[HN Gopher] New numbers on music consumption
___________________________________________________________________
New numbers on music consumption
Author : jseliger
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-07-17 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tedgioia.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tedgioia.substack.com)
| Mixtape wrote:
| From a sales-only perspective, this article makes sense, but the
| very obvious influence of TikTok seems noticeably absent from the
| analysis.
|
| TikTok, by nature of its scale, has completely changed how the
| music industry works. If you want to prove this, check the top 40
| chart of your favorite music streaming service or listen to your
| local top 40 station for a bit. Both of these were originally
| designed to provide a good metric on what songs people enjoy
| listening to from beginning to end. However, they're now almost
| entirely populated with songs made popular by 30 seconds to a
| minute of their content rather than the entire work.
|
| TikTok has created a fundamental shift in the metrics by which
| people collectively evaluate music's popularity. Forty years ago,
| what was most "safe" for radio (in the sense that it was
| palatable enough for most people) was what got played. Now, the
| shareability of even a single segment of a song is its entry
| point into the feedback loop of exposure that creates viral hits.
|
| Whether this is a good or bad thing is honestly subjective (and
| likely polarizing to some) but the article's failure to recognize
| it feels significant. In a system where the extent to which
| people get bored of listening to a song in its entirety is no
| longer a concern, people are revisiting old releases and finding
| that they perform extremely well under the current metrics.
| That's why we have Kate Bush and Metallica in the top 40. Their
| songs performed well under the previous system before fading into
| irrelevance, and they just happen to perform well under this new
| system as well. Stranger Things may have given them the push they
| needed to re-enter the public conscience, but what followed was
| the same process that would have happened if their music was
| released, say, ten years ago rather than 40. Age itself is
| secondary when shareability is king.
|
| Personally, I'm of the belief that this will stabilize in the
| long term if short-form shareability remains the dominant metric
| of a song's popularity. In the same way that radio stations stop
| playing songs as people get bored of them, so too do older songs
| fade from popularity on TikTok as they begin to become tiresome
| to enough people. Combined with the fact that this happens at an
| extremely fast pace and that the amount of legacy pop music is
| finite, this means that TikTok users are bound to run out of
| sufficiently popular legacy content to use eventually.
| MrBlueIncognito wrote:
| The article may have an interesting premise, however the only
| statistics we are offered in support of the author's claim is two
| years' worth of data (2021 and 2022). What about the more long-
| term trends? We might be missing the big picture for short-term
| cyclical trends. Also, the data for 2022 is, without doubt,
| incomplete.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Is it just me, or are posts moaning about the quality of
| contemporary music not as good or original as old-school articles
| moaning about it?
| riebschlager wrote:
| For sure. Gimme some good ol' "Pop Punk isn't Actually Punk"
| articles. Now THAT was some great music culture criticism. Kids
| these days....
| wikitopian wrote:
| Every medium of expression has a finite band of creative
| potentialities which are pioneered and explored, then exhausted.
| Expecting new artists to achieve what the Rolling Stones achieved
| with their music is as asinine as expecting me to achieve as much
| as Lewis and Clark when I go on a hike.
|
| There are new media of creative expression to explore, if you
| know where to look. Not that originality for it's own sake is
| intrinsically good.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| One of the things that was most interesting to me was the linked
| Ringer article that shows the advancing age of leading stars in
| movies: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2022/6/27/23181232/old-
| acto...
|
| I think this is pretty fascinating, and I think points to what I
| call "The age of data optimization". That is, starting in the
| early 00s, pretty much all businesses everywhere started to have
| much more actionable data on consumer trends and preferences,
| primarily due to the Internet.
|
| This culture of "neverending analytic optimization" is by its
| very nature risk averse - these data algorithms don't deal that
| well with a completely "new" input, like a young, untrusted
| actor.
|
| So, instead, these algorithms are fundamentally biased towards
| "what worked before", meaning actors that were able to come of
| age before all this data analysis started. And to be clear, I'm
| not saying movie studios have a single algorithm that they run
| that says "pick me a leading actor". But major studios have _all_
| gotten much more "data driven" in general in the past 25 years',
| where before that time movie making was much more of an
| "artistic" and personality-driven affair.
| CSSer wrote:
| This seemingly applies to virtually everything now too. It
| makes me wonder how direct the connection is between this
| phenomenon and young people feeling like the system is rigged
| against them. I don't necessarily think it's new or unique to
| society but it does seem exacerbated because of this.
| m3047 wrote:
| I'm thinking Goodhart's Law:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Even arts and entertainment businesses require constant
| infusions of fresh talent
|
| Who cares about art and entertainment _businesses_? We care about
| artists and to some extent entertainers.
|
| > It seems impossible --after all, billions of dollars are spent
| every year by entertainment corporations in their quest for
| market dominance. Yet, despite this constant spending spree,
| almost every week brings a new sign of cultural stagnation.
|
| The author seems to conflate money expenditure with cultural
| activity, in line with the conflation of business and art.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| "The time is coming when no one will be ready to submit himself
| to the ennobling discipline of learning music," he wrote.
| "Everyone will have their ready made or ready pirated music in
| their cupboards." Something is irretrievably lost when we are no
| longer in the presence of bodies making music, Sousa said. "The
| nightingale's song is delightful because the nightingale herself
| gives it forth."
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/06/the-record-eff...
| baristavibes wrote:
| Has anyone thought of this in relation with age demographics?
|
| Declining birth rates in developed countries => shrinking share
| of younger people => most of the demand is created by older
| people with lower neuroplasticity => older music stars are more
| popular
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Perhaps then the best investment for music labels would be to
| fund research into drugs that increase neuroplasticity.
| t-3 wrote:
| > It seems impossible--after all, billions of dollars are spent
| every year by entertainment corporations in their quest for
| market dominance. Yet, despite this constant spending spree,
| almost every week brings a new sign of cultural stagnation.
|
| The author fundamentally misunderstands how business works, I
| think. Lots of money up for grabs in a highly competitive market
| equals hardcore conservatism from investors (the labels in this
| case). They will heavily bet on artists following a "winning
| formula", and buy up the independents that invent new winning
| formulas. You see the same exact behavior in every creative
| industry, because the money is relying on past performance to
| predict success.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Yup, not just the entertainment business.
|
| It takes a different kind of vision to predict things which are
| orthogonal to past performance.
|
| In so many areas where corporate control has been consolidated,
| there is more complete dominance of bureaucratic hierarchies
| that just happen to more systematically exclude those rare
| innovators and creatives who could occasionally punch through
| to earth-shaking effect. The allowance for true innovation is
| almost extinct. The difference is it's nearly universal now.
|
| People like Thos. Edison and Nikola Tesla wouldn't have a
| chance today, they already had it difficult in their time where
| the downward pressure was already palpable, and each came very
| close to not having a worldwide imact, just like everyone else.
| Keep in mind their productivity was actually decimated by going
| against the current like this, so their known milestones &
| breakthroughs are only the tip of the iceberg compared to what
| "could have been" in a more supportive cultural environment.
|
| And that was then.
|
| Even in places which pride themselves in non-traditional
| corporate behavior, the same anti-creative characteristics have
| become generally acceptable by comparative example, all up and
| down the entire chain of command. Especially among the money
| people, increased greed is the antithesis of increased
| innovation.
|
| If the only thing you want to do with money is make more of the
| same, that's legitimate especially if you're in debt or
| something, but that's not how you make more of new other things
| which could turn out to be more valuable than money.
|
| People in general have gradually settled for so much less
| innovation, in exchange for the very little financial
| improvement that might result without such a distraction.
|
| And creatives who would have had a (already slim) chance in
| previous decades are having none of it.
|
| Woz dropped out when it _started_ getting so bad you couldn 't
| deny it.
|
| Plus "star-making machinery" itself became so much more
| prominent and more like an insiders lottery. The establishment
| of a mechanism which can "make anyone a star" ended up being
| needed just to get recognition for the occasional jaw-dropping
| talent. But once that mechanism is in place, there's almost no
| talent needed after that.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Exactly right. Everything is boring because reliable is boring.
| A lot of what we see output by major cultural businesses is
| basically algorithmic:
|
| We need a well-known actor (so one of maybe 50), supported by
| some other known actors (several of a few hundred), in a story
| that's a continuation (so a dozen or so franchises), where he
| beats up a bad guy or two, doesn't die, and doesn't offend
| anyone. We'll add explosions, magical creatures, and physically
| impossible stunts, because people like that. We'll fill it up
| with either well known tropes or ironic spoofs of such for a
| bit of variety.
|
| Songs are similar. Make sure the chorus is good, repeat it a
| few times, don't make people wait too long before the memorable
| bit, add a featuring artist who is going to get their own
| release soon.
|
| What we saw in the past was people would try something new, and
| quite a lot of those things would crash and burn, but now and
| again you got a really great hit.
|
| Part of why I don't consume much mass culture is I see this
| algo all the time. It's a bit like a foodie who's seen all the
| ingredients and all the ways to cook them: you stop thinking
| this new dish is new, and you just want to appreciate a well-
| made thing, which is also something that fits in this formula,
| but doesn't require constant innovation, and crucially doesn't
| require constant consumption.
|
| Explore/exploit tends to exploit when there's a lot of money on
| the line. Same reason drugs are invented by little companies
| that get bought by the big ones.
| art4ur wrote:
| We're no longer only fed music by the top 40. That's not a bad
| thing. We're in a musical renaissance.
| matwood wrote:
| We're in a _content_ renaissance. We have more access to more
| content at completely unsustainable prices.
| jSully24 wrote:
| If you're looking to discover some up and coming bands from
| across many genres check out https://mileofmusic.com/ a crazy
| good festival in northern WI (Appleton). Free outside of beer,
| food, and the merch you pick up to support these bands. They have
| a channel on Spotify of each year's 150 artists, all doing
| strictly original music. (I'm one of "older ones")
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Meh. What we are seeing is the fall of "the" mass market.
| Starting with Elvis, and going nuclear with Arnie, there were
| literal billions of dollars poured into promoting particular star
| actors / singers / entertainers. We can all name them because we
| all grew up with newspapers radio TV and cinema pouring them into
| our brains. These stars were _acceptable_. Sometimes brilliant,
| sometimes mediocre, but they could appeal to at least one or two
| standard deviations of paying customers. They were the tomato and
| cheese pizzas of the global entertainment industry. And we ate
| them in billions of tiny portions, even globally. The way it
| works is if the film succeeds in making its money back more money
| goes to that star to promote the next film.
|
| Then something like the internet / youtube / social media
| happens.
|
| Suddenly I can get spaghetti bolognese or fish and chips and
| someone else can go for a light omelette. And the money still
| works the same way - but on much smaller scales. Spag bol will
| keep growing, never reaching the heights of previous generations
| but plenty good enough.
|
| But the pizza distribution network still exists. It just has no
| more pizza - every young star is really spag bol or omelette- the
| venn diagram of who previously had tasted pizza will now have two
| smaller circles - spag and omelette. And it's not worth throwing
| pizza levels of distribution money at either spag or omelette.
|
| So the money has to keep throwing it at the aging pizza.
|
| One day even the pizza will retire or die and then we will look
| back on a time when everyone had seen one movie of tv show.
| dieselgate wrote:
| The author has some great points here and it's interesting to see
| parallels drawn between both music and movie/film/streaming
| genres. I was a radio dj in college and the only real rule (aside
| from legal stuff etc) was we could play an artist only once per
| quarter - the result for me was just playing the newest music
| that was coming into the studio. It's quite appropriate imo to
| identify music streaming as kind of a common denominator for
| music age - people just play what they're familiar with. I love
| music and a big big part of this is the discovery process; the
| radio is great for discovery but it's ephemeral - and a streaming
| or listening service such as spotify is a great way to expand on
| those leads. No firm opinions here, it just seems like more
| people listening more to older music makes sense and is kind of a
| weighted average. The "moving picture" medium is a different
| thing, maybe..
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Trump and Biden will be 81 and 78 respectively if they choose to
| run again in 2024 (and assuming they are alive to do so). The
| average age of congress is the oldest it has ever been. The
| wealth disparity between those over 54 compared to those under is
| the highest it has ever been.
|
| This fact pattern is visible in many places.
| hedora wrote:
| The data is based on number of tracks streamed.
|
| Are the bourgeois over-54s paying plebs to watch Harrison Ford
| movies and listen to crappy music now?
|
| Apparently, my misunderstanding of TikTok is much deeper than I
| previously imagined.
| mmaunder wrote:
| While the methodology may be flawed, the point remains that we're
| in an epidemic of artistic risk mitigation, where pre-sold
| franchises (sequels, reboots and remakes) combined with name
| brand artists are gobbling up an inordinate amount of attention
| that could be fueling new art and artists.
| coldpie wrote:
| Maybe the big studios are, though I feel like I've been hearing
| this complaint for my entire life. But there is so, so, so (so)
| much creativity happening in spaces like YouTube, Instagram,
| TikTok, Discord, etc. Don't write that off just because it's
| not coming to your local theatre.
| hedora wrote:
| Honestly, the crazy wacky internet stuff tours aggressively
| (how else can they get paid?), and regularly does make it to
| the local theater (or at least local bar).
|
| The article would have us write off anything that has fewer
| than a 2-day stint at a local sports arena.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Not in narrative.
| somecommit wrote:
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-05-22
| __s wrote:
| A bit out of place: their complaint is asserting teens are
| listening to oldies
| kibwen wrote:
| I don't see teens mentioned in the article anywhere. If
| anything, teens are probably underrepresented in the data due
| to greater willingness to use non-traditional outlets.
| KevinGlass wrote:
| h2odragon wrote:
| Also "The media kids enjoy today is bad for their health." As
| true for TikTok seizures and speech impediments as it was for
| Judas Priest inspired suicides and D&D Satanism.
| oblak wrote:
| This is the second time this guy's blog has been featured here in
| a week. His articles are borderline trolling to for old guys. I
| am not even young myself.
|
| "They don't make anything new :(". No, bruh. It's you
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I'm a younger guy, but the sentiment of the article does ring
| true to me. There is an overwhelming amount of regurgitation,
| at least within the realm of popular culture.
| oblak wrote:
| Time to put your big boy pants and see the _real_ world. Ta
| ta taaa.
|
| It's pop culture. Regurgitation is the very essence of it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I have a theory around this.
|
| Short version: Music is no longer the center of popular culture.
|
| Longer version: the 60s/70s/80s saw a technical revolution in
| producing and distributing music. Each year, new and even more
| amazing things were possible, and a steady stream of geniuses
| came in and produced groundbreaking masterpieces using the new
| tech. It changed the world, and the world loved it.
|
| But now, that's all pretty much done, and the exciting things are
| happening elsewhere.
|
| You can see similar cycles earlier in history when novels or
| films were where new amazing things constantly captured the
| world's imagination.
|
| What's the current "thing"? Computer games, internet stuff, maybe
| streaming TV.
| mongol wrote:
| Short clips as TikTok
| winternett wrote:
| Short clips have trivialized the value of music. If you go on
| TikTok, the same songs rotate very very frequently because
| TikTok pre-designates what trends. Only a handful of music
| artists are added at a time to the cue, and everything else
| (the independent (and often far more
| desirable/creative/undiscovered music) often languishes with
| little to no views in virtual storage there. TikTok is a
| smokescreen for major music label influence based on my
| observation, and boy is it tediously repetitive, even when
| you click the "I don't want to see this again" button.
| est31 wrote:
| Which ironically contain music. Often it's TikTok specific
| remixes of famous older songs. But does that mean that
| culture still revolves around music?
| seydor wrote:
| The current "thing" (which is gaming/virtual) contains
| cinema/tv and music, but does not replace them, in the same way
| that cinema did not kill music.
|
| The current "theme" however, is attention deficit. Artists
| dread the skip button or the scroll down and this has an effect
| in the type of music they make. If the Pink Floyd were
| releasing today, Shine On would not be 9 parts but 2 , a drum
| machine would roll after a few seconds, and white noise would
| be added to fill in the spectrum. It's a race for ears more
| than a demand to be heard
| dougmwne wrote:
| Vr. AI assisted art.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I consider the use of auto-tune in Cher's "Believe"(1998) the
| very last example of technological innovation in music.
| MrBlueIncognito wrote:
| I don't understand what is so surprising about this. The world
| has been producing high-quality music for decades. The catalog of
| old music will always grow in size relative to the catalog of new
| music. Were we expecting the dominance of old music to decline
| for no reason?
| seydor wrote:
| you could have said the same in the 40s , 50s , 60s etc. A lot
| of new music was made _in reaction_ to what was considered very
| formulaic old music.
| winternett wrote:
| People mostly play old and familiar content likely because it's
| totally exhausting now to find favorable new content.
|
| Too many of my older favorite artists like Tracy Chapman don't
| even release music any more because of the lack of reward and
| respect involved in releasing music now, it's disheartening to
| post your hard work and not get any notable views, especially
| when they're a grammy winner. Even notable musicians from the
| past don't get views now, not because the music isn't good,
| they don't get views because often the music isn't "TikTok Clip
| Worthy".
|
| If TikTok only had a tool to scroll through songs (music
| videos), with a much better method of preventing spam, playing
| everything uploaded fairly, and that was better at preventing
| repetitive plays, that's likely what would make new music
| discovery far far easier for everyone.
| svantana wrote:
| This is it. Music production technology made incredible strides
| from 1960-1990, as well as new ideas around production that the
| new equipment enabled. Thus, in that period, pop music sounded
| "old" very quickly. This all culminated with a computer-driven
| "we can do anything" style in the late 90's, where people like
| BT made awful hi-tech productions. Now, with hindsight, we see
| that 40-year old albums like Thriller still sound amazing,
| there simply is no new tech that can improve it.
| ghaff wrote:
| While I personally don't much care for much new music I hear,
| I'm hesitant to chalk it up to music being worse rather than
| I'm somewhat set in my preferences. That said, pre-COVID I
| had definitely reached the point where I had never heard of
| the bands playing trade show parties and the like and, when I
| did hear them, my impression was somewhere between meh and
| it's noise.
| svantana wrote:
| Hold up, I certainly didn't mean to imply that music has
| gotten worse - only that it stopped getting better (from a
| purely sonic perspective). There's lots of great new music
| coming out, but a lot of it has a retro sound anyway.
| [deleted]
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| For me, the thing that seems to be missing from modern music is
| passion. Pop music isn't about art its about sales, it does not
| want to say anything it just wants to party. Where are the songs
| that say something and touch you? Where are the folks that can
| even sing without digital processing?
|
| I think modern tools also have an effect on how we produce music
| - there is lots of software and anyone can use it but everyone
| plays in the same playground to do it. Maybe we rely on too much
| automation, too many reach for the same plugins.
| hedora wrote:
| You might like The Mountain Goats, or even the podcast "I Only
| Listen to the Mountain Goats" where they talk about the story
| behind the lyrics, and how they used to record the vocals on a
| half-busted 80's boombox mic.
|
| I think they're reasonably popular. One of the local newspapers
| recenlty ran a cover story about their new album. Anyway, they
| tick all your boxes.
|
| For something amazing that ticks none of your boxes, you could
| check out Igorrr.
|
| Lindsey Stirling, Diablo Swing Orchestra and Sumo Cyco are in
| between those extremes. Those bands are all very different from
| each other, and mostly from automatic recommendations.
| [deleted]
| jeroenhd wrote:
| How silly: using last century's centralised, radio-based,
| publisher-controlled popularity index to measure anything after
| the widespread adoption of the internet. Nobody cares about the
| top 100 anymore because there are too many possible source to run
| into any songs that'll get listened to enough to form a generic
| top 100.
|
| Music has both specialised and generified over the years. The
| "pop" numbers are all the same, as they have been for the last 70
| or 80 years now. Pop music isn't produced out of a desire to make
| art, it's produced to sell as many copies to as many people in as
| many countries as possible. Engineered lyrics are exchanged
| between agencies and used and reused until an artist makes a
| breakthrough. It's brute forcing culture to make a profit.
|
| That's not a recent thing either. Listen to older songs and
| you'll find that a lot of it is safe, generic, uninteresting
| stuff, even from the big bands. We've filtered down about 100
| years of music to the stuff that's considered good, but back in
| the day there was a lot of crap that was in the top of the charts
| for a single year and then disappeared.
|
| Today, we have a choice. For pennies we can listen to any type of
| music by bands we've never heard of all day long. Good luck
| finding a Mongolian throat singing metal band in 1980 if that's
| the music you're interested in. Good luck finding anything made
| by someone who's in it for the art if you're in a small town with
| a small record shop before the internet came along.
|
| The top 100 is no longer centralised by publishers advertising to
| radio stations. They're still trying, desperately even, to keep
| this business model going, but by these measurements, it's just
| not working. You can say that "people don't know how to make
| music anymore" but you'll have to back this up with actual
| statistics, not some useless measurement of corporately
| engineered preferences. Count the total amount of songs you can
| get your hands on instead. I wouldn't be surprised to find that
| more music gets added to Spotify in a month than got made
| available in an 80s record store over an entire year!
|
| And you know what? I don't see the problem with liking older
| music. We've got almost a century of crisply recorded music
| available to us right now. You can find enough music to develop
| and expand your musical preference for a lifetime even if no new
| music gets published ever again. People will always make music
| and these days that involves more remixing and more derived work,
| not because we don't know how to do it, but because we have the
| tools available to us.
| plaguepilled wrote:
| The "new" numbers? This is new? Wat?
|
| Yes, many people would probably like a little more experimental
| music in the public sphere, no, we probably won't get that, but
| also this is sort of established knowledge. It would have been
| nice if the author spent less time talking about the trend and
| more time on their suggested next steps. Or, doing better data
| analysis than 'the number of times "old" is in movie titles went
| up'.
|
| Sooking about a supposed societal collapse correlated with bad
| music is annoying, questionable in a statistical sense, and
| unhelpful in a practical sense.
| causality0 wrote:
| This article is making a lot of assumptions that I'm not sure are
| correct. For example, it claims older music and older movie
| franchises are gaining in popularity for the same pervasive
| cultural reason. That's an assumption, especially because he only
| mentioned two categories of artistic endeavor. What about others?
| Old books vs new books? Old video games vs new video games?
| Painting, sculpture, architecture?
|
| I can't point to numbers that say he's wrong, but for my whole
| life I have never felt like I had access to a smaller variety of
| media than I had before. It's just not on billboards. It's more
| individualistic. None of my friends read the same books or listen
| to the same bands as each other.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. We probably know some of the reasons action movie
| franchises (in particular) are big. Budgets have gotten huge
| and predictable effects-laden action franchises are very
| important for the international market and theater goers
| apparently flock to them in the US as well. The good news is
| there's lots of choice if that's not your thing.
| epups wrote:
| This graph is hilarious:
| https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...
|
| The putative effect is not statistically distinguishable, as
| observed by the fat overlapping confidence intervals. And the
| word "old" growing in prominence in movie titles is a very weird,
| unreliable proxy for the effect at hand. The rest of the article
| is similar drivel.
| jandrese wrote:
| The chart is measuring an effect way down in the noise. 0.3% is
| the top of the chart!
| Closi wrote:
| This looked odd to me too - and suspiciously like a p-hack.
|
| Besides - if the grey shaded area is where we are supposed to
| believe the 'actual' number should fall, we actually know the
| 'actual' numbers (the dots) and 60% of the datapoints fall
| outside of the shaded area, so this seems like total nonsense
| to me (presumably 95% of the points should sit inside this
| area?).
|
| On top of that - if you added the actual numbers to this graph
| (which I expect are 1-4 films a year) only a handful of
| releases can completely skew the data.
|
| And then even if you ignore the above, the whole premise titles
| such as 'old school', 'no country for old men' and 'the 40 year
| old virgin' are picked because of a trend towards 'old stuff'
| isn't in any way backed up by either data or common sense when
| thinking about the movie titles.
|
| When you get a graph like this which has such basic failures in
| stats and common sense, it does make you question the data and
| rigor behind the rest of the article.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Ha yeah you've got to love a graph that looks like random noise
| until you throw a fancy looking R trend line on it. Most of the
| data points are outside the confidence interval!
| gwern wrote:
| Irrelevant. The confidence interval is for the uncertainty of
| a parameter, the overall mean/trend: if most of your points
| fell inside it, that would not be good but extremely bad (you
| have _that_ much imprecision that your estimate of the
| overall mean could be anywhere inside the range of
| observations?). Ideally, your CI would be so narrow that ~0
| data points fell within it. (An example: you take a
| population census of adult heights and find the mean height
| is 5 '7 +- 0.001 inches, say. Very few people will fall
| within that CI. But that's because it's such a good precise
| CI due to so much data, not because it's a bad CI.)
|
| You seem to be thinking of a _predictive_ interval
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_interval), which,
| however, is not what is being plotted here.
| matt123456789 wrote:
| Notice also that we are looking at a "minimum 1k" observations,
| and the y-axis is labeled in increments of one-one thousandth
| starting at zero, so really it's "1", "2", "3", etc. The
| observed fluctuation may be attributable to removing the
| components of the top-1k which were not movies (reducing the
| size of the denominator).
|
| I don't know if I would go so far as to call the rest of the
| article drivel, though. There are some pretty interesting
| points made elsewhere, especially the average age of actor
| plot.
| carapace wrote:
| "Music consumption" is an ugly turn of phrase.
|
| The music industry execs are the ones hurting here. The music
| industry has done fuck all for music and culture for decades. Now
| they have painted themselves into a corner with their paint-by-
| numbers crap and can't even out-compete the pop/commercial stuff
| from just a few decades ago.
|
| _Culture_ is innovating just fine, all over the world. Anyone
| with talent and heart can gain a following large enough to
| support them. You just can 't package culture up and sell it in a
| mass market anymore.
| [deleted]
| winternett wrote:
| many people have been innovating the hell out of music... I also
| work hard to innovate, You just rarely ever see them and I on the
| Internet, because there is a paywall around independent music...
| Not just for listeners, it's there for artists as well.
| Independent musicians now are required to pay the same
| promotional rates as everyone else for social media boosting,
| requiring even unprofitable musicians to pay the same rates as
| major artists to promote their music online.
|
| The issue here seems like the results of the stranglehold that
| big interests has had on social media and music outlet (Spotify,
| YouTube, Apple Music) promotion for years. Major artists now have
| views in the millions showing on many of their YouTube videos,
| but most independent labels (like mine) struggle to get past
| 1,000 and even 100 views every day for new releases because of
| the new promotional economy. This is because platforms sit back
| and do nothing for independent musicians promotion-wise. They've
| created systems where payola is literally the glass wall to being
| ever heard to musicians and bands... You can't find and see music
| now unless you already know about the artists, and artists can't
| reach listeners unless they pay to boos visibility on each social
| post they make (at a dramatic financial loss compared to the
| income the streams make).
|
| Many labels have been innovating the hell out of stagnant-growth
| music genres for years... But it's in their interest of what
| little profit is made for dominant music companies to carefully
| limit the exposure of that new music to dedicated listeners in
| order to reduce the threat to their shrinking (but often "first
| in line to the feeding table" position). Big artists have always
| paid for promotion to an extent, but being featured is so costly,
| many big artists are doing controversial and embarrassing things
| on social media just to lower their overall promo costs by
| staying viral in the news. The entire music industry regularly
| suffers from the scent of desperation now, because everyone needs
| to pay to be under the spotlight, while the entities that make
| the most money have nothing to do with creating and supporting
| the music or even the industry ultimately... Money is being
| siphoned out of the music economy (and never reinvested back into
| it) regularly.
|
| Many "potential hit" musicians work day jobs and do other things
| for money to supplement their art, that ritually keeps them from
| innovating as much as they used to when a hit album would
| normally provide a better life... Now kids being "signed" off of
| a TikTok viral song literally and totally get ripped off when
| they are discovered, and likely paid below 10% of the money their
| song generates overall for use... Back in the day it was TLC
| getting ripped off, now it's every artist in a way, even the
| prominent ones, that are making fractions off of the real money
| that their music generates, while platforms like TikTok and
| Instagram post profits in the Billions year after year. The stats
| just aren't right, too many artists are lying about their success
| (earnings), and the music that makes it to your ears is carefully
| restricted and controlled unless artists pay a lot of money to
| promote their work.
|
| The problems with music industry success and innovation have
| festered since Social Media started charging for post
| promotion... If you want to hear innovative music, you have to
| dig deep and go through a lot of not so great stuff to find the
| real artists making music. I search for, collect, and share
| undiscovered (and under promoted) music from artists I find
| exceptional all the time, because I can't enjoy life without
| exceptional music around me.
|
| The best stuff these days have views under 10-20k on YouTube if
| you ask me. Our monthly listeners have sat under 50... (Not
| 50k... F*ckin 50) listeners for over 4 years now... The entry
| point for promoting on Spotify charges artists a minimum of $250,
| and that's just for one platform of many that an artist needs to
| promote for a chance to be heard (with little money returned even
| if it works).
|
| We only have had under about ~400 subscribers on YouTube for over
| 10 years, these numbers are crazy considering how long and hard
| we've worked on our music over that time... While a lot of people
| would say that may reflect the quality of music, literally on
| YouTube you know damn well that even fart reaction videos make it
| regularly into the 1 Million view +categories on YouTube all the
| time, something is deeply broken. Independent music is being
| crushed by the Major Industry... Has not and will not stop ppl
| like me though.
|
| For proper context, our music and collection of tunes is at
| RuffAndTuffRecordings.Com
|
| (Sorry if this looks like an angry rant, I'm not angry and/or
| defeated, it's just a result of being overworked and underpaid
| for ages)
| hedora wrote:
| Your landing page could use work. It's a bunch of links to
| services I don't pay for, and the selections page includes
| Drake and Wu Tang Clan. I thought they were doing OK? They're
| not you, right?
|
| http://www.ruffandtuffrecordings.com/SELECTIONS
|
| Anyway, it took me over a minute and three page loads to
| extract the strings "soopadaark" and "winterman" from your
| website.
|
| Are those the only two bands?
|
| Their names should be in larger print than everything else.
| They are under 10 keystrokes and work universally.
|
| Also, maybe embed a video or album preview widget, and de-
| emphasize the kitchen sink of spelled out link URLs?
|
| The album art could be bigger too. (Most recent release from
| each band.) Presumably the artwork conveys social cues about
| the genre of music, and you already paid for it. It probably
| conveys a lot more information than landing text could.
|
| If you do/did live performances, link to them.
|
| Your tidal metadata could also use work. There is no band
| picture, and tracks with matching album covers are presented as
| individual singles instead of EPs. You've already grouped the
| music. Let me play the group with one tap!
|
| Winterman is on SoundCloud with zero tracks. Soopadaark is not
| on SoundCloud. Neither have any tracks on Amazon's free tier.
| (Not sure how much publishing in those places costs, but
| putting a song or two up is unlikely to cannibalize sales of
| the rest.)
|
| Good luck! Will give you a listen in a bit.
| winternett wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| I am working on a site redesign, last round was in 2017...
| Social Media has consumed tons of my time and efforts outside
| of working in IT to pay for real living, but the music always
| comes first...
|
| I really appreciate you commenting, I've produced about 100
| songs under those names on top of making the videos and
| funding/creating everything else... There are 2 other
| artists, Moving East and Dubvendor as well...
|
| Gaining proper visibility and feedback after all the hard
| work means everything for musicians and creators like us.
|
| Thanks again, would be interested to hear what you think
| about the music.
| winternett wrote:
| Here are the correct Soundcloud links (Account squatters are
| a constant problem on social media.. hah)
|
| https://soundcloud.com/ruffandtuffrecordings
|
| https://soundcloud.com/winterman
|
| The curated music (selections) is music I find online that
| matches our vibes or inspires our work. Many of the artists
| there are widely unknown, some are popular, I don't
| discriminate too much... I like to focus on visual music as
| we make music for film projects primarily.
| [deleted]
| snet0 wrote:
| This might be entirely missing the point, but doesn't simply the
| production of new music, assuming it has any listeners at all,
| dilute the listenership of old music?
|
| If there's new music released in year N, and it has _some_ share
| of the listenership, all music from 0- >N-1 will have decreased
| listenership. Right?
| TekMol wrote:
| This article made me type "most popular albums 2022" into Google.
|
| Funny: When you click on the albums on the top of the page, there
| always is a YouTube link that brings you to music.youtube.com
| where you can listen to the whole album without any fuzz.
|
| Why would anyond still buy this music if you can listen to it for
| free?
|
| So far, I did not like any of the albums though...
| [deleted]
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| How much of this is due to some fundamental cultural decline, and
| how much is due to the fact that, starting relatively recently,
| old music stopped being something that you had to seek out and
| obtain, and instead became something that's provided almost
| effortlessly via vast archives and recommendation engines?
|
| There is an enormous amount of old music out there, and while
| only a small percentage is really good, that still amounts to an
| enormous amount of non-new good music that competes with new
| music.
| fullshark wrote:
| Not even sure it's decline so much as cultural fragmentation.
| The head pop culture creations (hollywood movies and the top
| streaming songs) are things with universal awareness (so things
| that came of age before the internet and mass media was created
| by a few brokers). The tail has been growing absurdly. Go ask a
| teenager what they like to watch or listen to, they'll probably
| mention some youtube/tiktok streamers you've never heard of,
| and have a tiny cultural footprint.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| I would posit that the "numbers on music consumption" are
| incorrect, and that Billboard, iTunes, Spotify, radio, television
| etc have no connection with "the whole creative culture". They
| are by their very construct focused on "old songs" and an old way
| of thinking about art. I am a musician and deeply grounded in
| virtually every genre of music. Not a day goes by that I am not
| blown away at some no-name musician on YouTube or other medium -
| at how they have extended the whole performance capability of
| their instrument(s) and of the creative process itself. Keep
| music LIVE!!
| hedora wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Tidal's recommendations. It somehow thought
| that I'd like Rush a few days ago (not wrong) and started
| playing popular 70's music. My initial reaction was "I didn't
| even know that it could do that!"
|
| Usually, it's people that are one step past YouTube track, and
| actually have an album out.
| rapht wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. I may add one thing though: it's probable
| that it is not _only_ measurement bias for a simple reason:
| demographics. The generations that currently are the most
| numerous and have the highest purchasing power are baby-boomers
| and gen-Xers. That same generation witnessed the birth of pop-
| rock music as we know it and was the first to consume music en-
| masse. To a certain extent, it 's no wonder that those 'old'
| (i.e. 60s-80s) recordings are those that get the most listened
| to. This is of course also true for movies and actors, for the
| very same reason: taste is widely known to be mostly formed by
| the time you're 25.
| zuminator wrote:
| Traditional top music charts didn't exclusively show "music" per
| se. They would list comedy and spoken word albums as well if they
| sold enough to be on the main chart. Music was just the lion's
| share of prerecorded auditory entertainment.
|
| Fast forward to today and the situation has changed. Instead of
| listening to traditional radio, a person can get audiovisual
| stimulation from TikTok. TikTok allows people to remix the sound
| and/or visual component from other people's clips into your own.
| So there can be thousands of people making TikTok content from
| the same exact music clip. But, as before, it's not necessarily
| "music" that counts. People will remix audio from movies, old
| cartoons, comedy bits, random spoken excerpts, non-charting
| independent music, etc. However, unlike Richard Pryor comedy
| albums, these little clips aren't showing up on Gioia's
| traditional chart sources. Is prerecorded auditory entertainment
| getting less creative or is it just less bounded by what we
| traditionally think of as music?
|
| Frankly I doubt lack of creativity is even a problem. Quite the
| opposite. The very fact that old stuff is still popular shows
| that people don't care if music is "creative" or not. If the
| traditional mainstream music industry is searching for the next
| big thing to revive sales, an exciting new genre, I don't think
| it's going to happen. More "creative" buggy whips isn't the
| issue.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| "AAA" gaming is also headed in a bad, but different, direction.
| Most money now comes from microtransactions, and the temptation
| to sell what amounts to an unregulated slot machine with a game
| attached will be hard to resist for most publishers.
| sumitviii wrote:
| In fact, the current CEO of Unity (One of the most popular game
| engine) said that anyone who's not baking monetization into
| their games right from the start is "f*king idiot".
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| Besides entertainment cooperations and tech algorithms putting
| newer artists at a disadvantage, I reckon demographics also plays
| a part. Post WW2 generation has established cultural preferences.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The haircut known as "The Mullet" is making a comeback. This is
| all you need to know about a culture that is out of ideas and is
| desperately looking backwards for anything that isn't today, but
| is too timid and soaked in irony to sincerely attempt something
| novel. Something real.
|
| I don't know but I think something broke during the financial
| crisis that hasn't mended yet and it has led to stagnation.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| A few months ago, I posted a comment on an idea that I sent in to
| Apple[0].
|
| I also mentioned how pessimistic I was, that anything like it
| would happen, because, even if they did, they'd poison it with
| commercialism, and wreck it.
|
| It's like when a favorite local food treat is brought out by a
| major conglomeration. Everyone is thrilled, because their local
| fave will now be going national.
|
| Except that the conglomerate "waters down" the treat. They may do
| some stuff to help with preservation and transport, but the stuff
| that kills the product, is the "taste adjustment." Maybe they
| reduce the spiciness, or substitute a cheaper ingredient, or one
| supplied by a crony company.
|
| Soon, absolutely no one likes it; including the folks that
| invented it, and the product dies.
|
| I see that happening in many creative industries.
|
| It's also happening in the tech industry. As megacorps borg
| smaller companies, they start bowdlerizing the work.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30996691
| [deleted]
| esarbe wrote:
| How about getting rid of these ridiculously long copyright terms
| so that people can actually reinterpret and remix and reinvent
| the cultural artifacts of their youth?
|
| Isn't it kinda obvious that these copyright terms - tailored to
| suit corporations almost exclusively - are like a straitjacket in
| terms of creativity? All human cultural work always built up on
| what came before. We are - as the saying goes - standing on the
| shoulders of giants. But since about one generations, the giants
| have started to refuse to let go and don't let us climb on top
| anymore.
|
| So, yeah. When you prevent the old giants from dying and stop
| their corpses from becoming fertilizer for new ideas and
| approaches, that's just what you get; a stale 'creative'
| industry, ever regurgitating the same ideas without real
| innovation and experimentation.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Look up Rick Beato + spotify* on youtube.
|
| People are making crappy music.
|
| You can't really blame copyright for lack of talent, marketing,
| and lack of taste.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I agree with you on copyrights in general, but I'm not sure
| that's the issue here.
|
| 1. Movies and their sequels/prequels: If anything, copyright
| should make it easier to make NEW stuff. But while there's lots
| of interesting movies being made (check Youtube and tiktok and
| vimeo etc, and even the mainstream streaming services which
| have tremendous long tail of weird content!), as far as
| _cinemas_ specifically go - that 's less and less where we
| watch our video entertainment, attention span is lower and
| lower, and people are choosing safe choices with their limited
| money and time, so cinema-oriented companies are making
| tremendously expensive visually impressive safe content. I can
| watch experimental interesting stuff at home. I go to cinema at
| cinema prices for a safe movie that has astonishing special
| effects that I cannot feasibly watch at home. It's an outdated
| medium, but that doesn't mean art itself is dead - it just
| moved to new forms.
|
| 2. Music may well be a discoverability problem. There's a
| RIDICULOUS amount of new stuff being made. Experimental and
| traditional, interesting and boring, in all shapes and formats
| and kinds. Go to reddit and see the amount of cool stuff people
| make at home. But it's also positively overwhelming... whereas
| I know I like Sultans of Swing and will always like Sultans of
| Swing :). And we have to consider who is the paying audience
| and how they pay - is the cool stuff teenagers and youngsters
| watch and listen to captured through traditional channels? Cool
| new stuff has always been shared and bootlegged.
|
| So I think cool innovative art is being made all the time, more
| than ever in fact; but not necessarily much or all of it is
| being consumed and importantly tracked at mainstream level. And
| that may be OK and normal. The article is looking at outdated
| art format/consumption, and noting that they are showing
| outdated content. It may be more tautologically true than an
| enlightening/warning sign.
| newsclues wrote:
| Music discovery is my number 1 problem with finding new music
| because computers made the barrier to entry so low there is
| now a lot of recorded crap.
|
| Lots of the discovery algorithms seem to be paywalled, which
| I don't want to do, I want to find good music for free and
| CHOOSE to support artists.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| If music discovery is your number 1 music problem, why
| won't you pay for it?
| ghaff wrote:
| Music discovery/recommendation and really
| discovery/recommendation more broadly are just really
| hard problems. I know someone who gave a number of talks
| about the difficulty maybe 15 years ago (I think at SXSW
| among other places). [1] And it really hasn't gotten any
| better.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2009/mar/17/sxswi-
| reco...
| netr0ute wrote:
| How does software discovery seem to always be free, but
| music gets special treatment?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I don't think it is. Or at least not effectively. When I
| need a utility or have a requirement, I struggle mightily
| to find reliable software I can trust to fulfill that
| purpose. A lot of signals that would've worked 10 years
| ago don't anymore. Paying for software, which would be my
| preference, in no way guarantees that it will fit
| purpose, won't install Malware, Won't abuse my trust or
| won't be handicapped in some way. Search will lead me to
| slightly scammy software, and so increasingly will SEO-ed
| paid reviews on websites and even forums. I live the
| trustless Web and I hate it :-D
|
| So for me at least, easy seamless software discovery is
| completely lacking.
|
| Now, this is HN. I am sure there are number of people who
| will enjoy spending many hours Nd days on reddit and
| github sifting through opinions and source code, trying
| many things and then tweaking them until they get what
| they need. I used to be one. But that's not easy software
| discovery, that's hard physical labour for 99.99% of
| populace, including today myself :->
|
| Whereas frankly, Spotify does ok job in building a radio
| station from a song or playlist. Unsolved problem is
| still finding a song that's alike to this song in some
| specific way that makes sense to me... But I expect that
| to be unsolved in my lifetime.
| newsclues wrote:
| I have the same issue finding new good video games to
| play.
|
| Software discovery isn't easy either.
|
| I kind of miss Yahoo categories and lists.
| newsclues wrote:
| I don't want to pay to listen to bad music to find good
| music.
|
| I want to support artists I like, but it's hard to find
| them in an endless sea of crap.
| bruh2 wrote:
| I use RateYourMusic and Last.fm mostly to find out about
| new music:
|
| 1. RateYourMusic has a wonderful feature of democratically
| tagging albums with genres. People suggest this or that
| genre, then if it gets more than 2 votes (or something like
| that) the album's page is updated to feature the genre. You
| can then browse the genre page and swift through other
| similarly-tagged albums. Here's an example[1].
|
| 2. I find Last.fm's "Similar Artists" section to favor
| niche artists more than, say, the Spotify equivalent.
|
| [1]: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/casper-
| mcfadden/medi...
| tomdell wrote:
| "The largest investments in music are the acquisition of old
| publishing catalogs, while almost nothing is spent developing new
| artists."
|
| While music companies are certainly spending big on old
| publishing catalogs, the second statement here is fact-free.
| Investment in new artists still represents a very substantial
| portion of the big three record labels' budgets, and is very much
| still viewed by execs as the most important part of the business.
|
| I'd like to add that the most significant innovations in popular
| music have not been a result of record label investment but
| rather of grassroots creative work by individual people and
| communities, largely unpaid (and thanks to technological
| innovations and new instruments more than anything the labels
| themselves do) - the record labels just pick people out of a
| preexisting music culture and turn them into stars and brands.
| The labels are ultimately not the driving force behind musical
| innovation, so this article comes across as unnecessarily
| alarmist.
| squidbeak wrote:
| I've no idea what it's like to 'consume' music. I've only ever
| 'listened' to it.
| hedora wrote:
| All I know is that analog Vinyl goes down smoother than digital
| CDs.
|
| Anyone that claims they can't tell the difference is full of
| it.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Vinyls are mastered differently. If that same master mix was
| stamped on a CD and played under the same
| speakers/dB/amp/conditions as a record player it'll sound the
| same. Some people do the whole pre-amp and EQ thing and you
| could do that to a CD player's output too.
|
| But nothing beats the big jackets, and there's magic in
| mixing between turntables that isn't there with any other
| method.
| jtode wrote:
| I remember feeling very excited about Spotify at one point - I
| figured there would be ways to get exposed to new and interesting
| artists. As it turns out, their algorithms, at the paid behest of
| those reliable old villains, the majors, are dead certain that
| what I want is the same fifty songs, over and over, that I've
| been hearing on FM radio for literally my entire life.
|
| Billy Bragg said it decades ago: capitalism is killing music.
| seydor wrote:
| There's a time for everything. Cinema was so '60s , the glamour,
| the star system, music was so '80s-90s, we ll save the world with
| music. That's old history now, the human reward systems have
| adapted. Nowadays it's probably shifting to a combination of
| porn/sex addiction sprinkled with hallucinogenics, as predicted
| by Aldous Huxley
| pbuzbee wrote:
| I noticed that many artists that I like put out albums in 2021,
| but far fewer have put out albums in 2022, even accounting for
| the year only being half over. I think this is partially due to
| the pandemic: with artists unable to tour, many took the time to
| release new music. That music largely came out in 2021. Now in
| 2022 they are touring to promote the new music rather than
| releasing new content.
|
| (just an anecdotal hypothesis, no data)
| pbronez wrote:
| This is overwrought. It's demographics weighting the population
| statistics.
|
| Movies star old people? Old billboard hits are more popular than
| new ones? DUH. That is boomer culture. Boomers have the numbers -
| dollars and bodies. They watch movies with their heros from
| yesteryear. They keep listening to the bands they discovered when
| they were young. So would anybody!
|
| To the extent that this turns into a population level phenomenon,
| it's just market share. Yeah, the gereotocracy is a problem. Yes,
| the overall picture DOES look stagnant. But it's not like there's
| zero fresh ideas. Young people are doing it in new places which
| aren't counted in the old metrics.
|
| Also, older folks can be creative too. Age is a state of mind,
| stagnation is a habit. I know plenty of folks who are hitting
| retirement age but are still interested in new media, new
| technology, new ideas.
|
| So I think the culture is ok. There's just a lot of money in
| nostalgia for an abnormally big generation. As the boomers go, so
| goes the nation. The real question is: what happens when they're
| gone? 10 years out they'll be tired. 20 years out they'll be over
| it. 30 years out, they'll be gone.
|
| Then we'll have a group of long-suppressed folks taking charge.
| Their ages will be more uniformly distributed. What impact will
| that have? Will they best people rise regardless of age? Will it
| be harder to achieve a social consensus? Will new ideas flourish?
| Will assumed competencies be lost?
|
| I don't know.
| jp57 wrote:
| His conclusion seems like measurement bias. Cloud-based streaming
| now means we can measure what people listen to, rather than only
| what they buy. Back in the days of LPs and CDs, it was natural
| that people only purchased new recordings, but most people
| maintained at least a small collection of favorites, often years
| old, that they listened to over and over. Likewise for movies and
| TV: TV broadcasts and movie theaters presented new works, only
| new works, but a favorite movie could be purchased once and
| watched as many times as needed. Or it could be rented.
|
| Now that we can measure all media consumption, we're discovering
| that people like to listen to their favorites over and over, and
| somehow concluding that's artistic stagnation.
| raymondh wrote:
| It is also measurement bias in choosing what to pay attention
| too. The content of high budget films makes for a poor metric
| for creative output.
|
| High budget films inherently have huge financial risk, so it
| reasonable that the decision making is risk adverse. Meanwhile,
| the rest of the ecosystem is flourishing with creativity. We
| have an astonishing selection of works in indie films, HBO, and
| Netflix programming. As a consumer, I've never had more high
| quality options to choose from.
|
| Hollywood of old used to crank out and an enormous number of
| films, almost none of which were big budget. This is the same
| as today where streaming services crank out an enormous number
| of creative entertainment options.
|
| The oligopolies of recent years may find that their business
| models are challenged, but the industry as a whole hasn't lost
| an ounce of creativity.
| itronitron wrote:
| Where it began, I can't begin to know when. But then I know
| it's growing strong.
| smugma wrote:
| This also explains why the value of catalogs has gone through
| the roof.
|
| This is evident by the huge valuations of the majors eg
| Universal going public, indie publishers such as Reservoir and
| Hipgnosis, and artist and writer catalogs eg Queen, Bob Dylan,
| Tom Petty, Paul Simon, etc. A few times a year I will read
| about a writer/artist catalog getting sold for $100M. Except
| for maybe a death like Whitney or MJ, that never happened 10
| years ago.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Is this the long tail we heard so much about?
| smugma wrote:
| It's kind of the opposite of that. Almost all of the value
| in music comes at the "head". Something like 80% of the
| value is in the top 100K tracks and 95%+ in the top 1M.
|
| 100K tracks are added each week but most don't have any
| commercial value. Even if you are modestly successful with
| say, 1M plays, that's not enough to live on for very long
| (about $10,000, split by however many people in the band,
| publishing costs, etc.).
| mynegation wrote:
| That is, IMO, is spot on and I cannot upvote you enough. In
| addition to that it is a question of accessibility. In the old
| times, let's say in the 90s you discovered an obscure piece of
| music from 70s. Good luck going to a CD or vinyl store and
| digging it up. Now the whole discography of that artist is on
| your fingertips.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| As a kid growing up in 80's and 90's Liverpool (UK) I was
| into US west coast hip hop.
|
| We did actually have a decent record store but once you'd
| gone through the rap section a dozen times you were stuck
| with months old photocopies of the source and ordering from
| the store that took months.
|
| Then 'Yo mtv raps' aired in uk on our nascent satellite
| service that hardly anyone had so we'd pass around blurry
| copies on vhs.
|
| Then a voice said 'let there be music' and Napster happened
| and my life changed forever.
|
| Napster to Kazaa to bit torrent to Usenet back to torrent
| then finally iTunes Match and Apple Music.
|
| And I still listen to 'All Eyez On Me' at least once a week.
| xorcist wrote:
| It also wouldn't surprise me if the demographic streaming music
| is getting older, as the older generation are still
| increasingly getting online. The pandemic certainly helped this
| transition. They probably won't change their taste in music as
| they start renting their streaming services.
| crtasm wrote:
| TV stations only showing new material? I think you'd need to go
| back a _long_ time before movie rentals for that to be true?
|
| We recorded movies from TV onto VHS, it wasn't unusual for them
| to air again before we watched the taped copy.
| cdtwigg wrote:
| Yeah broadcast TV content has long consisted in large part of
| reruns, syndication, and older (cheap to license) movies,
| think of what was showing during non prime time hours when
| you were growing up. If anything there's much more new
| content now thanks to the streaming wars.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Consumption and purchase of music are different things. The
| culture has not stopped. The kids just aren't paying. Thier
| parents are paying for easy access to Queen songs. The kids get
| thier music elsewhere.
| jmeister wrote:
| Can you please tell us older ones where the kids are getting
| their music these days?
|
| When I was young I used torrents and filesharing between
| friends or local networks.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| YouTube (and TikTok to a certain extent).
| Victerius wrote:
| Seconding YouTube.
| coldpie wrote:
| Definitely TikTok, and Instagram as well. Yes, really,
| there's a huge independent musician community on Instagram.
| parrellel wrote:
| This can't be anywhere near all of it, but check out the chat
| on the Lofi Girl YouTube channel, one hundred percent kids
| studying algebra and worrying about testing. Just like a
| chatroom in the 90's.
| [deleted]
| whatever1 wrote:
| Tiktok
| hobo_mark wrote:
| No so young anymore, but I listen to SoundCloud at least 50
| hours per week (after heavily curating who I follow and
| writing my own SoundCloud frontend to make the site usable,
| fwiw). In fact most artists I follow do not publish anywhere
| else, except maybe Bandcamp (whose usability is even worse).
|
| ps: to any SoundCloud pm listening, I would have gladly paid
| for a purely linear timeline of my follows that remembers its
| position across devices, but no I had to build it myself.
| elevaet wrote:
| > Bandcamp (whose usability is even worse).
|
| I guess this is a matter of taste. Personally I find
| Bandcamp super usable. It's one of the gems of the internet
| if you ask me, up there with HN.
|
| There's so much amazing independent music on BC and the
| revenue cut for artists is extremely fair. Money spent
| there is well spent.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| All extremely true, but the damn friction when buying
| tracks there... (jwz put it best [1])
|
| > If I put 6 albums in my cart and check out, you make me
| enter my credit card info SIX TIMES. This is insane. You
| realize this is insane, don't you?
|
| > You have used Amazon, right? Click once, receive candy.
| You need to be like that.
|
| (Maybe they fixed it? Haven't bought multiple items at
| once in a while)
|
| Also I would gladly pay for SoundCloud if most of the
| money actually went to the artists (if any SC pm is still
| listening).
|
| [1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/10/shouting-into-the-
| void-this... (you will have to copy and paste the link
| manually because he loves to block HN referrals for self-
| amusement)
| tux3 wrote:
| They must have fixed it, I buy a lot of stuff on bandcamp
| and I've only entered my card once.
|
| The only friction is waiting a few second per track for
| them to prepare my 12 flac downloads, clicking through
| payment only takes a second or so.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I had the payment problem the other day and it's because
| I wanted to pay with PayPal. It seems if you use a card
| they can roll together all the items, but PayPal can't.
|
| My biggest frustration is not being able to download a
| zip file of all the tracks I just bought. Going one by
| one is tedious, especially because I tend to download
| both a FLAC for backup and 320 for everyday listening.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I also love bandcamp! Very simple design, very mid-to-
| late 00s but without clutter. I want it to last forever.
| fullshark wrote:
| Apparently TikTok
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/05/22/1080632810/tiktok-music-
| indus...
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tiktok-
| music-i...
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Don't look at algorithm services, look and follow smaller
| record labels (on bandcamp maybe). Some of the labels i
| follow: unseen worlds, drag city, hausu mountain, hyperdub.
|
| I am turning 33 next year, I have yet to have a year where my
| heart almost doesnt explode from joy and amazement at all the
| music people are make. Every year I feel luckier than last to
| be alive to hear the new things coming out. I really can't
| relate at all to most of this discussion.. It is very alien
| to me.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| Spotify, youtube, indie discord servers, musician friends,
| SoundCloud, Instagram accounts of artists, live shows, just
| everywhere you turn there's a goldmine of indie music
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| A massive chunk of my music collection recently came from
| _random strangers_.
|
| I found a waterlogged phone on the beach. No amount of dry
| rice could resurrect it. But I located the owner and, via a
| micro SD card, returned a 100GB of family photos by EXIF GPS
| data that led me to their house. Happy repatriations. As a
| side effect I snarfed about 100GB of high quality MP3s. I'm
| still listening to bands I've never heard of before. On
| reflection I rather liked that. It shows my ego-driven so-
| called "tastes" are perhaps an over inflated sense of
| identity and that whether I'll like random music or not is
| only a little higher than chance.
|
| Another time someone gave me a USB with a PDF to read, and
| the rest of the drive was chock full of their whole music
| collection. Now that thumb drives are so HUGE and I literally
| have boxes of them lying around I wonder whether to just
| preload them with a shit-ton of cool music and give them to
| people I like. Like old mix tapes... it's nothing to do with
| the cost/purchase... it's a whole new formula for discovery
| and restoring a social dimension to music.
| tzs wrote:
| Unexpected good music can be quite fun.
|
| I found a pretty good band while giving advice to a
| coworker on how to explain away inappropriate language at
| work if someone complained to HR.
|
| The coworker was putting together a new workstation for
| someone, and said "I need a network card". The person at
| the next desk said that they had an extra and tried to hand
| it to the guy building the workstation.
|
| He said "I don't want your sloppy seconds". Then he
| remembered the origins of the term "sloppy seconds" [1] and
| wondered if he's allowed to say that at work.
|
| I overheard and told him, "Don't worry. If someone
| complains just say you were talking about the band. Every
| sexual term and phrase has a band named after it somewhere.
| Even if HR tries to check, you can just say it was a band
| you heard at a bar when you were in college".
|
| Naturally I then Googled "sloppy seconds band" and sure
| enough, there is a band by that name and the first Google
| hit is a Wikipedia article about them [2].
|
| The first two paragraphs of that article say:
|
| > Sloppy Seconds is an American, Ramones-influenced punk
| band sometimes referred to as a junk rock band from
| Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, that started in 1984.
| They gained notoriety in the underground punk scene with
| gritty and controversial songs like "Come Back, Traci," "I
| Don't Want to be a Homosexual", "Jani is a Nazi", "I Want
| 'em Dead" and "So Fucked Up."
|
| > The band's unusual and controversial lyrics encompass
| pornography, classic horror movies, classic television
| shows, comic books, alcohol, being fat, and getting drunk.
|
| After that second paragraph I had to check if they were on
| Spotify and they were. I listened to a few of their albums
| the rest of the day and sure enough, there were songs on
| all those things mentioned in that second paragraph, some
| of them quite good.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloppy_seconds
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloppy_Seconds
| myself248 wrote:
| Back when coffee shop wifi was a new thing, and AP
| Isolation hadn't been invented yet, I used to discover a
| lot of music on Network Neighborhood at my local Caribou
| Coffee.
|
| A lot of folks would have their file-sharing settings wide
| open, so I could just click around the WLAN and look for
| mp3's. Found all sorts of interesting stuff, and if someone
| left a writable folder, I'd take-some-leave-some in kind.
|
| Those days are long gone, so lately it's estate sales. Show
| up on the last day of the sale and pick up a whole milk-
| crate of CDs for $40, probably 150 pieces in there.
| Basically if I recognize and like a few artists in the
| collection, I figure this person's tastes overlapped enough
| with mine that I should give the rest of the collection a
| spin. Oh, wow.
|
| Best part is, it's all physical media which can never DRM
| itself out of my collection again. (I've ranted previously
| about random tracks just "turning gray" on my Spotify
| playlists, presumably because of some licensing dispute or
| whatever, and how deeply offensive that is to the fans who
| curated these playlists and assign significance to the
| songs therein.) It's a bit of work to rip and encode, but
| it's not like the old days where a 60-minute album might
| take 90 minutes to rip and encode. CPUs are quick and USB
| CDROMs are cheap; I can do 5 albums in parallel in 10
| minutes. Then stuff the milkcrate in the basement and
| forget about it.
| kibwen wrote:
| I'm not quite young, but I listen to lo-fi hip hop streams,
| video game soundtracks (Guilty Gear Strive is my current
| recommendation), DJ streamers, live cover streamers, and
| space music on public radio (WXPN). I doubt any of these get
| reflected in the official numbers.
| [deleted]
| aikah wrote:
| Yet all the summer music festivals are packed, sold out within
| minutes. It's just that the kids value live experience more
| than they value mp3 or Spotify.
| [deleted]
| havblue wrote:
| Certainly the culture hasn't stopped, but how would you say
| that music has moved forward in the past decade or two? While I
| can name a lot of groups that make new music I enjoy, I can't
| say that there have been revolutionary genres created for
| awhile.
| coldpie wrote:
| Ohhh it's out there... I'm not sure "when" dubstep was
| created, but it's starting to spawn new explorations. Take
| Clown Core, kind of a dubstep/metal/jazz/comedy fusion...
| thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT7x1NvGf5k Before you
| write it off entirely (I don't blame you), take a second to
| notice the synchronization around 0:55.
| thriftwy wrote:
| That's pretty cool, thank you!
| ModernMech wrote:
| Have you heard of live coding? Writing code in front of a
| live audience that plays music? I doubt anything like that
| has been done before the last couple of decades. I don't know
| the history, maybe people dabbled with it way back when, but
| it's an actual thing now. I hope it really catches on!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1m0aX9Lpts
| CalRobert wrote:
| Algorave?
| CalRobert wrote:
| Nils frahm, jon hopkins, pomme, go_a, all awesome and the
| last two are fairly recent. I think there's hundreds of new
| genres, but we're all finding what we love. I don't have to
| listen to college radio at 1 AM and hope for the best
| anymore.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Sure there have been totally new genres within the last few
| years: Russian hardbass, phonk, hyperpop, etc. Art is
| constantly evolving, even though not necessarily evolving in
| the mainstream.
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| Phonk isn't new and a lot of the new stuff is more of a
| caricature of phonk (though some is quite good as well)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Possible explanations:
|
| 1) our average age is older, so of course we have older actors,
| music, etc. People's tastes are more malleable in adolescence
| (usually), and adolescents are a smaller percentage of the
| population
|
| 2) the amount of recorded back catalog to listen to is larger
|
| 3) the percentage of music listening which is pre-20th century
| (mostly classical) is actually falling compared to 50 years ago,
| so it's not clear that we listen to less old music, we may just
| be listening to newer old music than Bach, Haydn, Mozart, etc.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm reading Gioia's history of jazz right now, haven't gotten
| past the swing era. But one impression I've already made is that
| there was a period of time when someone could aspire to a modest
| but decent enough middle class life as a musician. I think that I
| grew up at roughly the tail end of that era.
|
| As for trends in the movies, I'm not sure they're related.
| bayareabadboy wrote:
| Music industry is still recovering from lil peep's untimely
| expiration. Things will bounce back. In the meantime, show some
| respect, please.
| volkl48 wrote:
| I don't feel like 18 months and not currently on the Billboard
| charts is a particularly reasonable cutoff for "new vs old"
| music.
|
| I listen to tons of new music - current, young artists, who've
| released all or nearly all of their music the past 5-10 years,
| that's most of my listening.
|
| In spite of that, I expect that 70%+ of my listening is over this
| arbitrary cutoff and would count as "catalog" . Even if I find a
| new band opening at a show - probably they've been around a
| couple years and if I dive into them the majority of their music
| is >18 months.
|
| -----
|
| The other aspect is I'd like to see age demographic data for the
| music stats. Older people have largely only gotten into Spotify
| and the like more recently. Are young people listening to less
| new music, or is this just a reflection of now having a wider age
| range in streaming stats?
| Closi wrote:
| Yep, besides, by the definition on the graph their own examples
| of Kate Bush's "Running up that hill" and Metallica's "Master
| of Puppets" would not count as "catalog" and counts as 'new
| music' while The Weekend's "Blinding Lights" counts as
| 'catalogue' music (i.e. 'old' music in the context of this
| article).
|
| Seems overly simplistic to me!
|
| It's also worth accounting for how music is consumed and how
| this is accounted for - i.e. I assume the shift to streaming
| platforms would naturally cause reporting of old-listens to
| increase (i.e. if you buy a CD once in 2015 and listen to it
| every year, this would be recorded as a single 'non-catalogue'
| sale, while in the streaming world it would be classified as
| 'two non-catalogue listens and then five catalogue listens'),
| so I assume more people streaming would drive more 'recorded'
| catalogue listens unless this is carefully adjusted for.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Yeah I see a lot of complaints but this is the salient one.
|
| 18 months is not that old. Even mainstream pop radio stations
| are still going to be playing a stuff that's 3 years old
| regularly.
|
| Maybe it's not brand new but it doesn't fit their rhetoric
| later on.
| yojo wrote:
| The NYT ram an article a while back on Spotify listening by
| age; they found that people tend to latch on to what was
| popular when they were in their early teens.[1]
|
| So yes, on the music side this is probably dominated by
| demographics. Old people listen to old music.
|
| 1:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-s...
| conradfr wrote:
| Deezer made a study that evaluated peak music discovery at
| around 25 years old.
|
| https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/people-stop-
| discoveri...
| hedora wrote:
| Read the fine print on the bar chart. They're measuring catalog
| by trying to figure what the current top 100 streamed songs /
| albums are.
|
| I can only name a song from one top forty band from the last 10
| years. (The HU; I have no idea how mongolian throat metal charted
| in the US; check them out.)
|
| However, I regularly stream dozens of albums that came out after
| 2020.
|
| The article seems concerned that pop music is dying. Good
| riddance?
|
| I'd be much more interested in a revenue-based breakdown
| (inclusive of concerts, merchandise, etc.), and the number of
| musicians grossing over $10K, 100K, 250K 500K, 1M, etc. per year
| over time.
|
| If the population of musicians earning a middle class income is
| increasing, that'd be great news, and would be well-worth having
| fewer break $10M per year.
|
| Edit: misspelled "The HU"
| sime2009 wrote:
| * You mean "The HU", unless there is another international
| mongolian throating singing metal band out there with a similar
| name.
| sk0g wrote:
| The HU likely charted because of their inclusion in the OST of
| a game by EA - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I was pleasantly
| surprised to see them start prominently in the opening of that
| game!
|
| Doom Eternal, for the record, also had some Mongolian throat
| singing from the late vocalist of Tengger Cavalry.
| itronitron wrote:
| Presumably they were also easier to get than The Who.
| quattrofan wrote:
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I can confirm this anecdotally. My teenage niece only wants to
| listen to music her grandfather was into.
|
| Just terrible, terrible pop music from the 70s.
| hedora wrote:
| She might like 89.3 KBCZ. They're based near silicon valley,
| and play good pop music from the 70's. However, it only comes
| in on route 9. They have an internet stream.
| psyc wrote:
| Everyone who is now the age that Ozzy, Slash, and Alanis were
| when they did the work that made the world pay attention, was
| born after 9/11. Meaning, in that climate. They were never
| conscious of a world without the web, Facebook, and YouTube.
| Rock, as Marilyn Manson noted, is deader than dead. That's a
| formidable and fertile tradition going back to the blues that's
| just over and done as far as the mainstream is concerned. Forget
| Metallica- we don't even have Nickelback and 3 Doors Down
| anymore.
|
| Instead of reaching for your logical fallacies and statistical
| poindexterism to pseudo-refute the article, maybe have a think
| about why it might actually be describing an actual phenomenon.
| pbronez wrote:
| That's an interesting point. How would you characterize growing
| up in the shadow of the Global War on Terror vs growing up in
| the shadow of the Cold War?
| mongol wrote:
| The shadow of the global war on terror has been more
| intimate. Surveillance, airport security etc. During the cold
| war the fear was that we would all be blown up by the same
| thermonuclear bombs in a nuclear holocaust. What you could do
| with a passenger airplane was not the main problem.
| VictorPath wrote:
| 90% of music market share in the US belongs to three companies.
| Warner Music has a 12.1% market share. Sony has a 23.4% market
| share.
|
| Universal has a 54.5% market share. Over half the market share of
| music in the country is from one company.
|
| It's a long way from magazines like Broadside and Sing Out and
| independent record labels like Folkways and Vanguard. Even songs
| on major record labels were influenced by this milieu. Most songs
| today are a corporate product packaged for consumers. The article
| says people seem to prefer music made before this all happened.
| The grunge/alternative scene that was commodified in the early
| 1990s is the last independent music scene that was mainstreamed
| that I can think of. Can't think of anything else - Reggaeton or
| a variety of other things never really became mainstream.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I think the "music is boring" sentiment could be about the lack
| of shared experiences due to hyper-fragmentation. It's easy to
| access all genres of music from one app at flat monthly rate. The
| mainstream, then, is the lowest common denominator much more so
| than before. Specifically it doesn't need to embrace any rising
| genres. And there are no longer pronounced subcultures either, if
| there's no friction e.g. queueing up in front of the record store
| - that facilitate socializing with like-tasted fans.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think you'll also find a sentiment going back decades that
| "today's music sucks" or "today's popular music sucks." That
| said, there's certainly a lot of fragmentation even if there's
| still a big pop culture head too. In TV certainly an HBO or
| Netflix hit has nothing like the reach of a network hit a
| couple decades ago. And, of course, watching is less
| synchronous too.
| wombatpm wrote:
| But I believe we are still in universal agreement that Dusco
| sucks. Always has, always will
| ghaff wrote:
| Disco is certainly the genre from what would normally be my
| peak music taste acquisition time--college and the period
| thereafter--that I could never stand and which none of my
| peers were into either.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| D: Wtf this stuff is great https://youtu.be/LUGga_VPeTo
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This is survivorship bias. There was a lot of mediocre
| dreck shoveled out in the late 70's that is largely
| unlistenable. Everything was rerecorded in disco style
| even if it wasn't a good idea.
| mosiuerbarso wrote:
| Hey disco is coming back. If these trends continue...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6LOWKVq5sQ
| coldpie wrote:
| Aww. Disco spawned house music[1] and, from there, all of
| house's subgenres and massive influence on popular music.
| Listening to old 80s house is full of samples of disco
| beats and string grooves. You can still hear it in popular
| records; disco influence is all over Daft Punk's
| discography[2]. I think it deserves some credit and fond
| appreciation :)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_music
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daft_Punk#Musical_style
| marssaxman wrote:
| I think the end of musical subcultures may be significant. It
| used to feel like there were many isolated musical bubbles,
| separated by geography or language or social class or simply
| aesthetic choice, and each one would develop its own unique
| musical idiom. Every now and then some cultural explorer would
| bring one of these idioms back to the mass market, introducing
| a new flavor into the pop music melting pot, and a surge of
| innovation would occur.
|
| Of course the flow of attention back into the previously-
| isolated musical subculture tended to be destructive, as far as
| its inhabitants were concerned; the musicians who rode the wave
| out to mainstream popularity were often scorned and labeled
| sell-outs, for making private profit at the expense of the
| community which had supported them.
|
| When there is no more isolation, all music shared everywhere
| over the internet all the time, how can a unique new cultural
| strain develop? When any new ideas one musician comes up with
| just get dropped into the global soup, instead of taking time
| to ferment in a smaller, more focused environment, how can any
| distinct new genre emerge? It seems like we are seeing a
| different model of musical creativity, which is likely to be
| broader and smoother; more gradual global drift and fewer
| irruptions.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I'm not so sure about the end of musical subcultures. The
| house/techno/dnb underground here is still strong, there are
| events focused around those genres every weekend and during
| the week here. I almost went to a warehouse party last night
| but was worn out from walking all day. And I just got back
| from a festival in another part of the state that was almost
| exclusively bass music.
|
| And this is completely separate from the larger festival
| circuit, EDC/CRSSD and the like. I actually don't like going
| to bigger festivals, the vibe is all wrong and its way too
| bro-y.
|
| The subcultures are still there, they're just not easily
| organized or present on Spotify. I judge a DJ by how easy it
| is to Shazam all the tracks he plays, the good ones aren't
| getting their shit off Spotify thats for sure
|
| My sis has been diving headfirst into goth culture, and
| exploring their musical palette. She goes to events centered
| around the music they listen to. And on and on.
| est31 wrote:
| > When there is no more isolation, all music shared
| everywhere over the internet all the time, how can a unique
| new cultural strain develop? When any new ideas one musician
| comes up with just get dropped into the global soup, instead
| of taking time to ferment in a smaller, more focused
| environment, how can any distinct new genre emerge?
|
| The bar of checking out a new genre has gotten lower than
| ever, yes. But I don't agree that it's one big global soup
| now. Recommendation systems of Soundcloud/Spotify/Youtube
| often give you stuff from the same genre/niche of music when
| you listen to a given niche, and conversely they don't
| recommend you stuff from unrelated niches. So small niches
| might not be discovered by average listeners unless they are
| going viral.
|
| Furthermore, the gatekeepers of the mainstream are still in
| full power. Things like radio stations, shopping mall music,
| etc. all are still controlled by a small elite. Even social
| media platforms often perform curation of things featured on
| their front or even trending pages. So there's still often a
| "this isn't going to work with average listeners" kind of
| decision going on, done by a human.
| seydor wrote:
| I think it's demographics. The 2 latest generations are such a
| minority and so dominated by older generations that they can't
| find each other, and their voices can't be heard or amplified
| tacon wrote:
| >And there are no longer pronounced subcultures either
|
| This article is an elaboration on an earlier post by the author
| about there being no countercultures in today's world:
|
| "14 Warning Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a
| Counterculture"
|
| https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/14-warning-signs-that-you-ar...
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I've been working on an IDE for music composition
|
| https://ngrid.io
|
| Launching soon.
|
| Join the discord https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG
| LegitShady wrote:
| doesn't look like you have enough to show to get me interested,
| and everything you've put there is either opinion ("Write 10
| songs in the same time as you used to write 1.") or things that
| daws or random ios apps already do.
|
| It's also totally unrelated to the article at hand so this is
| shameless self promotion of something that isn't really
| available to promote.
| bambax wrote:
| At first I was interested by this. But as I have seen this
| comment pop up everywhere on HN for a very long time, and zero
| progress on said IDE, I think it's just spam. Please stop.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Do you think that I would be spamming this of it wasn't real?
| I'm legit close to launch now.
| detaro wrote:
| Good that you recognize you are spamming - then please
| _stop spamming!_
|
| You've been posting about it being ready _soon_ for 4 years
| now, and you keep posting it in just vaguely related
| threads despite having been asked multiple times to stop.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| You called it spamming, I would not call it that.
|
| Yeah shit took way longer than it should have. Just FYI
| Bitwig also took a while. Figma too. Desktop apps are
| hard, and audio desktop apps are double hard.
|
| Almost there though.
| detaro wrote:
| > _Do you think that I would be spamming this of it
| wasn't real?_
|
| Does suggest you are spamming it.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| It doesn't.
| mplewis wrote:
| This doesn't sound danktacular. It doesn't even sound like it
| works. Where are the screenshots, documentation, demos?
| adamnemecek wrote:
| It's being worked on.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| In order to find "new music" the listeners themselves have to put
| in some effort, be curious and open to the experience. It helps
| if there is a culture around it, not around "genres" but around
| discovering music (be it old or new) in general.
|
| When I was a kid I always enjoyed walking into my uncle's living
| room being awestruck by the enormous hi-fi sound and his massive
| collections of LPs and later CDs. He, at times, offered me to
| play what I like. Because I had no real clue about music back
| then, I just picked the ones with "interesting" cover art. I
| vividly remember picking Bauhaus' _The Sky 's Gone Out_ or King
| Crimson's _In the Court of the Crimson King_ , totally alien
| music for me but quite the listening experience.
|
| This kind of ceremonial setting and the work and care around it,
| is missing in the days of immediate availability under our
| impulsive fingertips and with it the disposition to take a good
| listen with a clear intention, with a beginning and an end. It
| seems that we are more or less offered to be drowned in music
| streams making it hard to discern, unable to recover with
| fresh/curious ears without taking breaks and the possibility to
| listen more _sparingly_.
| adrr wrote:
| Music discovery has been replaced by playlists that you can
| subscribe too. They are the new radio and now actually drive
| radio plays.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > In order to find "new music" the listeners themselves have to
| put in some effort
|
| This is a very good point. I listen to a lot of great "new"
| music, but I do that by listening to oddball radio stations
| (like KCSM San Mateo), going to music festivals (just got back
| from the Sicily Jazz Festival in Italy), and "new music" events
| (like the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
| https://cabrillomusic.org/ ), and I play the piano with amateur
| groups and in amateur recitals.
|
| It takes a lot of work, but all I hear is new music, or fresh
| takes on old music. But sadly, the audience for this is either
| people like me (men 55+ and some women) and kids who are music
| majors. There's little in the middle.
|
| I think the average kid who simply followed pop and rock back
| in the 70s knew more about "music" than the kid today to whom
| it's just a branding, or a backdrop for a TikTok. They don't
| listen and pay attention. Pop culture doesn't resolve around
| music anymore. There's too many other things (games, social
| media) to worry about.
| ska wrote:
| Counter to this, I know some teenagers who are obsessed with
| music in the way (time wise) mainly only teenagers can be.
| Currently enjoying a summer off doing 10+ hour days focused
| on that, collaborations with other people online, everything
| digital or digitized.
|
| You know what they won't be doing? Any of the venues and
| sources you describe. Not a value judgment, by the way, just
| an observation and a curiosity of what you are really seeing
| is a silo effect where you just don't see what they are into
| and vice versa.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > You know what they won't be doing? Any of the venues and
| sources you describe.
|
| And I get to hear a lot of their music. It's very clear
| they haven't heard a wide range of music, and thus for the
| most part they make music within a tiny range of what is
| possible, and you get painfully conventional music.
|
| Being ignorant of the past doesn't make you a better
| musician.
|
| Not one song on the pop charts this year would have sounded
| particularly out of place in 1992.
|
| In 1970, the music on the charts would have sounded like
| alien voices to people in 1940.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| No offense, but the "new music" you're talking about, that
| primarily appeals to men aged 55+, is new jazz and classical
| music? Kids these days don't pay enough attention to the hip
| new composers? Come on.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Nobody would call modern art music "classical music."
|
| When I was high school/college age, I certainly paid
| attention to the composers who were writing for film, or
| synthesizers, etc. I just don't think enough kids today are
| positioned to be able to appreciate it.
|
| The artists performing this aren't all old men, for the
| most part they're a diverse group of young people.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Actually why I don't see AI generated music a thing.
|
| What I think we do as humans participating in culture is
| "select" music, I'm not sure music is every truly created or
| composed but stumbled upon and then selected. It's selected at
| a rate which we can manage. A large part of the fun comes from
| sharing music with others. When everything becomes
| personalized, we start to lose this.
|
| If I had library of never ending new great AI generated music,
| what would happen? I guess I'd just keep browsing forever and
| never really know what I like. Arguably this is already
| happening. I've been a musician from a young age, and I now
| actually find it difficult to know what to listen to. Before I
| had steaming services, it was a lot easier a lot less option
| stress.
| lc9er wrote:
| I'd guess like most people, my greatest period of music
| discovery was in my teens and 20's. Listening to music with
| friends, we'd share new discoveries, hoping to win over a new
| fan.
|
| Music stores were great, too. Putting on the gross headphones
| at Tower Records and sampling the latest releases, let me find
| new bands without risking my limited teen cash supply.
|
| Even better, I could go across the street from Tower and pick
| the brains of the people at the punk/metal shop, or convince
| them to play something that Tower would never stock. The people
| there always had a better understanding of your tastes, far
| better than a genre listing.
|
| The most fruitful source of new music was going out to see
| shows. Going to a show to see one or two bands at any given
| show, there was a good chance I'd come away a fan of one of the
| openers.
| koala_man wrote:
| It's seems like what you're describing would help you find
| music that's new to _you_ , not necessarily music that has been
| produced recently like in the article.
|
| I imagine this is especially true with today's data driven
| recommendation engines.
|
| When I discover new music it often turns out to be made in 2010
| rather than 2022, and tbh it doesn't matter to me since I
| haven't heard it before either way.
| octokatt wrote:
| > This kind of ceremonial setting and the work and care around
| it, is missing in the days of immediate availability...
|
| I'm riffing off of this, and saying it's about the same as
| trying to find a new opinion by reading Facebook.
|
| If the main way you're trying to find new music is
| algorithmically, you're only going to find fairly similar kinds
| of music. This differs hugely from the music festival, or even
| being able to go into a music shop and ask a human for
| something interesting and new.
|
| That's without talking about how garage bands and live music
| have mostly died a sad death.
|
| As well, I'd say listening to complex music, or even a
| different genre of music, takes focus and patience. In gaining
| the algorithm-driven, attention-seeking internet, we've lost a
| lot of that focus and patience.
| sogen wrote:
| Yes, it involved more effort, and did not have competition like
| all things the the internet offers.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I understand the point the author is trying to make but some of
| it unnecessarily mean-spirited and ageist. I haven't seen it yet,
| but by all reports, the new Top Gun movie was very well received.
| And no one has even seen the new Indiana Jones film yet, so is
| the AARP dig really necessary?
|
| There are better ways to make your point about recycled content
| and franchises than saying "lol, these actors are old".
| vlunkr wrote:
| This is lame. It spends most of its time going over film and
| architecture in order to prove that music is stagnating. It's not
| a good comparison. Film is stagnating creatively because the
| budgets are too big to take a risk. The same is not true of music
| at all.
|
| One real point they make is that people are listening to older
| music. So what? That's what we do in a culture. People continue
| to be inspired by the classics because they good.
|
| And my last snarky point is that if you think music isn't good or
| creative anymore, you just aren't paying attention. Go take a
| dive on a streaming service for a while. It's an amazing time to
| be alive for music.
| winternett wrote:
| Shows like "The Boys" are produced with higher writing and
| cinematic quality than most of the recent Marvel movies if you
| ask me... There is always deeply creative stuff out there being
| made on shoestring budgets. The rewards for those undiscovered
| creations are dramatically less now because the Internet buries
| them under algorithms, and far less people are aware of hidden
| gems within a sea of bad and cheap content.
| ghaff wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, The Boys had a budget of $11.2
| million per episode in S1. So that's not a great example of a
| shoestring budget. (Though I agree with your basic point. I'd
| rather watch The Boys than pretty much any Marvel film.)
| winternett wrote:
| There are many facets to the discussion of course, but many
| examples of movies and shows that were exceptional based on
| lower budgets. When comparing the budget of an entire
| season of The Boys to almost any single Marvel film though,
| the wasted money on individual Marvel Films is far more
| apparent.
|
| Movies like Desperado, Way of the Gun, No Country for Old
| Men, Fall (by Eric Shaeffer) and many others are far more
| enjoyable to me than big budget blockbusters, but others
| may disagree... Those had far lower budgets than many
| ensemble cast/empty script superhero movies, but
| preferences are always subjective, so it's not really
| something I'd really want to argue with anyone about.
| [deleted]
| yodon wrote:
| The period between about 1970 (when the huge generation of Baby
| Boomers started buying records in fantastic numbers) and 1995
| (when the first web browser started making large scale piracy of
| intellectual property trivial) was the only 25 year period in the
| history of the world when large numbers of artists managed to get
| fantastically wealthy.
|
| Looking back through the entirety of recorded history, that had
| never happened before, and it likely never will again.
|
| More artists became fantastically wealthy in those 25 years than
| in the previous 2000 years. It looks very likely that, with the
| invention of the web browser, we're back to historical norms.
| This article has lots of data backing up that return to the mean.
|
| Being a musician or actor is still a good thing, but it's once
| again not a very probable way of getting incredibly rich, just as
| it has been, on average, for the past 2000 years.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| If this is what you believe then you're simply looking in the
| wrong places.
|
| I firmly believe all the best new art (including music) is
| digital. Everytime I go looking for it I'm astounded at what I
| find.
| dougmwne wrote:
| This has a simple explanation. The creative frontier has moved on
| to social media and the internet. Looking at box office movies
| and declaring stagnation is like looking at the music industry
| minus MTV in the 80's.
| processing wrote:
| 32121386 wrote:
| The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a
| deflation of expectations. There can be few who believe that in
| the coming year a record as great as, say, the Stooges' Funhouse
| or Sly Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On will be released. Still
| less do we expect the kind of ruptures brought about by The
| Beatles or disco. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the
| gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the
| fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of
| previous periods and you will quickly be accused of 'nostalgia'.
| But the reliance of current artists on styles that were
| established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the
| grip of a formal nostalgia, of which more shortly.
|
| It is not that nothing happened in the period when the slow
| cancellation of the future set in. On the contrary, those thirty
| years has been a time of massive, traumatic change. In the UK,
| the election of Margaret Thatcher had brought to an end the
| uneasy compromises of the so-called postwar social consensus.
| Thatcher's neoliberal programme in politics was reinforced by a
| transnational restructuring of the capitalist economy. The shift
| into so-called Post-Fordism - with globalization, ubiquitous
| computerization and the casualisation of labour - resulted in a
| complete transformation in the way that work and leisure were
| organised. In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the
| internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered
| the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition. Yet,
| perhaps because of all this, there's an increasing sense that
| culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present.
| Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no
| present to grasp and articulate anymore.
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