Music doesn't have ever-increasing production costs, and if anything it's easier than ever to get something out there on the primary distribution mechanisms used by the public to consume media.
It certainly has it's own business problems but I don't see any lack of interesting, risk-taking music out there. Even as a fan of genres largely far out of the mainstream I often feel like there's so much great new stuff that I can't keep up with it all.
It actually has. Venues are getting more and more expensive, and the effort to run shows has also increased - Rammstein is far from the only one requiring dozens of trucks to move their equipment around. On top of that you have Ticketmaster and their ilk on a brutal rent-seeking ride at the expense of both artists and fans.
> It certainly has it's own business problems but I don't see any lack of interesting, risk-taking music out there. Even as a fan of genres largely far out of the mainstream I often feel like there's so much great new stuff that I can't keep up with it all.
Yeah, indie stuff still works out fine these days, if not easier as Soundcloud has replaced physical tapes, but to achieve major recognition still takes an absurd amount of money, connections and luck. Or all three of them.
Not even talking about insane amounts of good educational material available online for free these days, the capable equipment required to produce a studio-quality track fell down in price significantly, and most older equipment is still fully functional and compatible with newer offerings (thanks, MIDI and XLR). And newer equipment is still significantly cheaper than almost anything comparable from 20 years ago (if it was even available back then).
Back then, you wouldn't be able to produce anything that could compete in quality with studios from your bedroom, and not on a reasonable budget. And even if you somehow were so rich you were able to finance a pro studio in your house, and you produced a decent track, now the question is how would you even distribute it to the public and get heard.
These days? Thanks to affordability of what it takes to produce a track and the ease of getting your material released to the public, you can go from a nobody to someone with a hit track overnight. All for the price of a laptop, some decent speakers/headphones, and a midi-controller. And even that list is optional, as there are people who produce great stuff with less than this or even something entirely different.
But how many actually manage to pull off that feat? You can probably count them on two hands. One-hit wonders yes, there have been a fair few of these that managed to hit the zeitgeist thanks to social media (Wellerman!), but a sustained career after that, from scratch and with no prior experience? I couldn't name one.
Everyone has the chance to strike a lottery jackpot, but only one person will.
Are they everywhere? Nah, music is a capitalist endeavor, and the market wouldn't support that. But there are a surprising number of artists that have gained success with their first endeavors produced out of their homes.
Quite a few, but that's not the point. Increasing opportunities for everyone does not mean that there will be the same levels of increase in top tier outlier outcomes. Just like if you suddenly gave access to MIT education to everyone, I think the success metric median (whether it is income or achievements) for MIT students will decrease, but the absolute number of successful people due to MIT education being available to everyone will increase.
Off the top of my head in terms of examples: Brockhampton, Skrillex, Billie Eilish, Porter Robinson, Steve Lacy (who produced hit tracks for artists like Mac Miller, J.Cole, and Kendrick Lamar), Flume, etc. The list can keep going on and on, and I listed only the very top tier artists in terms of popularity and lasting presence so far.
“How much does it cost to make a hit song”
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-...