbzso https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nbzso
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    In case they post other comments before other readers get there, here’s a direct link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32489833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32489833
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > > do Art to create meaning and participate in the meaning making process > is just > > for external signaling and the sort of implied “hey look at me” desire OP didn’t specify “create meaning” for anyone else, or otherwise conveying art to others. One of the weird things about art is that it’s a form of expression that doesn’t necessarily have an audience. Quite a lot of art is more akin to keeping a diary, or singing in your head, than “look at me”. > You cannot participate in the meaning making process without signalling to other meaning makers I have ample evidence to the contrary which I have no desire to share with you, or anyone, other than noting its value to me having created it.

blueboo 4y ago

Keen observers might equally surmise that young people use music much more intensely as a signalling device, visible in particular by the searing intensity of fandoms and the currency of TikTok music microfads. The friction that endows signalling with its cost is simply opportunity cost — you can’t be a vocal fan of everything or go deep on every TikTok trend-strand. Also note that “discovery” here has been almost entirely mediated by TikTok or Spotify algorithms. If you’re tired of what those algorithms offer, in practice, it’s outlandishly difficult to do better than random walks to find something new you like….except through your friends’ signslling. That all said, I think you might be right. But I submit this radically different reading is plausible. My own anecdata suggest this.

rightbyte 4y ago
> it’s outlandishly difficult to do better than random walks to find something new you like….except through your friends’ signslling. If you like niche genres there are plenty of catalogues though and the amount of wide known artists are not that big.

mikkergp 4y ago

> Have you noticed that young people use music less and less as a signalling device? Is this the result of some study, or where is this observation coming from? I have almost certainly not noticed this, in fact I might almost say the opposite.

oraphalous 4y ago
Personal observation - so indeed, feel free to ignore, reject on this basis.
yoohoo123 4y ago
Personally, I agree with original claim. This article doesn't cite any research per se, but has some anecdata from people in the industry. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/genre-is-disappearing-what-comes-next https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/genre-is-disap...
- herval 4y ago
  Based on what I see, the concept of "genre" is gone for a few years - you just listen to whatever spotify or apple music or your app of choice recommends, and it fluctuates across a set of genres, but it's not as "fixed" as it used to be, in past decades. Fandom/identification with specific artists remains as strong as ever though - you see a lot of "Swifties" or fans of a specific rapper, for instance, and they use it as a form of identity. You see fewer "metal heads" or "classical music erudites". All anecdotal, of course. Would love to see studies on this.
  - sogen 4y ago
    Metal \m/
thematrixturtle 4y ago
Back in the 90s, DJs used to flex their record collections: cases and cases of obscure vinyl records that were both hard to find and expensive to buy. Owning specific items like KLF's White Album after the band nuked its back catalogue was a serious accomplishment. But now anybody with a phone can dial up millions of tracks in a split second with Soundcloud, Spotify etc, including those KLF releases that were once unobtainium.

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