8 ms·

Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. Even then it's highl

Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. Even then it's highly subjective and behind almost every one of those songs or albums is a handful of brilliant writers, producers and session musicians you probably never heard of. I'd say it's never been better. Music is more accessible which means more folks get exposed to it earlier and in more variety and in turn we get more musicians. It's only going to get better.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hnbad 3y ago
FWIW most of the top charting music of the 90s, 80s and so on were also "worse" and have mostly been forgotten. Few songs remain popular or regain popularity. A lot of chart hits are really just springboarding off "you had to be there" cultural moments or experiences or simply a general "vibe" that are fleeting and trivial enough not to stick around even in nostalgia. As an extreme example, I'd argue the popularity of David Hasselhoff's I've been looking for freedom in Germany is almost entirely a result of "retconning" (if not fabricating) its supposed popularity at the time of its original release. It would have probably been forgotten entirely if it hadn't been rediscovered "ironically" in the context of ridiculous claims about its influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall. Heck, I remember owning a casette of the album as a kid only because "it's the guy from Knight Rider". For adult women his claim to fame was co-starring alongside Pamela Anderson in Baywatch as one of the few men regularly appearing bare-chested on daytime television - I'd say his musical talents played a very small role in his original popularity and it's telling nobody remembers any other songs than the one he performed on a TV show. He was never considered good, he was just a familiar face (and body) and made a catchy tune.
- suoduandao3 3y ago
  I recently encountered the term 'Tempoflavanoids' - the flavour of a particular moment in time. I love the concept, it speaks to the artist in me. Though I thought David Hasslehoff's 'True Survivor' music video for the Kung Fury kickstarter was a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY
- goosejuice 3y ago
  I agree with this take. “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.” comes to mind
erikbye 3y ago
Of course, it's extremely subjective, but how about naming a few artists who have appeared in the last few years that you think make better music and are more talented musicians than those who came before?
- herbst 3y ago
  I could spend hours writing a response to this. I am mid 30 and my style of music changes with every season I am not within trends but most songs I enjoy most are not older than 3 or 4 years. Not all of them are well known. Even something established like Punk reached new heights with more modern approaches (ex. Sleaford mods, Team Scheisse in German) I think music is very subjective still but new music never stopped to impress me.
  - kataklasm 3y ago
    I just discovered Team Scheisse a week ago (they are from city!) and now I come across them on HN, what a coincidence (obviously this might be the Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon at play but since they are a comparatively small band I would say the effect is rather small)!
  - erikbye 3y ago
    Team Scheisse, new heights? What exactly brings punk to new heights with this band? There's no hiding the "influence" of Sex Pistols, and I'd much rather listen to Sex Pistols, Ramones, and also Rancid than this band. Do not see the appeal.
- dman-os 3y ago
  At the risk of just mouthing off my favorites, there are a lot of genres today are the best they've ever been. The post-punk revival out of the UK is great. The "chambery" Black Country, New Road and the "mathy" Black Midi are some of the best we've seen and there are other exceptional talents in that scene. Noisy-shoegazy-indie rock is also a great scene right now with artists like Jane Remover and Mitski releasing what will be important albums for ages to come. Note, Mitski debuted in 2013 but most of the strongest records over the past few years, from hip-hop, pop to experimental rock to metal, seems to be by artists or individual who've been making music for around a decade-ish roughly. Maybe this disqualifies the whole lot and you're trying to highlight some weakness in the debuts of the past few years. If so, maybe you should wait a decade? If not, I can assert that some of the most talented artists of history are making music today. By any metric.
lapcat 3y ago
> Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. But there's a crucial difference between what's out there and what people are listening to. There's a lot of obscure stuff that not many people are listening to. Whereas the top charting music is what millions of people are listening to. It matters a lot what's getting marketed, what the majority of people are exposed to. Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."
- throw5323446 3y ago
  > Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music." Seems very hard to accurately measure, could be that people don't know what was released in their decade but the stuff from the 80s is easy to pinpoint.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > could be that people don't know what was released in their decade It seems implausible that young people don't know that new music is new. Why would the 80s be easy to pinpoint for people who weren't even alive in the 80s?
- goosejuice 3y ago
  Define obscure. Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because if you have a desire to find music that you like you just have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet connection. If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > it's all there for free with an Internet connection The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is massive. Almost everything is available on the internet, but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack. > If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced. So what is the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music", which again, you haven't addressed.
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
If you consider the top charting music and the typical fart noises uploaded to soundcloud which have 3 listens, yes it is worse. If you're only considering your 25 favorite new songs out of tens of millions then sure, it's better. But also there is recency/novelty bias which counteracts and may overcome any past/nostalgia bias In conclusion, if all you're doing is listening to music alone in your apartment then it's never been better. Until you step out into the real world and realize that, best-case scenario, everyone hates your music and everything that it represents. More likely they will be completely bored and indifferent.
- goosejuice 3y ago
  Music only matters to the producer and the listener. It's deeply personal. I think you're missing the point.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    This sounds like a parody of Western individualism
    - goosejuice 3y ago
      Why exactly do you care if music you enjoy listening to is also enjoyed by others? If you enjoy it and the musicians are making it what else is there? Plenty of artists are just making art for themselves.
      - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
        Plenty of people live in the woods. If we all lived in the woods everything would be fine! I'm sure our GDP wouldn't fall and no one would starve to death at all. Nope; Not a bit. Why don't we all just wear VR headsets all day? LOL enjoy your atomized Balkanized tower of Babel existence. If it has to be explained then you're consitutionally incapable of understanding it anyway.
        3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hnbad 3y ago

FWIW most of the top charting music of the 90s, 80s and so on were also "worse" and have mostly been forgotten. Few songs remain popular or regain popularity. A lot of chart hits are really just springboarding off "you had to be there" cultural moments or experiences or simply a general "vibe" that are fleeting and trivial enough not to stick around even in nostalgia. As an extreme example, I'd argue the popularity of David Hasselhoff's I've been looking for freedom in Germany is almost entirely a result of "retconning" (if not fabricating) its supposed popularity at the time of its original release. It would have probably been forgotten entirely if it hadn't been rediscovered "ironically" in the context of ridiculous claims about its influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall. Heck, I remember owning a casette of the album as a kid only because "it's the guy from Knight Rider". For adult women his claim to fame was co-starring alongside Pamela Anderson in Baywatch as one of the few men regularly appearing bare-chested on daytime television - I'd say his musical talents played a very small role in his original popularity and it's telling nobody remembers any other songs than the one he performed on a TV show. He was never considered good, he was just a familiar face (and body) and made a catchy tune.

suoduandao3 3y ago
I recently encountered the term 'Tempoflavanoids' - the flavour of a particular moment in time. I love the concept, it speaks to the artist in me. Though I thought David Hasslehoff's 'True Survivor' music video for the Kung Fury kickstarter was a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY
goosejuice 3y ago
I agree with this take. “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.” comes to mind

erikbye 3y ago

Of course, it's extremely subjective, but how about naming a few artists who have appeared in the last few years that you think make better music and are more talented musicians than those who came before?

herbst 3y ago
I could spend hours writing a response to this. I am mid 30 and my style of music changes with every season I am not within trends but most songs I enjoy most are not older than 3 or 4 years. Not all of them are well known. Even something established like Punk reached new heights with more modern approaches (ex. Sleaford mods, Team Scheisse in German) I think music is very subjective still but new music never stopped to impress me.
- kataklasm 3y ago
  I just discovered Team Scheisse a week ago (they are from city!) and now I come across them on HN, what a coincidence (obviously this might be the Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon at play but since they are a comparatively small band I would say the effect is rather small)!
- erikbye 3y ago
  Team Scheisse, new heights? What exactly brings punk to new heights with this band? There's no hiding the "influence" of Sex Pistols, and I'd much rather listen to Sex Pistols, Ramones, and also Rancid than this band. Do not see the appeal.
dman-os 3y ago
At the risk of just mouthing off my favorites, there are a lot of genres today are the best they've ever been. The post-punk revival out of the UK is great. The "chambery" Black Country, New Road and the "mathy" Black Midi are some of the best we've seen and there are other exceptional talents in that scene. Noisy-shoegazy-indie rock is also a great scene right now with artists like Jane Remover and Mitski releasing what will be important albums for ages to come. Note, Mitski debuted in 2013 but most of the strongest records over the past few years, from hip-hop, pop to experimental rock to metal, seems to be by artists or individual who've been making music for around a decade-ish roughly. Maybe this disqualifies the whole lot and you're trying to highlight some weakness in the debuts of the past few years. If so, maybe you should wait a decade? If not, I can assert that some of the most talented artists of history are making music today. By any metric.

lapcat 3y ago

> Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. But there's a crucial difference between what's out there and what people are listening to. There's a lot of obscure stuff that not many people are listening to. Whereas the top charting music is what millions of people are listening to. It matters a lot what's getting marketed, what the majority of people are exposed to. Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."

throw5323446 3y ago
> Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music." Seems very hard to accurately measure, could be that people don't know what was released in their decade but the stuff from the 80s is easy to pinpoint.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > could be that people don't know what was released in their decade It seems implausible that young people don't know that new music is new. Why would the 80s be easy to pinpoint for people who weren't even alive in the 80s?
goosejuice 3y ago
Define obscure. Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because if you have a desire to find music that you like you just have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet connection. If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > it's all there for free with an Internet connection The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is massive. Almost everything is available on the internet, but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack. > If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced. So what is the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music", which again, you haven't addressed.

iraqmtpizza 3y ago

If you consider the top charting music and the typical fart noises uploaded to soundcloud which have 3 listens, yes it is worse. If you're only considering your 25 favorite new songs out of tens of millions then sure, it's better. But also there is recency/novelty bias which counteracts and may overcome any past/nostalgia bias In conclusion, if all you're doing is listening to music alone in your apartment then it's never been better. Until you step out into the real world and realize that, best-case scenario, everyone hates your music and everything that it represents. More likely they will be completely bored and indifferent.

goosejuice 3y ago
Music only matters to the producer and the listener. It's deeply personal. I think you're missing the point.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  This sounds like a parody of Western individualism
  - goosejuice 3y ago
    Why exactly do you care if music you enjoy listening to is also enjoyed by others? If you enjoy it and the musicians are making it what else is there? Plenty of artists are just making art for themselves.
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      Plenty of people live in the woods. If we all lived in the woods everything would be fine! I'm sure our GDP wouldn't fall and no one would starve to death at all. Nope; Not a bit. Why don't we all just wear VR headsets all day? LOL enjoy your atomized Balkanized tower of Babel existence. If it has to be explained then you're consitutionally incapable of understanding it anyway.
      - 3y ago