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I remember working in a record store about a decade ago and coming to the conclusion that 99% of our (very large/broad) catalog was, to me, terrible music that

I remember working in a record store about a decade ago and coming to the conclusion that 99% of our (very large/broad) catalog was, to me, terrible music that I would prefer to have never, ever heard. Us warehouse guys would listen to all the new tracks as they came in during our receiving shifts, which sounds nice on paper, but really was much closer to 8 hours of punishment. Lots of really terrible execution of even worse ideas — algorithmic renditions of real books, half-assed dub reggae covers of classic rock songs, note-for-note European remixes of zombified disco classics. We had a saying: "most music is bad". It's great hearing the dreadful output of this infernal contraption named "Suno" and being reminded specifically of this bittersweet time in my youth, but also broadly of how difficult it is to make memorable, sweet music, and how precious that can be.

TillE 3y ago
Sturgeon's Law says 90%, but that is probably an underestimate. If you trawl YouTube for acoustic covers of rock songs or whatever, it should quickly become apparent that even just making a different arrangement of a song is an incredibly difficult, complex, creative endeavor. There's mountains of amateur garbage and then there's, like, Molly Tuttle.
freedomben 3y ago
Yep, this matches my experience. I've never worked in a record store, but I had access to a very large catalog, and nearly all of it was terrible music that I wish I'd never heard. It really is remarkable how much the good music is the top 1% or even 0.1% of music made, and the level of quality shoots up rapidly in exponential way as you approach 99ths percentile
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I was music director for 97.7 KAFA from 2006-2007 and I literally listened to 100 CDs everyday Picked up my box of 500 CDs from the mail distributors sent us each week and had to find new music every week It was a challenge and honestly not much fun cause as you said its frankly a lot of junk However that’s all art - for every “let it be” there are 100,000 songs produced and released by artists for themselves What was clear to me was not that there wasn’t good music out there, it’s that there was a surprising amount of it that wasn’t popular. So what becomes a “hit” or whatever has less to do with the actual music and artist. It’s all to do with marketing. Like almost 100% A mediocre artist with a gang of writers and producers will make more “impact” than anything The entire K-Pop industry proves this Let’s not confuse art for marketing even if they use the same medium
- petre 3y ago
  > I literally listened to 100 CDs everyday Not possible without a lot of skipping songs.
  - cameroncairns 3y ago
    Not who you responded to, but I worked in college radio for a while. Depending on what CDs they were listening to, generally the label will highlight which tracks are standouts and that you should listen to. Usually it would be 3 or 4 tracks max (generally track 1, 3 and 4 though there are exceptions). Most tracks are 3 minutes long.. so given an average of lets say 3 songs a cd at 3 minutes each... 100 x 3 x 3 / 60 == 15 hours of listening (hand wavey no time to change cd and stuff...). So yeah probably pushing the limits of reasonable but not quite as crazy as you might think. Also, although it was unfair to the artist, I would usually make up my mind on pop songs by the end of the first chorus. If I'm not hooked within 1 minute it's probably not going to play on my show. It was brain numbing work, and frankly made me view music as a chore for a few years afterwards... but you can listen to quite a few tracks this way and try and find the few gems amongst the chaff so to speak.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Here’s me with a sample of CDs: https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1770053620144234763 https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1770053620144234763 Actually you skip within the song…to do this well you listen to about 20-30 seconds of each song focused on intro, bridge, outro. Most songs aren’t air worthy so you’ll know in 5 seconds it’s a skip It was a few hours a day After months of this you get it down to a science As other posters said, the CDs have stickers indicating the tracks they want you to play so sometimes I’d just play those if I was feeling lazy

TillE 3y ago

Sturgeon's Law says 90%, but that is probably an underestimate. If you trawl YouTube for acoustic covers of rock songs or whatever, it should quickly become apparent that even just making a different arrangement of a song is an incredibly difficult, complex, creative endeavor. There's mountains of amateur garbage and then there's, like, Molly Tuttle.

freedomben 3y ago

Yep, this matches my experience. I've never worked in a record store, but I had access to a very large catalog, and nearly all of it was terrible music that I wish I'd never heard. It really is remarkable how much the good music is the top 1% or even 0.1% of music made, and the level of quality shoots up rapidly in exponential way as you approach 99ths percentile

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I was music director for 97.7 KAFA from 2006-2007 and I literally listened to 100 CDs everyday Picked up my box of 500 CDs from the mail distributors sent us each week and had to find new music every week It was a challenge and honestly not much fun cause as you said its frankly a lot of junk However that’s all art - for every “let it be” there are 100,000 songs produced and released by artists for themselves What was clear to me was not that there wasn’t good music out there, it’s that there was a surprising amount of it that wasn’t popular. So what becomes a “hit” or whatever has less to do with the actual music and artist. It’s all to do with marketing. Like almost 100% A mediocre artist with a gang of writers and producers will make more “impact” than anything The entire K-Pop industry proves this Let’s not confuse art for marketing even if they use the same medium

petre 3y ago
> I literally listened to 100 CDs everyday Not possible without a lot of skipping songs.
- cameroncairns 3y ago
  Not who you responded to, but I worked in college radio for a while. Depending on what CDs they were listening to, generally the label will highlight which tracks are standouts and that you should listen to. Usually it would be 3 or 4 tracks max (generally track 1, 3 and 4 though there are exceptions). Most tracks are 3 minutes long.. so given an average of lets say 3 songs a cd at 3 minutes each... 100 x 3 x 3 / 60 == 15 hours of listening (hand wavey no time to change cd and stuff...). So yeah probably pushing the limits of reasonable but not quite as crazy as you might think. Also, although it was unfair to the artist, I would usually make up my mind on pop songs by the end of the first chorus. If I'm not hooked within 1 minute it's probably not going to play on my show. It was brain numbing work, and frankly made me view music as a chore for a few years afterwards... but you can listen to quite a few tracks this way and try and find the few gems amongst the chaff so to speak.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Here’s me with a sample of CDs: https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1770053620144234763 https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1770053620144234763 Actually you skip within the song…to do this well you listen to about 20-30 seconds of each song focused on intro, bridge, outro. Most songs aren’t air worthy so you’ll know in 5 seconds it’s a skip It was a few hours a day After months of this you get it down to a science As other posters said, the CDs have stickers indicating the tracks they want you to play so sometimes I’d just play those if I was feeling lazy