Hacker News Reader

Comment by searchableguy | Hacker News Reader

It's market valuing things based on scarcity. Music is in abundance right now due to lower barrier to entry for distributing and producing it than ever before. You have to provide more value than someone producing music as a hobby for free on youtube.

View on HN

Good music - electrifying, change-your-life music - is still extremely scarce.

But Spotify has made it even harder to find by swamping it in mediocre burger+fries music.

Huh, this is an interesting take to me. I'd say that my using Spotify has definitely increased the amount of "bad" music I listen to, but it has _drastically_ increased the amount of amazing, life-changing music I find. There are _so_ many artists I enjoy now because Spotify threw them in my Discover Weekly. By increasing the sheer amount of music I listen to, thanks to Spotify, I've increased the number of bands I love that I stumble upon, and bands I hate. It's a net win though, because I forget the shit stuff, but really, really cherish the gold I find.

I'm just surprised that you feel it's _harder_ to find good music because of Spotify.

There's more shit to wade through.

I really miss the days when Youtube's "related videos" were seemingly based on a graph data model -- populated like: other people that watched this, then clicked on that.

Honestly, it was far more accurate for new, niche music. My browser tabs would grow exponentially.

Now it's all sorts of weird shit like US news coverage of sentencing serial killers. Which I didn't ever watch before...

I disagree. Music is subjective. In fact, the lower barrier to entry and discovery has enabled me to find my favorite music that 5 years ago I had no idea even existed. You would probably hate the music that changed my life, and I would probably not enjoy yours.

I do agree that bands are getting screwed though. That's why I use Spotify for discovery and buy lots of merch when a band really lands with me (and go to live shows - pre COIVD of course).

I don’t buy that. Much of my favorite music is video game fan-made music; and, while that is hard to make and their skill is great, there’s a lot of that music.

I love music (and am a musician), but I disagree that good music is scarce. Part of the issue here (among many others) is that music is fairly "evergreen", and certainly much more so than apps. Zillions of people are still listening to the Beatles and Bob Dylan (two examples of "good music") more than half a century later. I worry that the ever increasing catalog of recorded music is making it ever harder to gain mindshare as a musician.

> But Spotify has made it even harder to find ...

Compared to what?

I grew up with music heavily filtered by radio promoters. That was rarely "change-your-life music".

On the flip side SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music and websites like http://everynoise.com have made it even easier to find more obscure music, of which some is electrifying, change-your-life music.

It doesn't follow that "more people making music" means "same amount of good music"

Music ain't changing my life.

Help me have a good cry? Sure. Make chores less boring, absolutely.

But for me life changes are life-changing; music's ultimately just what was on, the soundtrack.

Music is life-changing when you hear something that your mind cannot conceive at first, but finds particularly striking. The memory of hearing that song gets embedded in your memory. It's likely that you'll remember where you were when you first heard the song. It becomes part of your history.

Functional music, like what you describe, is easy to listen to. It serves a purpose: reduce boredom, be a companion in sadness, lift the awkwardness of sitting next to strangers in silence. It fits in the genres you are used to listening.

This is, of course, just my experience. But it's clear that for many people, music becomes their life.

The kind of music that I paid money for in the past hasn't been released much recently. So in my opinion, there's a lot of potential for growth by making good music.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com