“Why does music today suck?”
It’s been a cultural punch line ever since music started splitting on generational lines (which is actually a fairly new thing).
But today, it’s actually true, in economic and sociological terms.
Rick Beato explains a lot of things in the world of music very well, and he gets this one right:
It’s not only easier to produce, it’s much easier – almost trivial – to consume.
I’m not sure how to even explain to a Zoomer the contortions we – or some of us – had to go through to hear the music in the first place. It was a particular experience growing up in rural North Dakota – where getting great music on the radio wasn’t easy in the late ’70s and early ’80s, frequently involving staying up late to tune in WLS in Chcago, until I got an FM boombox that could get Q98 in Fargo.
In even more economic terms? I talked about my experience discovering Tom Petty; staying up late to watch SNL (my parents had given up trying to get me to go to bed on Saturday nights), then racing to White Drug to buy a copy of Damn the Torpedoes between sunday school and church. That record cost $7.98 before tax – which, with taxes, came to two and a half hours working at KEYJ.
For eight songs.
Today a month of AppleMusic costs me a fraction of one hour’s pay – knock wood – and I use free Spotify (sorry, artists). Which is one thing for people who cut their teeth with the experiences Beato, and I, list.
But for people who have access to a constant Amazon River of music (the metaphor cuts both ways), at a time when music is not only trivially easy to access, but to produce (even for curmudgeons like myself – I did most of the recording of my album at home on GarageBand, only doing the vocals and mixing in an actual studio)?
It’s worth a watch.
Don’t feel bad about using free Spotify, Mitch.
I have an iHeart radio playlist with songs ranging from the sixties to a few current ones on my iPhone. It’s good for a two to three hour road trip. About every fifth song, I have to listen to two to three thirty second commercials, but it’s less expensive that their monthly fee of $12.95, for All Access.
Beato is 100% correct, but I’m conflicted about it, because I use the heck out of Spotify. I can listen anywhere and I have dozens of playlists. It’s a great product, but in certain ways it’s evil.
I miss Napster.
Mitch, Were you able to get WOW out of Omaha on your radio? That was the only other station for me on the western MN prairie.
On a related note, I was listening to WLS-FM last weekend as I drove to visit my father-in-law and the rest of the family, and it struck me that they’re playing about the same music as they played when I was a kid, just without the “filler” stuff that everyone has mostly forgotten. My kids are also all into 1980s rock & roll, and note that the new stuff….is just bad.
On another side note, regarding the “quantization” of music as demonstrated by the video, it strikes me that the “swinging” of rhythms and notes as demonstrated by John Bonham is one of the main things that traditionalists said they objected to in jazz, blues, and the like. But that noted, you find it in classical and traditional music of the cultures of Europe as well, so it’s something of a “selective objection.”
I love Rick Beato’s videos. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out his “The Most COMPLEX Pop Song of All Time” video. It’s fascinating.
It’s always jarring when I enter a store or restaurant that ISN’T playing the music of my youth. It’s as if Baby Boomers have such tremendous purchasing power that merchants are afraid of alienating them in the slightest way. I was recently at a restaurant in Cottage Grove where the background music included “Touch of Grey” by THE GRATEFUL DEAD, for crying out loud! Who listens to that, nowadays?
No wonder modern music is crap. It’s been frozen out of circulation for three, no four, geez, five decades.
And by the way, Mitch, WLS-Chicago was good but they didn’t have a patch on KAAY-Little Rock, if you listened late at night when your AM radio caught them on the skip.
Oh, and since I am very Amazon-centric (yeah yeah yeah, supporting leftist billionaire big tech, I know. Believe me, I know.), I subscribe to Amazon Music and have a few playlists built up. My main one has 747 songs, 50 hours 57 minutes long. They range from late 50s/early 60s folk thru last year, with the majority being 70s’ and 80’s pop (KS95/WLOL mainstream fare).
Mr Beato, as a music expert, describes well the present music scene and the effects of technology on both music producers and consumers, but I have two issues with his conclusion that today’s music sucks.
The first issue is that there is lots of today’s music doesn’t actually suck. It’s just harder to find because there is so much more music available and so many people just want to hear the music from their youth (K*cough*Q*cough* – which, to be honest, a lot of which sorta, kinda completely sucks after hearing it for the bazillionth time).
Almost all the music I listen is from YouTube. I don’t know how other streaming services work, but YouTube pays attention to what I listen to and offers me songs from bands I’ve never heard of all the time. And if I take the suggestion, The Algorithm continues to offer me new and different music.
Did’jo know about the band Durry (from effing Burnsville) and their song Who’s Laughing Now? Or howabout the Donnas, late 90s? Or Samson (just released a video this morning). Or Jon Batiste’s Freedom. Or Los Angeles Azules’ Cumbia A La Gente (btw, you need cumbia in your life).
None of Beato’s criticisms about producer technology apply in any of these cases. He’s just being a dick.
My second issue is that music most of us know from the 60s through the 70s came during an especially wonderful and productive period of time that won’t happen again in our lifetime. You can expand that time frame to include the 40s, 50s and certainly up through the 00s, but center of gravity of good to great music happened during those 20 years. Using this time period to compare against others is simply not fair. I mean, there are a lot of talented young musicians who know this too and are mining this mountain of great music. Examples abound, like Low Darts’s Rosanna (a bunch of high school kids in the parent’s basement). Or Pomplamoose’s Stuck in the Middle with You. Gary Clark Jr’s version of Come Together – or The Darzis’ version if you want something less hard. Alpha Bondy’s rendition of Whole Lotta Love or Alfonso André’s version of Life’s What You Make It…
My point is that the musical greatness of that period is acknowledged in ways that *we ourselves would not have done* – yeah, sure, listen to Frank Sinatra? Benny Goodman?
Moreover, there was lots and lots of crap that hit the charts back then too. Maybe it wasn’t digitized machine music, but it was just as cynical and soulless and produced to make a few bucks (think the Archies, the Partridge Family, Ohio Express).
Beato’s just looking for clicks (while showing off his house, sigh). He should just shut up.
KAAY… Beaker Street. Clyde Clifford. Great memory, Mr Jones. Did’jo ever stay up long enough in the morning until KAAY went back to it’s WCCO-like format?
My favorite late night radio was TONY GLOVER on KDWB. From 1969 to mid 1970, Tony Glover held down the midnight to 6 am shift which included his dead pan reading of the farm report every morning followed by a tune from Ledbetter or Little Walter.
Mr Beato has already responded to the angry comments to the video above with a new video. If you enjoyed the one above, you’ll probably enjoy this one as well.
In Helena Montana, it was hoping for the skip to bring in KOMA, Oklahoma City.
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