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Finding "new" music is a concept that the music industry has marketed to you like being skinny or that cola is a lifestyle. In times past people were happy with

Finding "new" music is a concept that the music industry has marketed to you like being skinny or that cola is a lifestyle. In times past people were happy with one genre or slight variations of that genre for millennia. Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the oldest. As if there is sickness to be found in enjoying something old and well worn.

tombert 2y ago
Yeah, I agree. I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like they're hurting anyone. I listen to mostly late-90's-early-2000's punk rock even still, and I don't think it's a moral failing that I don't listen to the latest stuff all the time, just like I don't think it's a moral failing for my mom to mostly listen to The Beegees. Music is, first and foremost, a means of entertainment, and it's not like it really buys you anything to be up to date in music for most careers. If your job is, I don't know, marketing director of a company, then sure, maybe you should keep up to date with the latest trends all the time, but most of us have pretty utilitarian jobs where it doesn't really matter what we like. I think where it gets harmful is acting like "the stuff I listened to as a teenager is objectively better than what the kids listen to now", which I will admit is a mentality that I sometimes have to actively fight against. I think it can sometimes be a proxy for shitting on the next generation of humans, and I am very actively against needlessly divisive and reductive stuff like that.
- ElFitz 2y ago
  > and I don't think it's a moral failing that I don't listen to the latest stuff all the time I’ve personally enjoyed going the other way and exploring earlier and earlier singers and genres. Quite fun. For those interested, there’s also "Excavated Shellac"[0]. I can’t say I’ve liked or even enjoyed most of it, but it’s been an intriguing and interesting discovery nonetheless. [0]: https://excavatedshellac.com/2020/12/13/excavated-shellac-an-alternative-history-of-the-worlds-music/ https://excavatedshellac.com/2020/12/13/excavated-shellac-an...
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah, I've done something like the theme of Excavated Shellac with old CDs a couple times. I will buy a bundle of 100 random CDs on eBay and go through and rip anything that seems remotely interesting. Occasionally I've found stuff from obscure artists that I end up liking, and even stuff that never made it to Spotify. It's time consuming and I probably won't do it again but it was fun to do a few times.
- floxy 2y ago
  >I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager Pretty funny, especially since I just attended a sold-out performance of Mozart's Requiem last month. Back when I was younger, I think the dominant perception was that classical music was "cultured" and popular / current music was lacking in refinement
  - tombert 2y ago
    I think it kind of goes both ways? Maybe the word "uncultured" isn't right, but I feel like when I say "I don't really listen to much that was written in the last fifteen years", people kind of act like I'm some kind of luddite. I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest people go way back and listen to the classical stuff. Personally, I've never really been able to get into classical music outside of movie soundtracks, and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that fact, but I'm not really anymore. As I said, music is about entertainment, and you like what you like. Kind of related, when I was a teenager, I liked to read a lot, but I didn't have any money. I discovered Project Gutenberg and started reading a lot of public domain stuff (a lot of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Dickens, etc), purely out of cheapness. Teachers would think I'm smarter than I actually was because I knew obscure literary references from old books in my essays and when I would answer questions in class, despite the fact that it doesn't really require a 10,000 IQ to download a PDF file from the internet and read it.
    - ElFitz 2y ago
      > I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest people go way back and listen to the classical stuff. […] and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that fact That says a lot more about those who think that it does about than those who do or do not listen to "classical" music. > Personally, I've never really been able to get into classical music outside of movie soundtracks, Not implying it will or should be the same for you, or even that you should try it, but in my limited experience headphones and speakers have hardly ever done any justice to "classical" music. It also seems some of it needs the listeners to have lived a little, so it can resonate with them. As an example, I couldn’t care less for operas as a teenager. Fifteen years later, two live operas are among the few pieces that have so far managed to make me cry. But in any case, to each their own.
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  > I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like they're hurting anyone. I think the antagonism usually goes in the other way. Most people get crystallized music tastes pretty soon into their life and the second the new generation comes up with something different, it's all "music is crap these days, silly kids, back in my day the 90s had the best music." There are several examples in this thread without a hint of the irony of this article.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    Old foreign language books had translations for phrases along the lines of "the lobster makes a good salad" and "my husband is unwell, can you call a doctor?" If I were to use YouTube for a corpus, I could probably write contemporary translation books for many languages, as long as the phrases were along the lines of "still listening in ${YEAR}" and "new ${GENRE} isn't this good"
    - reducesuffering 2y ago
      I don't even blame them, clearly the article shows there's a biological or cultural phenomenon to it. It's just unfortunate when you're the 2% outlier that thinks music is progressing, as you can't share with others the appreciation that sounds are actually getting better.
      - 082349872349872 2y ago
        > a biological or cultural phenomenom to it Puberty? (much folk music has ambiguous lyrics; I wonder if starting to blush at all the traditional village songs used to be a social milestone?)
gwill 2y ago
i feel like a majority of people don't seek out "new" music, so i see how you apply that to the music industry as a marketing concept. with whatever app, if you get people listening to more new stuff, you can get them engaged longer etc. however, i've sought new music since i was young. its something i share with my father who would purposely grab new records or cassette based on trivial things (title, art, price..) and then listen to the album several times. i love exploring different cultures and music is a great reflection of that. at the same time, i often go back to the old and well worn music i grew up with, and even that my parents or their parents grew up with. i think there's a lot of beauty out there and it's a shame to shun something new because you feel it falls within an industries agenda.
maerF0x0 2y ago
> Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the oldest. As Actually I've found Gen-z's to have surprisingly wide listening patterns. As a few datapoints I was surprised that my friend's teenager could actually name several Nirvana songs, knew who the Smashing pumpkins were, and also the Talking Heads. (all rose and fell from fame before her birth)
- kyllo 2y ago
  My friend (who's the same age as me) has a 14 year old son who's learning guitar and he asked me for a lesson. The first thing he wanted me to show him was some riffs from AC/DC songs that came out before I was born.

tombert 2y ago

Yeah, I agree. I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like they're hurting anyone. I listen to mostly late-90's-early-2000's punk rock even still, and I don't think it's a moral failing that I don't listen to the latest stuff all the time, just like I don't think it's a moral failing for my mom to mostly listen to The Beegees. Music is, first and foremost, a means of entertainment, and it's not like it really buys you anything to be up to date in music for most careers. If your job is, I don't know, marketing director of a company, then sure, maybe you should keep up to date with the latest trends all the time, but most of us have pretty utilitarian jobs where it doesn't really matter what we like. I think where it gets harmful is acting like "the stuff I listened to as a teenager is objectively better than what the kids listen to now", which I will admit is a mentality that I sometimes have to actively fight against. I think it can sometimes be a proxy for shitting on the next generation of humans, and I am very actively against needlessly divisive and reductive stuff like that.

ElFitz 2y ago
> and I don't think it's a moral failing that I don't listen to the latest stuff all the time I’ve personally enjoyed going the other way and exploring earlier and earlier singers and genres. Quite fun. For those interested, there’s also "Excavated Shellac"[0]. I can’t say I’ve liked or even enjoyed most of it, but it’s been an intriguing and interesting discovery nonetheless. [0]: https://excavatedshellac.com/2020/12/13/excavated-shellac-an-alternative-history-of-the-worlds-music/ https://excavatedshellac.com/2020/12/13/excavated-shellac-an...
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah, I've done something like the theme of Excavated Shellac with old CDs a couple times. I will buy a bundle of 100 random CDs on eBay and go through and rip anything that seems remotely interesting. Occasionally I've found stuff from obscure artists that I end up liking, and even stuff that never made it to Spotify. It's time consuming and I probably won't do it again but it was fun to do a few times.
floxy 2y ago
>I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager Pretty funny, especially since I just attended a sold-out performance of Mozart's Requiem last month. Back when I was younger, I think the dominant perception was that classical music was "cultured" and popular / current music was lacking in refinement
- tombert 2y ago
  I think it kind of goes both ways? Maybe the word "uncultured" isn't right, but I feel like when I say "I don't really listen to much that was written in the last fifteen years", people kind of act like I'm some kind of luddite. I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest people go way back and listen to the classical stuff. Personally, I've never really been able to get into classical music outside of movie soundtracks, and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that fact, but I'm not really anymore. As I said, music is about entertainment, and you like what you like. Kind of related, when I was a teenager, I liked to read a lot, but I didn't have any money. I discovered Project Gutenberg and started reading a lot of public domain stuff (a lot of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Dickens, etc), purely out of cheapness. Teachers would think I'm smarter than I actually was because I knew obscure literary references from old books in my essays and when I would answer questions in class, despite the fact that it doesn't really require a 10,000 IQ to download a PDF file from the internet and read it.
  - ElFitz 2y ago
    > I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest people go way back and listen to the classical stuff. […] and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that fact That says a lot more about those who think that it does about than those who do or do not listen to "classical" music. > Personally, I've never really been able to get into classical music outside of movie soundtracks, Not implying it will or should be the same for you, or even that you should try it, but in my limited experience headphones and speakers have hardly ever done any justice to "classical" music. It also seems some of it needs the listeners to have lived a little, so it can resonate with them. As an example, I couldn’t care less for operas as a teenager. Fifteen years later, two live operas are among the few pieces that have so far managed to make me cry. But in any case, to each their own.
reducesuffering 2y ago
> I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like they're hurting anyone. I think the antagonism usually goes in the other way. Most people get crystallized music tastes pretty soon into their life and the second the new generation comes up with something different, it's all "music is crap these days, silly kids, back in my day the 90s had the best music." There are several examples in this thread without a hint of the irony of this article.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  Old foreign language books had translations for phrases along the lines of "the lobster makes a good salad" and "my husband is unwell, can you call a doctor?" If I were to use YouTube for a corpus, I could probably write contemporary translation books for many languages, as long as the phrases were along the lines of "still listening in ${YEAR}" and "new ${GENRE} isn't this good"
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    I don't even blame them, clearly the article shows there's a biological or cultural phenomenon to it. It's just unfortunate when you're the 2% outlier that thinks music is progressing, as you can't share with others the appreciation that sounds are actually getting better.
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      > a biological or cultural phenomenom to it Puberty? (much folk music has ambiguous lyrics; I wonder if starting to blush at all the traditional village songs used to be a social milestone?)

gwill 2y ago

i feel like a majority of people don't seek out "new" music, so i see how you apply that to the music industry as a marketing concept. with whatever app, if you get people listening to more new stuff, you can get them engaged longer etc. however, i've sought new music since i was young. its something i share with my father who would purposely grab new records or cassette based on trivial things (title, art, price..) and then listen to the album several times. i love exploring different cultures and music is a great reflection of that. at the same time, i often go back to the old and well worn music i grew up with, and even that my parents or their parents grew up with. i think there's a lot of beauty out there and it's a shame to shun something new because you feel it falls within an industries agenda.

maerF0x0 2y ago

> Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the oldest. As Actually I've found Gen-z's to have surprisingly wide listening patterns. As a few datapoints I was surprised that my friend's teenager could actually name several Nirvana songs, knew who the Smashing pumpkins were, and also the Talking Heads. (all rose and fell from fame before her birth)

kyllo 2y ago
My friend (who's the same age as me) has a 14 year old son who's learning guitar and he asked me for a lesson. The first thing he wanted me to show him was some riffs from AC/DC songs that came out before I was born.