Ramblings on the State of Music

When's the last time you heard a NEW song you truly loved?

Not liked, not saved to listen through later to see if there's more there, not nodded your head to... LOVED.

Crickets? Yeah, me too. 

...

American music has been struggling for a while. I don't like to admit it really, I'd rather just be nostalgic and cling to the shiny, jewel case remnants of when music as a collective was still steeped in artistry.  

I also hate to be negative or down on something I respect so deeply and that I don't possess the skills to be part of. Yet, here I sit as another random bit of noise. 

When they had the mp3 ready they said it'd be the death of music. So much so, that they essentially sat on it from 1995 to 2001 - when the public was introduced to the first iPod. This is not to say there weren't models before, but for most Americans 2001 was when their iTunes and downloadable journeys began. 

If you want to really get in the weeds check out, "How Music Got Free" by Stephen Witt. It's a little aged now (2015) but the research is solid and it's how I learned that part of the mp3's magic is that it compresses audio which takes up less space but gives you less quality sound. Though you'd have to have a trained ear or great quality headphones to really notice that difference, I was a little taken back.

But little known to me in the middle of it, I suppose I grew up in one of the largest shifts in music yet. Besides when they figured out how to record people singing and radio. In the early 2000s, the question became - how will music survive without people buying it?

Now, we're in the middle of another shift. I do think the mp3 helped create an uninhabitable environment for music. I won't say it killed it. I think the true essence of what it did was force people to evaluate what they were purchasing. In turn, people didn't want to purchase something digital, not after years of owning physical copies. 

Because what is secure about a digital foundation? Absolutely nothing, yet we've built economies, our finances and our personas on this shifting sand. But that's a discussion for another day. If you disagree and think digital property is sound, then perhaps consider this: how does something made by human hands and spirit become predominately translated to digital consumption? Don't you feel something would be lost in that exchange, something unaccounted for? Don't you think it might pave the way for a world where no one minds who made the music, even if no one made it? That's where we are. Digital bots "making" derivative "music" for digital platforms. That's our shift now. That's our challenge. How do we keep humanity central in art and music in a world of artificial intelligence? How do we plan to create rules and regulate its use so that this thing we've "made" doesn't destroy the future of all we hope to create?

I'm not interested in detailing my thoughts on AI, nor do I have enough knowledge of it's inter-workings to speak widely on the matter. Yet, I can tell you I believe it has no place in creativity and no place in artistry. You might call me a purist and maybe that'd be right. 

But I think there's still something more here. With so much free music everywhere - what has that created? More music. So much. So many hours of listening, and I do. But so much of it is mediocre, formulaic and creates an auditory cavity in the mouth of music enthusiasts. While I love Spotify, and I myself am part of this pattern - watching music being hollowed out before my eyes into a shell of itself and rebranded as entertainment only is painful. 

I also think that social media, specially video driven platforms have wrung the substance out of music. Obviously, right? Songs are now 30 seconds, a cheesy dance and get looped a million times on your phone. That song will go viral but with what staying power? Who remembers the song in the following week when a new shiny, candy coated, hardly edited, hit clip length snippet pops into a new video and is then duplicated thousands of times? Do those listens reflect fans? (Shout out to Creative CTRL, nobigdyl's podcast for getting me on this line of thinking | Episode 7, somewhere in there). 

I digress. There are also some really cool and fun things that have come from short form video clips musically as well. However, I'd venture to say the instant gratification and accelerated attention span it reinforces for an industry that was already WHIZZING through content weighs more heavily on the hard realities of such platforms. It's also made us so aware of what others are listening to. To the point that we won't listen to certain things because there's this wild social accountability of what music we're spending time with. What a loss if we trim our tastes to fit a trend, or avoid the digital judgement of someone else.

Okay, so I had some time today. 😂 If you ventured through this likely you feel these similar pangs. I'm not saying anything new, I've exhausted this subject before. However, I think there's still a heartbeat in the midst of the mechanical maze music has become. And I will always advocate for the art that stems from honest, human experience because that is worth your money, worth your support and time. Not every song has to be this deep reflection, I'm not saying that. I love pop music as much as the next person. I am saying what we passively consume becomes a standard, and I want to live in a world where there are creatives not strictly entertainers. 

What modern music are you listening to and LOVING?

What changes does the music industry or artist/ fan relationship need to properly evolve? How does music thrive in a maturing digital world?

What artists feel like they are pulling from their experience, talents (play their instruments/write their content) and/or doing something unique? 

Jon Bellion is one of these artists in my mind. This interview has a lot of relevance to the conversation at hand, too.

This has inspired me to make a playlist focused on those question for myself and to really dial into the support of musicians that are fighting for art in 2024. It also has me looking for people doing musical differently, packing it in a new way, ect.