Oh my fucking god I just wanted to say how otherworldly bad music is right now (pop has always been stupid to varying levels but oh my fucking god they have raised the stakes). I just listened to a bunch of pop tracks from various genres and I literally think I’m about to die. Rock, country, indie, folk, hipster white rap, whatever you call home, is aggressively bad. It’s like Walmart made a gun that can shoot cum and blood and piss and shit and puke into your soul. We are so fucking fucked. I want to saw my own head off.
It’s a completely ridiculous idea to think that worsening material conditions won’t lead to worse art, or that the logic of the market (especially in our age of algorithms and market research ) prioritizing profit over everything else won’t harm art either.
Music is undeniably getting worse.
I think youre the one whose conception of art is wormed by capitalism. Plenty of great music being made right now, youre just looking in the wrong place.
Believe me, I know where to find music, it’s just that none of it is as vital, energetic or as good as it should be.
Doesn’t sound like you do
Plenty of good music out there, is it possible its you?
Beautiful art has again and again and again come from artists living under far worse material conditions than the imperial core is going to face. We also live in a time of unprecedented access to instruments and production technology, lots of which are free, and publishing has never been easier than with the internet.
Music is going to continue to be fine. The industry might face issues, but there’s always going to be wonderful music to listen to.
I disagree. Sure, the internet might have given more people the ability to publish their music, but it has also cheapened the act of listening music to such a degree that any benefit that might have brought on has been completely eroded. “Back in the days” when people bought music, they actually were forced to engage with it, nowadays anything that might challenge listening conventions gets immediately skipped in favor of something else that more easily fits listening conventions. Streaming services obviously change listening behaviour and changed listening behaviour changes the music itself (as studies have proven). As more and more of human experience is viewed through the logic of the market, art is obviously going to suffer.
yeah were the material conditions that created blues, jazz, rock and roll? (hint its slavery) were… good or something? like the musical heritage of those genres can literally be traced back to field hollers and negro spirituals. of anything worse, conditions have only led to better art in this country, thats why almost all American music comes from the most disadvantaged group of people, it would also explain why the genres have always been so queer as well.
thank you for really making my point. Blues, Jazz, Rock and Gospel came to be because thousands of years of musical traditions were ripped from their places of origin, left to its own devices in a climate in which making music was a just another part of life, where the process of making music and listening music were one and the same. And that musical culture was then confronted by the advent of sound recording, which canonized those musicians who were “lucky” enough to be recorded. That it was able to keep its vitality despite being “trapped in amber” is a testament to its sheer power, but also to the fact that the fledgeling music industry hadn’t yet become the cultural industry of today.
Misery doesn’t automatically lead to great art, the conditions under which it can lead to great art are instead very fickle and capitalism has tried its hardest to not allow them to be.
Music only keeps getting ‘worse’ by your meterstick because crackers can’t help but steal whole genres from the people actually invested in creating them and advancing them; then the settlers water down what they stole til it can be hocked to a lowest-common-denominator consumer. Happened with blues, jazz, rock and roll, (not disco; the crackers burned that for being too queer), and hip-hop.
The oppressed will always make art that touches the soul; it’s not our problem that you don’t recognize that. You don’t sound like you’ve ever been immersed in the places where it happens; which leads me to believe this is just speech from a place of theory but no physical investment or interaction with the people actually moving around outside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LySF0Rrhc8c
this is when music was alive, if you know of any place right now where music is as alive as at that club in 1963 please tell me id love to go there
“When music was alive” this some absolute oldhead talk. Get out of my replies; you are not serious enough to chop it up with me on this subject and you are no longer welcome to it. Soundin exactly like the oldassed barbershop mfs we swore we was never gonna become
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Muting doesn’t exist and blocking wrecks threads you’re involved in. Just take accountability for having a boomer mentality
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I’d post up my favorite diy punk venue but it would be bad opsec. There’s got to be a place just like it in every mid to large city and they’re putting the best sounding most talented people you’ve never heard of on stage.
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Disrespectful assed motherfucker I swear to god you sound white with this pithy snark shit. Try this on for size: “I’m talking out of my ass right now, and will strive to put an end to this redditor-tier doomerism until I actually take a good, long walk through the underground”.
Like damn I’m not even gonna chop up underground artists or even just subjects-of-empire I love that stay on hard ART, you live in an era where Aesop Rock, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, Doechii, Zeal and Ardor, Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian (all solo, mind), Sleep Token, TOOL, Poppy, and HELLA OTHER MUSICIANS all dropping like their lives depended on it and you’re out here talm bout "music is getting worse".
You live in an era where those unserved and underserved by the industry have been pushing the very concept of ‘genre’ itself to its breaking point themselves, and you’re out here talm bout "music is getting worse".
You live in an era where more people than ever before have means to self-production, an era where ‘DIY’ actually means some shit, and you’re out here talm bout "music is getting worse". I can’t take motherfuckers like you seriously and it fundamentally disgusts me you fix your face to talk on the subject.
Amber.
Capitalist slop is getting more banal, yes. There’s so much good music being made. Im too busy with discovering King Gizz’s live shows to listen to the new kendrick album even tho ik thats fire too.