I think there's issues with "popular" music as the best selling music is usually middle-of-the-road to appeal to as many people as possible. However, the lower

I think there's issues with "popular" music as the best selling music is usually middle-of-the-road to appeal to as many people as possible. However, the lowered bar of being able to produce music from low cost equipment has opened up the world of music production to talented individuals that otherwise might never have produced anything. The trick is to try to find more unusual styles of music that don't have mass appeal as those artists will be doing it for the love of the music. (We've been to ArcTangent festival for the last few years and that's an incredible mix of different metal genres with a fair sprinkling of math-rock. There's a lot of incredible talent out there, you just need to look in the right places). There's one aspect of modern music that I have come to resent and that's the death of sampling. I'm a huge fan of Tribe Called Quest and back in the day, they were able to use so many incredible samples of little known jazz tracks. It's so instructive to find the source of the samples and realise how they inspired Q-Tip to incorporate incredible musicianship into just everyday rap. Nowadays, it's a lot harder for musicians to navigate the legal minefield of sampling and building upon the work of previous artists. I have to add that I've grown to have an intense dislike for "generic music" that seems to be used as a background for social media videos. Why does it all just sound the same?