I think Thoughty 2 is right.
I remember when I was young often buying a naff record but because I had paid money for it, I would persevere and keep playing it, then, after a while, I would often start to like it. After that, I would zoom around my mates house all charged up about this great new band I had discovered, only to be greatly disappointed when my friend didn't like it much either, but within a week or two, he's right into it as well.
Nowadays, though, with streamed music, if it doesn't hit right away we move on, and now all music is designed to excite straight away and all nuance and complexity has been lost.
Thoughty 2 - Why is modern music so awful
Also of interest: Modern Music's Death by Autotune. I absolutely can't stand this instrument, but maybe I've just got old, so I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in my dislike. But it is a useful tool when used occasionally.
5 comments:
So, Jerry Lee Lewis was late for a concert in Paris and these two guys [Kenny Lovelace & James Burton] start riffing. The good part starts at the 1-minute mark (best played loud).
Jerry Lee Lewis - Roll Over Beethoven / Lucille
The Half Life of a Spotify Hit - Blair Fix
Browse the internet long enough and you’ll eventually run across Hunter S. Thompson’s meme about the music industry. The meme is actually a misquote, but it’s still a fair representation of what the music business is like. Or rather, what it used to be like 50 years ago. Today, things are different. ‘Thieves and pimps’ no longer run free. Instead, ‘corporate execs and lawyers’ run the show. The suits do just fine. But artists die like dogs.
The modern music industry runs on the Walmart model. Streaming services like Spotify charge low prices to listeners. But under the hood, the streaming business model is ‘always cut costs’. That means paying artists as little as possible — about 0.2 cents per stream. To put this rate in context, an artist with 1 million streams would earn $2000 — hardly enough to live on. For most musicians, then, Spotify is basically a marketing tool that pays a little on the side. Their real income (before COVID) comes from playing live.
Because the payout lasts, every artist wants a slow-burner hit. Yet few musicians achieve this feat. Most hits burn briefly. The median half life of a Spotify Top 200 hit is 59 days — just short of 2 months. Moreover, the ‘half-life distribution’ is highly skewed. As Figure 5 shows, most hit songs have a brief half life, while a lucky few are slow burners.
source: The Half Life of a Spotify Hit
Great old interview withPhil Alvin on this issue and the history…
https://youtu.be/Sd994qtXMJQ
In other words, Capitalism. Zappa talked about this staring back in the late 60's.
Modern music is great! Critics are awful ;)
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