[HN Gopher] Pop culture has become an oligopoly
___________________________________________________________________
Pop culture has become an oligopoly
Author : kevin_hu
Score : 128 points
Date : 2022-05-02 18:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (experimentalhistory.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (experimentalhistory.substack.com)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Some of these graphs are more convincing than others, this in
| particular seems to be fairly creative use of statistics.
|
| https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...
| t1nytim wrote:
| derbOac wrote:
| I think their paper they linked in the blog post is a bit like
| that too, maybe even more so, although I found both
| interesting.
|
| I do agree some of the trends are more convincing than others,
| although they're generally consistent with the overall
| direction the author is suggesting.
| seydor wrote:
| What do we know about winner take all phenomena from biology? How
| do they work in a petri dish?
| davemp wrote:
| In forests it's usually when an invasive species is introduced
| and results in a less efficient use of energy in the ecosystem.
| iostream24 wrote:
| This puts its finger on something I've had a vague feeling about
| for awhile now.
|
| Something I noticed was that being "underground" and
| "alternative" was considered "cool" when I was a youngster. Now,
| it seems all transgressive elements have been stripped from the
| mix and it's all about "please like me, like my product, I'm
| desperate for your approval"
|
| I'd had my own notions of this being fueled by the suit-vs-rocker
| dichotomy turning into the self-promoting-artist lonesome
| internet point of light thing.
|
| But this article describes a bigger pattern, and I think it's
| largely about commercial conquest and has little to do with the
| ideas inside.
|
| There's also the theme of nostalgia and "good old" style
| marketing. How much junk food is marketed as "grandmas good olde
| traditional natural authentic junk food"?
|
| What is extremely frustrating is watching mediocre output be
| considered best in class merely due to the rubber stamp effect of
| popularity, popularity due to marketing power and branding.
|
| Clearly xyz charttopper is the best singer in the world if they
| are the most popular, right?
|
| The entertainment oligopoly falsifying the appearance of
| democracy and choice while limiting the range of presentable
| choices is actually symbolic of how many authoritarian systems
| fake democratic parliamentary procedures and such.
|
| Clearly the people have spoken, approving the pre approved
| choice. Lol.
|
| Everyone must obviously love autotune if 9/10 top ten songs use
| it.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| > Now, it seems all transgressive elements have been stripped
| from the mix and it's all about "please like me, like my
| product, I'm desperate for your approval"
|
| It's all a matter of perspective, I don't see this trend as
| necessarily good or bad. There were some positives to the
| "underground" and "alternative" aesthetic, like being
| independent-minded and an emphasis on doing things that were
| new and original. There were some downsides too, like being
| jaded about everything, being too cool to show enthusiasm, and
| ultimately sometimes just blindly conforming to the
| "alternative" view for the sake of opposing the mainstream
| view.
|
| Similarly I think there are positives to how I see young people
| behaving today, the flip-side to the negatives you mentioned.
| Being genuine and showing emotion is cool again, and, perhaps
| ironically, since there is less cultural pressure to be
| "alternative" people are arguably being more honest with
| themselves by openly seeking approval. We're all humans after
| all and we all seek approval from others, maybe it's good that
| there is no longer any stigma around that in the influencer
| age.
| insickness wrote:
| The commodification of dissent. In the 50's, counter-culture
| was far more delineated from corporate squareness, which is why
| those old 50's ads are so funny to us now. Business evolved to
| where now it has the ability to coopt any emerging dissent and
| counter-culture almost immediately.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's still corporate but it's much less visible. Now many
| things look cool and transgressive - including elements of
| startup culture - but the _goals_ are still corporate.
|
| In a real counter culture the goals are aggressively anti-
| corporate.
|
| The most impressive part is the way that individualism has
| become almost entirely a corporate creation. You "express
| yourself" by choosing and displaying products, all of which
| are either corporate or sold through a corporate monopoly
| (Amazon, Ebay, Etsy). The middle classes are allowed some
| artisanal choices, but only because they signal a more
| refined and informed kind of consumerism.
|
| There really isn't much evidence of individualism which isn't
| assembled from some combination of corporate-friendly
| competitive ambition, Veblen signalling, standardised
| rebellion/outsider tropes, and political and religious
| tribalism.
| WalterBright wrote:
| What are your thoughts on government art? (Art funded by
| the government.)
| onemoresoop wrote:
| > What are your thoughts on government art? (Art funded
| by the government.) Sometimes it could be good. Artists
| need funding too, and generally that funding is lacking.
| Being an artists is associated with poverty.
| markvdb wrote:
| There _is_ a lot of genuine expression. It's just not very
| visible and/or you might not recognise it as such. The
| sausage machine might be involved in some way , but that
| doesn't necessarily make it a product of the sausage
| machine!
| Teever wrote:
| Can you provide some examples of what you feel is genuine
| expression in this context?
| kirsebaer wrote:
| Like here we are expressing ourselves.
| vkou wrote:
| > The most impressive part is the way that individualism
| has become almost entirely a corporate creation. You
| "express yourself" by choosing and displaying products, all
| of which are either corporate or sold through a corporate
| monopoly (Amazon, Ebay, Etsy). The middle classes are
| allowed some artisanal choices, but only because they
| signal a more refined and informed kind of consumerism.
|
| I think you are confusing the deluge of internet ads that
| tell me to 'express myself' and 'unleash my potential' by
| <buying their crap>, with how people actually express
| themselves. Maybe I hang out with the wrong people, but
| I've never heard any of my friends 'expressing themselves'
| in those ways.
|
| They obviously make statements about their take on fashion
| through their purchasing habits (as do I), but I don't
| confuse what I wear with what I am.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I don't confuse what I wear with what I am.
|
| How people signal to others what they are is by what
| they're wearing. Asking people not to - good luck with
| that.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I think you are confusing the deluge of internet ads
| that tell me to 'express myself' and 'unleash my
| potential' by <buying their crap>, with how people
| actually express themselves.
|
| Well, if they're "expressing themselves" on mainstream
| social media, that's "corporate" and oligopolistic in a
| very real sense. It's puzzling to see so much knee-jerk
| anti-corporatism on sites like Twitter and even here at
| News.YC.
| screye wrote:
| > to co-opt any emerging dissent and counter-culture almost
| immediately
|
| It has to do with the nature of the dissenters themselves.
| Nowadays they are politics / social media wannabees. When
| corporates coopot your movement, they make you rich and
| famous. Nothing makes a 'ladder climber' more happy.
|
| The nature of dissent in the 50s was more about the problems
| than the status assigned to the people. You couldn't easily
| lure them away with sneaky gifts.
|
| Worst of all, the 50s-esque true believers do exist. But they
| get cannibalized and spit out by the exact cabal of milque-
| toast corporate activism. The ones that don't are so radical
| that they only serve as red-flags on the danger of true
| belief, because all the reasonable ones got squash under
| corporate America's feet.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The people who genuinely care about problems don't fit the
| "dissenter" stereotype, by and large. They speak with
| authority about the limited domain they're familiar with,
| and don't try to have an opinion about everything in
| pursuit of shallow popularity. Overall, their attitude
| might register as "fringe" and "unusual" to most but it's
| not going to be seen as unambiguously "dissenting" or
| oppositional.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Watch "Century of the Self" (and "Hypernormalization") by Adam
| Curtis. Pop culture, marketing, and advertisement are in many
| ways the products of wartime propaganda techniques being
| applied to civilians by corporations during peacetime. Also
| watch Zizek for his thoughts on how corporations like Starbucks
| get people to try and practice their morals through
| consumerism. And since you mentioned falsified democracy, might
| as well look into Chomsky and his thoughts on Manufacturing
| Consent. These are legitimate, calculated phenomena that it's
| worth being aware of.
| oicU00 wrote:
| True that; there's a government paper trail detailing the
| transfer of military propaganda research to university
| marketing and advertising programs.
|
| Check out Hyman Rickover, a proponent of a nuclear Navy that
| pushed members of Congress to vote mothball 10 years of
| thorium reactor research for uranium reactors so they had
| weapons material.
|
| I laugh at the notion we have a free market since the basis
| of our system is 50-70 year old back room deals that boosted
| families like Gates, Musk, Andreesen, Bezos.
|
| There's zero science that explains how they're ahead of
| anyone else in skill and intelligence. Plenty to suggest
| typical old fashion political propaganda and corruption.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >Something I noticed was that being "underground" and
| "alternative" was considered "cool" when I was a youngster.
| Now, it seems all transgressive elements have been stripped
| from the mix and it's all about "please like me, like my
| product, I'm desperate for your approval"
|
| I think it's because anti-institutional cynicism has become the
| new norm with the rise of gen-x and the "ironic" hipsterdom of
| the early 2000s.
|
| So much of modern culture is about operating in the negative
| space of the "normal" which takes significantly less effort
| than actively defining what you value and who you are.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Honestly it just sounds like you're no longer a youngster.
| coldtea wrote:
| That's probably the most facile cliche answer, amounting to
| "it has always been this way". TFA, for one, shows tons of
| ways it isn't so...
| smokey_circles wrote:
| The word you are looking for is "contemporary" and nobody is
| spending money to make contemporary things appealing to you
| anymore.
|
| The collorary is your "counter culture" was bought and sold
| too. That one stung to find out, but alternative lifestyles
| have been manufactured for a long, long time
| tonguez wrote:
| most of it is the result of wealth inequality. no one can
| afford to be cancelled. if you want a vision of the future
| watch chinese youtube iq.com where everything is hollow and
| empty. every show just becomes a tool of the state, all
| entertainment is an arm of the MCI. we're heading there slowly.
| every single creator today faces a black box known as "the
| algorithm", on tiktok, instagram reels and youtube shorts.
| those are the only platforms you can get any views today.
| vertical videos. the things we all collectively said Rotate
| your phone and film in landscape mode, about. your videos
| didn't get popular? they must've just been bad, now watch this
| 15 year old girl twerk in spandex. francis ford Coppola never
| had to compete with girls in spandex, but today's entertainment
| does.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Or maybe music executives are the only ones who read Fukuyama?
| walrus01 wrote:
| > remake
|
| and then you have things like the book series of The Expanse and
| the follow on TV/streaming series, which are an entirely new
| thing.
|
| or a movie like "ex machina".
|
| nothing mandates watching endless remakes...
| bumper_crop wrote:
| Copyright lasting 1XX years probably has a substantial amount to
| do with it. If you are a media company, and you already spent the
| marketing budget building up the idea of Avengers, or Mario, or
| whatever pop culture icon you are selling, making a sequel means
| you get to lean on it. Should your company spend lots of extra
| money advertising your new video game, or just a little reminding
| people the next Call of Duty is coming out in a month?
|
| Alternatively, flip this around. Would Disney spend so much on
| Marvel movies if other studios could make movies about the same
| super heroes? No way! Why should Disney let the other studios
| ride on their coat tails? They would need to make all new stories
| and heroes.
| pbuzbee wrote:
| To me this reflects the large variety and volume of content out
| there today. As the amount of content grows, people with less
| mainstream tastes spread out their consumption, but people with
| more mainstream tastes stick with popular choices.
|
| For example, music. Let's say 50% of people like mainstream music
| and the rest have more obscure preferences. In the past, when
| music was harder to access, you might be exposed to 100 artists.
| Now, you might be exposed to over 1,000. The 50% who like more
| obscure music used to spread their listening out over 100, but
| now it's spread out over 1,000. Those who like mainstream music
| still mostly listen to the top 100 or so. The end result is that
| the top 100 is more solid than before, even though music is
| diversifying.
|
| For multiplicities, I see a snowball effect: each subsequent
| release in a multiplicity adds more people to the snowball. As
| long as the quality is good enough -- and people who enjoy
| mainstream content arguably have a lower bar -- the audience
| grows with each release. I think this effect, combined with the
| author's "proliferation" theory and major producers wanting to
| make safe investments, explains the dominance of multiplicities.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I wish some of these charts weren't normalized. Instead of
| percent of the market, I want to see the overall volume. Because
| my hunch is that these markets are just expanding unevenly. If it
| use to be 10 novel movies and 1 superhero movie, and now it's 15
| novel movies and 10 superhero movies, it's a decrease in market
| share, but it's still an increase.
| spicyusername wrote:
| A very well written essay.
|
| I very much agree with one of the conclusions:
|
| > Fortunately, there's a cure for our cultural anemia. While the
| top of the charts has been oligopolized, the bottom remains a
| vibrant anarchy. There are weird books and funky movies and
| bangers from across the sea. Two of the most interesting video
| games of the past decade put you in the role of an immigration
| officer and an insurance claims adjuster. Every strange thing,
| wonderful and terrible, is available to you, but they'll die out
| if you don't nourish them with your attention.
| blueboo wrote:
| This is the romantic view of the hundred (million) flowers
| blooming of a gatekeeper-liberated internet. I don't think it's
| a realistic "cure" given human nature.
|
| Rather, I think David Foster Wallace's prediction has been
| proven out:
|
| > ...this idea that the internet's gonna become incredibly
| democratic? I mean if you've spent any time on the web, you
| know that it's not gonna be, because that's completely
| overwhelming. There are four trillion bits coming at you, 99%
| of them are shit, and it's too much work to do triage to
| decide...We're going to beg for [curation]. We are literally
| gonna pay for it.
|
| After all...here we are on HN, hoping someone has curated the
| seething froth of new content into something manageable.
| iostream24 wrote:
| I don't tend to consume curated art, other than the odd
| friend passing me musical recommendations.
|
| Reviews and playlists are suspect to me. I also enjoy
| discovering and combing and deciding.
|
| I'm extremely picky about music and cinema and books. Curated
| media rarely works out.
|
| I never use Spotify and consider that sort of thing to be bad
| for music as an art for many reasons I won't get into in this
| comment.
|
| I'm a lifelong musician, multi instrumentalist etc... I have
| my tastes and preferences and desired directions of expansion
| of both (all, lol)
|
| To me, as a former DJ, I drop the needle 3-4 times, skip
| around in the song, if I like some harmonic scenarios I am
| hearing I may stick around to hear how it develops and
| progresses. Given the harmonic constraints of an instrument
| etc, is there any variety of tone, harmonic structure,
| technique , texture, or is it just skulking away in a corner
| looking at its own navel... etc...
|
| I realize that I'm atypical, but I'm also precisely a "music
| power user". We don't matter. The industry doesn't care about
| progrock, jazz fusion, afrobeat, bebop, acid jazz, classical
| (except the Messiah on Christmas) samba, salsa, cumbia, or
| music in general, it cares about tracking armies of fan
| consumers across the internet, tabloid entertainment news,
| clothing, photos, videos, good looking people posing. Forget
| the music, these days it's all image...
|
| Only in art are experts thrown on the garbage heap while
| moneyed interests court the brains of those more easily duped
| simply due to less experience. I think this is where the
| competitive thing in music comes crashing hard into the
| reality that a good song and a really bad song can share the
| charts, but the bad song often remains longer...
|
| Objectively bad, low effort, poorly structured, lacking a
| hook, etc, but marketing can keep it there as number one...
| unlike in UFC where your actual ability to fight matters.
|
| This clearly illustrates that we went from a competency and
| competition of musical skill to one of marketing skill. Fair
| enough, but call a spade a spade
|
| Does this mean I am old? Only if one disrespects the human
| race and human intellect so much that you would cheer the
| death of a sonic world from the warlike hand of visual
| glamour and stylized imagery.
|
| A musician is just a kind of fashion photography model
| capable of making erudite hand gestures and choosing sponsors
| iostream24 wrote:
| Do you know, I think you are right about one thing: we
| basically still need a search engine, but in many realms
| beyond textual content
| citruscomputing wrote:
| So, question to all -- how have you found success at locating
| the fruits of this "vibrant anarchy?"
|
| Here's an interesting, related link, that's very obviously
| coming from a certain perspective but still has things you can
| take [0].
|
| Here are some strategies I use for books:
|
| Go to the library and walk down a random shelf until a book
| calls to you. You can run your fingers down the spines and feel
| for the energy of the right book.
|
| The opposite (however, somewhat sideways, rather than top-down)
| is pulling books from the "someone just returned this" section.
| And the books suggested by librarians.
|
| I will also do full-text searches of my somewhat large library
| of ebooks, which gives equal weight to popular and unknown
| authors.
|
| Randomness, with uncommon items weighted somewhat equal to
| common ones, and direct recommendations that bypass algorithmic
| feeds seem to work somewhat well for me as general strategies.
|
| [0] https://www.epsilontheory.com/25-anti-mimetic-tactics-for-
| li...
| screye wrote:
| I have resorted to find individual curators of vibrant
| anarchy. Reddit and Youtube are the most common sources.
|
| RedLetterMedia helps me find weird movies without any
| mainstream appeal. r/NearProg, r/ListenToThis and r/progmetal
| are how I find weird experimental rock artists.
|
| For books, some subreddits has a 'I have finished book X,
| what should I read next?' thread. That's a good way to do
| Markov-Chain-esque random walk. Another is to simply rely on
| my favorite podcasters and bloggers. Books are a long
| commitment and hard to 'figure out' in a minute or an hour.
| So, I rarely resort to low quality and high coverage
| searchers like I do with music or TV media.
| jstgord wrote:
| Your ideas could potentially be encoded in a better
| ranking/recommender _algorithm_ ..
|
| ie. recommenders using something akin to page-rank
| could/should inject some random items so as to allow new
| content to bubble up and good new content to be voted up.
|
| It seems nature does something similar - copying DNA pretty
| accurately, yet allowing for some mutations to advance things
| and adapt to a changing environment.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I found it funny that in an article pushing for variation, used
| two video games examples(https://papersplea.se/ &
| https://obradinn.com/) from the same author
| cafard wrote:
| Sixty years ago, the TVs in most American households got three
| channels, and each channel spent eight or ten hours broadcasting
| its test pattern. There weren't that many radio stations. The
| entertainment/distraction available was vastly less than today.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
| https://twitter.com/a_m_mastroianni/status/15211330751991439...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245559, but we merged
| that thread hither)
| [deleted]
| omar_alt wrote:
| Growing up in the 80s it seemed like there was a whole host of
| serious music and films made for my parents whether it was Phil
| Collins, Luther Vandross, Out of Africa or MASH. There was a
| market back then whether it was considered less than high brow
| however that is no longer the case. I would go so far as to say
| if Steve Jobs was alive things might be slightly different but
| not much.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Isn't it somehow related to series being more and more popular in
| the last 20 years? Maybe people just like being in a comfortable
| place, seing the same stuff?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| While there may be a smaller number of musicians dominating the
| Top 100 or Top 40, less people listen to that music than ever
| because there are tons of other artists putting out good music.
| krapp wrote:
| Youtube, Spotify, TikTok, Soundcloud, etc. are far more
| relevant to pop culture, even if they don't bring in as much
| revenue.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _less people listen to that music than ever because there are
| tons of other artists putting out good music._
|
| You'd be surprised. Most people only listen to what's popular,
| same as always. It's just that what is popular is much more
| constrained.
| shannifin wrote:
| In his article [1] he mentions the Internet as part of a possible
| explanation in terms of it being easier for amateurs to create
| and distribute material.
|
| But I think the Internet also plays a huge part in the
| consolidation of fandom. Before the internet, the majority of us
| could really only share our opinions with those physically
| nearby, so there were less connections per each node. Enter the
| internet, now each node has 1000000x more connections, naturally
| pooling together the ranges of an opinion's influence. The
| spheres of influence expand while the overall number of spheres
| shrinks. Just a thought, anyway.
|
| [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-
| has-b...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's easier to distribute material. But it is not - at all -
| easier to _market and promote_ material. Especially not in a
| persistent and effective way.
|
| That's the real difference now. People can make near-
| professional movies on iPhones, musicians can make
| professional-quality music at home, but no amateur has access
| to the huge industrial PR, social, and trad ad networks that
| the major labels/studios can roll out to promote their
| projects.
| jstgord wrote:
| Could this effect also explain why a lot of seemingly truly
| original music came out in the 80s .. roughly coincident with a
| peak in wealth distribution in the middle class ?
|
| My reasoning : a post-war relatively wealthy middle class and
| free University education meant more time for things like
| attending political protests, tinkering with emerging
| electronics/computers, engineering projects and garage bands.
|
| We have wonderful flat screens now, much better comms .. and yet
| nothing seems fixable, were killing the planet with our carbon
| emissions and not many people seem concerned, and our best most
| energetic young minds are slaves to servicing their student debt.
| shaunxcode wrote:
| In situationist terminology - the spectacle is compounding upon
| itself towards oblivion. This is good! It makes it easier for
| people to see it for what it is.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| The population is getting older too.
|
| Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally
| impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's
| most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and
| 20.
|
| Same things for movies, franchises sell because there is a
| familiarity to it. Stuff that isn't franchise just doesn't sell.
| A possible exception would be biopics.
|
| I predict a huuuge amount of high budget biopic to integrate
| revenues from franchises.
|
| JFK, MLK, Reagan, Hendrix, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles,
| Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan...they will all get a biopic with
| a budget of no less than 175M a pop.
| paganel wrote:
| I'm in my early 40s, I've just discovered Kino [1], I think
| they're really damn great. I "discovered" Ornella Vanoni and
| Mina when I was in my mid 30s, me and my SO have formed a habit
| of listening to this Mina song [2] each New Year's Eve, at
| exactly midnight (it also helps our dog and cat focus on us and
| on the music inside the house, and not on the fireworks
| outside).
|
| Between 14 and 20 years of age I was listening to some cool
| music, too (it was that interesting period just after grunge
| and as brit-pop was taking off), but, to be honest, the lyrics
| from those songs and even the music itself don't speak to me
| that much anymore.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(band)
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcX5wopq3M
| redwall_hp wrote:
| > Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally
| impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's
| most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and
| 20.
|
| Nah. When I was a teenager, I was listening to classic rock and
| folk music. When I was in my mid 20s, I got into metal. Now I'm
| 30 and would absolutely give you a list of J-Pop songs
| competing for the title of "favorite song."
| photojosh wrote:
| > It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at
| age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain
| forever between 14 and 20.
|
| With all due respect, this sounds like a comment from someone
| who's not really into music.
|
| I did a quick check with a musical friend to see if he shared
| my initial reaction... "what's your favourite song?" resulted
| in "I have no idea how to answer that question. Maybe ask me my
| top 100 favourites?"
|
| I'm well over that age now, and I have a new "favourite song"
| every week or two. Easing into more free time as the kids get
| older and am using some of that to go see more live music from
| local bands.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I hope when I'm in my 30s and 40s and decades after I'm still
| finding and enjoying new music from times before I was born
| to times after my youth.
| brimble wrote:
| Approaching age 40. Most of my favorite songs are probably
| from the 60s and 70s (5-20 years before I was born), but I
| only heard most of them (the ones that are my favorites)
| after age 35. I like plenty of newer music, too. I discover
| great new-to-me stuff from many decades, including the
| current one, all the time. This seems pretty normal in my
| social circle, though few of us are _super_ into music.
|
| There aren't a ton of albums that I liked between the ages of
| 14 and 20 that I'd still defend as "good", though a handful
| are still nostalgia-listens for me. I had pretty shit taste
| in music then, really.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| It's a very "consumes music as a mass market product" vibe.
| My preferred genres have changed over and over, and since
| I've had a Spotify account since they came to the US, I can
| easily scroll back over playlists and see that. Hell, I
| started practicing _making_ music as a hobby at the age of
| 29.
|
| In the last decade alone (I'm 30), I went from primarily
| classic rock and folk music mixed with some movie soundtracks
| to metal to Eurobeat to J-Pop. My favorite song when I was 14
| was probably something by Feist or the Beatles, maybe
| something by Queen. Now it's definitely something from a
| J-Pop or Vocaloid artist. Somewhere between that I'd have
| said something by Franz Ferdinand or White Stripes (and to be
| fair, I do listen to them quite a bit).
| sssilver wrote:
| Exactly how I feel at 37.
| teg4n_ wrote:
| No it's not literally impossible to discover your favorite song
| when you are 35 or older. You just have to continue to seek out
| new music.
| mdoms wrote:
| What nonsense. I'm 37 and my favourite song changes all the
| time.
| syntheweave wrote:
| There is something I saw on YT a year or so ago from a guitar
| teacher who said that his students have changed over the past
| 15 years: they used to come in and say "I want to learn this
| song from my favorite band" - and now, overwhelmingly, when
| asked what they want to learn, they shrug and start scrolling
| through their phone to try to find an answer. They want to
| learn, _but not anything specifically._ And often when they
| have something, it could be the most random old thing, from any
| era.
|
| That is, the song catalogue has stopped being something that
| has turnover, it just keeps accumulating into a library of
| dusty shelves, and that makes it hard for young people to
| assert norms as in days past and tell everyone "this band that
| was marketed to my demographic is totally the best and nothing
| will ever beat them" - which is where a concept of "best song"
| is going to come from, because hardly anyone is trying to
| assign letter grades to their listening.
|
| Instead you'll see a more apocalyptic Fall-of-Rome tone in the
| comments of old hits: "I'm only 13 but I wish I were in the
| 80's, best decade for music nothing like today's crap". It's so
| common a sentiment as to be memetic and widely riffed upon.
|
| Something has definitely changed in the music business.
| rnd0 wrote:
| >It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at
| age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain
| forever between 14 and 20.
|
| I don't have a single favorite song, but the band Ghost is high
| in my personal rotation -and they didn't even make a record
| until I was 44.
|
| And I didn't discover most of my favorite bands until I was in
| my 20's.
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| I'm an avid music listener (in my 30s), and it'd be hard for me
| to name just 1 (or 10 or even 30) of my favorite songs. A
| couple of albums I keep in high regard came out in the last
| several years. Also, I seem to wear out music over time: you
| can only listen to Loveless or SAW 89-92 or Astral Weeks or
| Velvet Underground and Nico so many times. I know, yes, those
| albums are some of the best music made, but I don't find
| pleasure in re-listening them for the 100th time - I'd rather
| listen to something new.
|
| I probably took after my dad when it comes to music listening.
| He's in his 60s and still actively searching for and finding
| new favorites.
| anfilt wrote:
| Sounds very much like me. I like to keep listening too new
| music.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Ok devil's advocate. What's more original? Thor 3: Ragnarok? Or
| Jojo Rabbit? Both great films imo; both by Taika Waititi.
|
| The former features marvel's Thor, who's commercial af. But it
| goes to a new world, has a markedly different tone, humor,
| themes, and plot. The plot hits themes of humility and identity
| and the specifics of the ending were, imo, not very predictable.
|
| Jojo rabbit is set in WWII with all original characters with some
| great bits, but an overall plot that's fairly predictable.
|
| You could easily argue it's still Jojo rabbit, but is there
| anything obviously bad about how original Thor 3 is? I think no.
|
| And there have been lots of great movies in the past year even.
| Everything everywhere, Last Night in Soho, massive talent, etc.
|
| Edit: the formulaic rom coms and action movies and comedies were
| the bigger issue to me. A mildly novel setting, or perhaps, novel
| buddy cop duo, added far less interesting material than things
| complained about here.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Romcoms are the romantic equivalent of B-budget action movies.
|
| You know exactly how it goes, but that's the reason you enjoy
| it =)
| mr_tristan wrote:
| This sure seems to be what happens when the long tail runs into
| the paradox of choice.
|
| One thing I've noticed, it is now way easier to create content
| over this time period as well.
|
| I now have a camera that can record beautiful 8K video, I can
| produce high-quality music records, and I don't have to rent or
| hire anyone. I've got a CNC that can crank out perfect templates
| for my woodworking. But there are now millions of others who can
| (and are) doing the same thing.
|
| And thus, it's stupidly easy to find something new, but it's hard
| to find something new and consistently good. So we just gravitate
| to the proven because, ugh, our free time is valuable.
|
| My only sense is that the oligopoly will persist, and probably
| become even more focused. But the "1000 true fans" approach for
| small-time producers is still the best way forward. Don't even
| bother trying to compete with big-time media, just try to build
| strong connections, thus being a "trusted" choice.
| mjfl wrote:
| the consumer is to blame
| rurban wrote:
| As counterpoint we just experienced one of the most original
| movies ever, which made it to the top 3:
|
| https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3861218049/ (Everything
| Everywhere All at Once)
|
| On minimal budget and marketing
| insickness wrote:
| Not for nothing, Everything Everywhere All at Once was produced
| by the Russo brothers who directed Avengers Infinity Wars,
| Endgame and Captain America movies. Also Michelle Yeoh is a
| pretty huge star both here and in China. Just saying it's not
| exactly an indie film. But it was original, for sure.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Mid-price movies are the ones that have mostly gone extinct.
|
| We have the Disney-level Mega Movies with ONE BILLION DOLLAR
| budgets. These are the ones that are made by a committee of
| producers and executive producers and shareholders. They're too
| big to fail, so they'll be tested and re-tested and re-shot until
| they WILL make a profit. Currently they will also include a
| Chinese movie star and won't touch any subjects too sensitive for
| China, because multiple tens of percents of profit will be made
| in there.
|
| Then we have the Blumhouse[0] type 5-20 million dollar movies.
| They give a hard budget limit and won't pay the actors much -
| they'll get a share of the profits instead. They're cheap enough
| to not bankrupt the production company if it flops, but will make
| immense profits if they succeed. The Company won't usually affect
| the production much, giving the director free reign to do what
| they want.
|
| What's missing in today's world are the $10-$100M, movies. These
| have a big enough budget to not have to cut corners much, but
| still small enough to not draw the attention of The Executives
| who want their favourite things in the movie - letting the
| director enact their vision. The only mid-budget movie I can
| think of in the recent years is Michael Bay's Ambulance[1], shot
| with $40M.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumhouse_Productions [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulance_(film)
| cableshaft wrote:
| Everything Everywhere All At Once, currently in theaters, had a
| $25 million budget, and has made a respectable $38 million in
| the theater so far, enough that some articles are calling it a
| box office hit.
|
| Also in 2019 there was Knives Out, which had a budget of $40
| million and made $311 million in the box office.
|
| I agree with your overall point, just giving a couple more
| examples.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Until recently, Denis Villeneuve's movies were in this range
| as well:
|
| * Prisoners: US$ 46M
|
| * Sicario: US$ 30M
|
| * Arrival: US$ 47M
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Villeneuve#Reception
|
| His first three movies were <$7M. He went up market (>$160M)
| with _BR2049_ and _Dune_.
| hirundo wrote:
| These are natural examples of ecosystems evolving toward a pareto
| distribution after a punctuated equalibrium. Think of it as
| another example of the great winnowing of variations that
| followed the Cambrian explosion. The cultural explosions were the
| invention of books, radio, television, internet, etc. Those
| disrupted the prior pareto distributions, and it took time to
| reestablish them.
|
| It's a general feature of complex ecologies rather than a
| specialty of cultural or economic ecologies.
| paxys wrote:
| Sure if you look at box office numbers and the billboard hot 100
| you will see this picture, but that is really just telling you
| about older millennials and above. What about artists who post
| their music to SoundCloud or Bandcamp? What about all the short-
| form content on YouTube? What about true crime podcasts? What
| about big name production houses who skip theaters and go direct
| to streaming on Netflix or Apple TV? What about all the people
| whose primary form of content consumption isn't any of these but
| rather TikTok and Snapchat?
|
| The real conclusion IMO is that the methods of distributing "pop
| culture" have been turned on their head, and traditional media is
| now playing catch up. Nielsen numbers and Billboard charts and
| all similar metrics are now irrelevant to the conversation.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Actually Neilsen uses ultrasonic signals which many platforms,
| big and small, rush to support to satisfy their creators. At
| least that was my experience as a Neilsen household then SWE at
| a SAAS serving radio stations (including white-labeled
| streaming apps).
| kderbyma wrote:
| this to me is a symptom of greed. It's people not wanting to pay
| for others efforts (possibly because they are not promoted or
| showcased or hidden) but they expect it for their efforts.
| spideymans wrote:
| Chart-topping original music has also gone "extinct"[0]
|
| 0: https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/no-2022-hits-
| harr...
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| >How much does it dull our ambitions to watch 2021's The Matrix:
| Resurrections, where the most interesting scene is just Neo
| watching the original Matrix from 1999?
|
| Perceptions are subjective, but I don't know how anyone wouldn't
| consider the most interesting scene to be the one where Neo (and
| therefore the audience) is told point blank: "our beloved parent
| company Warner Bros. has decided to make a sequel to the
| trilogy."
|
| I'm surprised it wasn't quoted in TFA because it's an unusual
| fourth wall break that aligns with exactly the points the author
| is making about the inherent emptiness of endless franchises.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps we should introduce a "purge" that happens every 10 years
| or so, and replaces all the popular figures by new ones.
| danrocks wrote:
| Isn't that what the music industry does, already?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-03 23:00 UTC)