Is Old Music Killing New Music? | Hacker News Reader

Is Old Music Killing New Music?

theatlantic.com

22 pointsaarghh20 comments

Maybe the takeaway is that most new music just sucks? It's been the case for at least a decade. Multiple genres overrun by celebrities (vs talent) and endless re-hashing of the same ideas, samples and arrangements.

Every year there is only a handful of artists that stand out.

EDIT: A little experiment taking random past years:

- 1969: Elvis, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Fletwood Mac, Johnny Cash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cream, Mutantes, The Byrds, Frank Sinatra, Steppenwolf, The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Nick Drake, The Doors, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, The Allman Brothers Band, BB King, The Jackson 5

- 1989: Rush, Lou Reed, Skid Row, New Order, Elvis Costello, Madonna, Ramones, Sepultura, Pixies, Tom Petty, Aretha Franklin, Green Day, The Cure, Queen, Paul McCartney, Nirvana, Prince, Faith No More, Bee Gees, RHCP, The Rolling Stones, Soundgarden, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Billy Joel, KISS, Satriani, Clapton, plus dozens of others

- 2021: Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, The Weeknd, BTS, Harry Styles, Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo, Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, Arlo Parks, Justin Bieber, Adele, Lorde, illuminati hotties, Silk Sonic

Taken from yearly compilation sites. Not only the 2021 list of highlights is shorter, but half of these artists are going to be forgotten in five years because their songs are just not memorable enough.

I can understand why you'd get that impression by only looking at the top 40, there's a thriving middle ground of artists that are popular enough to do national/world tours but don't get radio play. Rock and folk are hugely popular (under the "indie" label). The metal scene is thriving. There are young musicians pushing the boundaries of jazz. Electronic music is huge and has more subgenres than anyone can count. The cost of creating and distributing music has fallen massively in the last two decades. More music is being made now than ever before, and small artists are able to reach audiences that would never have been possible just 10-15 years ago.

There's also the fact that it's a lot harder to identify what will be have long-term impact in the moment. To cherry pick a couple examples from those lists, nobody was talking about Nick Drake in 1969. I want to say he sold something like a total of <5000 albums by the time he died. Similarly, Green Day didn't really see widespread success until the 90's. I'm sure there are plenty of currently unknown artists who released their first albums last year who will go on to see mainstream success in the future.

I'd also add that the 2021 list doesn't even seem like a great representation of what was popular last year. It pretty much entirely ignores hip hop which has been one of the most commercially dominant genres behind pop the last few years and produces a huge number of hits.

Also, Pink Floyd released two albums in 1969, and they sold well, but it was nothing like the success they had starting in 1973 with The Dark Side of the Moon.

Indeed, accountants and the internet provided the one-two punch.

I recognize the historical bias of "new music sucks." However I remember iconic hit songs dropping every single week in the 80s, from multiple genres. Now I hear a trickle of a few a year. Most pop tracks seem to be just vocals and beats, better to fend off lawsuits I suspect.

Another important milestone in the legal environment folks might have forgotten was when George Harrison was taken to court over the music of one of his songs being reminiscent of a Motown-era ditty. ("My Sweet Lord" vs. "He's So Fine")

There are undoubtedly some great undiscovered writers and musicians that haven't been noticed nor allowed to be noticed by the big players. Artist development went in the toilet as profits declined.

> However I remember iconic hit songs dropping every single week in the 80s, from multiple genres.

That's probably survivor bias more than anything. Or maybe the '80s just happened to be a strong decade for music. But again, that's dependent upon one's biases- I seem to remember the '90s to be a great era saturated with iconic hits, even if it coincided with accelerated corporatization of the music industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt9c0UeYhFc

> America says we love a chorus

> But don't get complicated and bore us

> Though meaning might be missin'

> We need to know the words after just one listen so...

> (Repeat stuff, repeat stuff, repeat stuff)

Except the previous thread doesn't seems to support this narrative.

My view is that Good Music are timeless, and Good music we have over time are cumulative. Which means as we progress, new good music will have to compete with old good music. And the bar are set a little higher, which reduce the amount of good music we can make. But then a lot of music revenue are made by cult / era / marketing following. So in theory there should always been a market for new music.

Someday may be we have old music operating on digital freemium model. And then Old music will truly be competing against new music.

Music sampling has had an impact on the differentiation of music. It's a lot easier to use a liked sample than to come up with a new ones so a lot of the post 2000's music sounds the same. So what's the point of trying to find new music when it all sounds similar.

This article was posted sometime last week, apparently got picked up by the Atlantic. Interesting read, interesting prior discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29999110

The top voted comment there suggests that "young people have moved to streaming" but unless I read it wrong, the report's 'total consumption' figures do include streaming. In their metric ~3k streams == one album sale (based on artist revenue).

A more correct observation could be that old people have moved to streaming and are now responsible for a much larger share?

Pro Tools and Auto Tune destroys new music. Is the verse repeated somewhere? Just fly the first verse over. Engineers and producers will quantize the song and just put things where they want them. Timings are microsecond perfect every time. It's bare, lifeless and completely sterile. If a new artist wants to, even slightly, disrupt this paradigm they are going to have a hard time making the rent.

I'd argue that advanced and easily-accessible software tools is doing this to most mediums. Personally, I'm very jaded by amazing cinematography, at least physical landscapes, in films these days. It's too easy to go on location (well, less that part), shoot some breathtaking scenery, and after the IMAX footage is digitally processed, make a macOS wallpaper. Or even a smartphone background. Everything looks glossy and spectacular to the point of banality. One of the reasons I was less than overawed by Dune.

Technical perfection is too easy to achieve these days, and music is just but one example.

Even many live performances are put through the tools. It's pretty sad.

There are plenty of independent radio stations who curate diverse shows of both modern and older music. The best shows are the ones which lean towards mostly modern music with a few classic songs sprinkled in. They find the new artists who become the classic “old music” that everyone else discovers 5-10 years later. One great example is https://kexp.org/ from Seattle which has thrived for over 25 years with exactly this variety of music, with years of recorded in-studio music available for streaming.

I'll add kxt.org (kera in Dallas/Ft Worth). They have a kind ofor bizarre format of old pop song, new pop song all day long. Might not be your cup of tea, but they play a lot of new music I would not have heard had it not been joined with things I've liked for a long time.

>The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams.

I don't think it's an issue of old vs. new music but the decline of pop music. People are just tired of the same boring rehashed pop music being pushed by the major record labels. Streaming services are making new artists from independent labels accessible and allowing younger people to rediscover older music.

- In this pandemic-y world people retreat into what's comfortable, and older music can be one of those comforts.

- In this streaming world it's easier than ever to listen to 'new' old music.

- There's plenty of new styles of music that isn't on the charts. Yet.

And I'm aging out of the demos those music company heads market to (and many of them beat me to it)

I suspect that the recommendation engines have a lot to do with this. Old songs have a lot more likes that new one so they are recommended at a higher level. Additionally, more likes begets more likes that again increases the recommendations of already popular music. The whole system is built to favor old music.