Slashdot Mirror
Is Pop Music Becoming Louder, Simpler and More Repetitive? (bbc.co.uk)
dryriver writes: The BBC has posted a very interesting article that investigates whether people claiming all over the internet that "pop music just isn't what it used to be" are simply growing old, or if there actually is objective science capable of backing up this claim of a "steady decline in music quality." The findings from five different studies are quoted; the findings from the fourth study is especially striking:
1. Pop music has become slower -- in tempo -- in recent years and also "sadder" and less "fun" to listen to.
2. Pop music has become melodically less complex, using fewer chord changes, and pop recordings are mastered to sound consistently louder (and therefore less dynamic) at a rate of around one decibel every eight years.
3. There has been a significant increase in the use of the first-person word "I" in pop song lyrics, and a decline in words that emphasize society or community. Lyrics also contain more words that can be associated with anger or anti-social sentiments.
4. 42% of people polled on which decade has produced the worst pop music since the 1970s voted for the 2010s. These people were not from a particular aging demographic at all -- all age groups polled, including 18-29 year olds, appear to feel unanimously that the 2010s are when pop music became worst. This may explain a rising trend of young millennials, for example, digging around for now 15-30 year-old music on YouTube frequently. It's not just the older people who listen to the 1980s and 1990s on YouTube and other streaming services it seems -- much younger people do it too.
5. A researcher put 15,000 Billboard Hot 100 song lyrics through the well-known Lev-Zimpel-Vogt (LZV1) data compression algorithm, which is good at finding repetitions in data. He found that songs have steadily become more repetitive over the years, and that song lyrics from today compress 22% better on average than less repetitive song lyrics from the 1960s. The most repetitive year in song lyrics was 2014 in this study.
Conclusion: There is some scientific evidence backing the widely voiced complaint -- on the internet in particular -- that pop music is getting worse and worse in the 2000s and the 2010s. The music is slower, melodically simpler, louder, more repetitive, more "I" (first-person) focused, and more angry with anti-social sentiments. The 2010s got by far the most music quality down votes with 42% from people polled on which decade has produced the worst music since the 1970s.
1. Pop music has become slower -- in tempo -- in recent years and also "sadder" and less "fun" to listen to.
2. Pop music has become melodically less complex, using fewer chord changes, and pop recordings are mastered to sound consistently louder (and therefore less dynamic) at a rate of around one decibel every eight years.
3. There has been a significant increase in the use of the first-person word "I" in pop song lyrics, and a decline in words that emphasize society or community. Lyrics also contain more words that can be associated with anger or anti-social sentiments.
4. 42% of people polled on which decade has produced the worst pop music since the 1970s voted for the 2010s. These people were not from a particular aging demographic at all -- all age groups polled, including 18-29 year olds, appear to feel unanimously that the 2010s are when pop music became worst. This may explain a rising trend of young millennials, for example, digging around for now 15-30 year-old music on YouTube frequently. It's not just the older people who listen to the 1980s and 1990s on YouTube and other streaming services it seems -- much younger people do it too.
5. A researcher put 15,000 Billboard Hot 100 song lyrics through the well-known Lev-Zimpel-Vogt (LZV1) data compression algorithm, which is good at finding repetitions in data. He found that songs have steadily become more repetitive over the years, and that song lyrics from today compress 22% better on average than less repetitive song lyrics from the 1960s. The most repetitive year in song lyrics was 2014 in this study.
Conclusion: There is some scientific evidence backing the widely voiced complaint -- on the internet in particular -- that pop music is getting worse and worse in the 2000s and the 2010s. The music is slower, melodically simpler, louder, more repetitive, more "I" (first-person) focused, and more angry with anti-social sentiments. The 2010s got by far the most music quality down votes with 42% from people polled on which decade has produced the worst music since the 1970s.
Because the style of music we call "Pop music" isn't popular anymore. EDM has stolen that crown, just look at what all the kids are listening to these days.
I would not be surprised to see the same trends there.
Where I live all the kids are listening to the same autotuned R&B cr@p either with some mysogynistic neanderthal with his pants down by his knees rapping out some teenage wannabe bullshit or else some wailing woman in her knickers putting it out there.
I thought all pop music was supposed to be a descendent from Delta Blues - which definitely cant be beat on the above features (pun intended).
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pulled the bedsheet over me,
went back to sleep for quite some time!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Axis of Awesome - 4 chord songs...
Get your music off my lawn
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Music today is made with the intent of creating a 'hit' song. Using formulas that have worked in the 80's/90's. The music that was made by garage bands, one hit wonders were created by talented artists who just wanted to make a song that 'they' liked, they weren't making it in order to 'sell' it. Manufactured 'pop' music is the easy thing to do. There is no 'formula' that guarantees a hit song. People, especially the newer generations, have gotten wise to the fact that having driving bass does not 'connect' with listeners. And they are going back in music history and 'discovering' great songs that many of us 'oldsters' have known all of our lives.
Yes
Bo Burnham - Repeat Stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ever since the 70s there has been a progression of suppressing melody in favor of accompaniment. Melody is where creativity shines, and it is what moves people, especially moves them to revolt. No one will ever join a cause that is put to accompaniment.
Despite the attempts by the big brained and very smart among us to distance themselves from the ice cold hand that is pop music, we are one and the same species as those who produce and consume pop music. Pop music being a major facet of our culture, I believe this study reflects on us as a whole, and what it indicates is that human beings are growing isolated from one another, sad, and angry. That makes me feel bad.
I think pop music blows. It seems to be one "singer" who doesn't really sing, and the music is mostly some kind of beat and there's almost no melody or music at all besides the percussion beat and maybe some kind of occasional synthesizer fill in. There seems to be a side version of this, featuring only a guitar with someone who can't lift their fingers off the strings.
And the artist? It's like "Sharyian, Featuring Gtili and Wryannn" or some other kind of "collaboration" which ranges from the featured artists' presence being almost unknowable without the credits or totally dominating the song so that you don't know it was the "main" artists' song.
But my kid loves it, so who am I? Some old guy who thinks this younger generation is full of it? Where have I heard that one before?
My larger take is that this is just pop music subsuming "rap" music. The kid if given the choice will also try to play the rap station, which is even worse. Lyrics totally devoid of meaning and a "beat" that's just kind of a cacophony of rhythm and noise. It makes flipping the station back to classic rock like discovering something amazing.
Lev-Zimpel-Vogt or Lempel-Ziv-Welch?
That be hip hop!
Word!
Except that I've noticed that this
1. Pop music has become slower -- in tempo -- in recent years and also "sadder" and less "fun" to listen to.
seems to apply to hip-hop as well. To my ears, hip hop music has become less "funky", less dance-able, a lot slower, a lot less R&B/soul-like, more drawn out, with more "irregular" and slower beats. Note, I'm no music expert, I'm describing it as I hear it. I mean, compare the stuff say Drake puts out with hip hop of the 2000s and the 1990s. If I listen to some 2016/17 hip hop mix (the biggest hits, the mainstream stuff) it all sounds drawn out, slow, feeble, with lyrics which are more pathetic and pop-like compared to a mix of hip hop hits from say, the late 90s.
Less dynamic:
https://youtu.be/lFqNQna_-sI?t...
More dynamic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You gain a bonus +1 to intelligence for expressing disdain for pop music or anyone who enjoys it. However, you also suffer -1 to charisma for being insufferable.
As it is louder, (compressed) I can not find joy listening to anything, It sounds horrible. Therefore, I know I'm missing a big chunk of good music that simply has been recorded or mastered to be listened in smartphones across the street. It is devastating when compared to a good ol day recording.
My absolutely despised albums are two of my favourite band: The cure. Please listen (if you can) to albums called "The Cure" 2008 and "Dream" 2008. Absolute trash sounding.
Next time, 2020s will be universally the worst. Then, 2030s will be universally the worst.
Strangely, 2010s and then 2020s will increase and be considered on par with every other decade.
This exact cycle has been happening for over 50 years. Nobody likes the current music, then they grow up and feel nostalgic for it.
And the same with slashdot posts probably...
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You don't understand pop music. Pop music is a commercial enterprise. Worse doesn't mean lower complexity or less dynamic loudness, or even that more people report that they prefer other decades' pop music. Worse means fewer sales. That's it.
And from that point of view you don't need a complex study to show that it's got worse year on year since the MP3 format became popular. Before that revenue was at the highest levels ever seen in the industry. Then MP3, then Napster, then utter collapse.
So an industry with about 1/3 of its previous revenues isn't managing to make stuff to the same perceived quality any more? Colour me shocked.
I imagine polling people in the '00s they would say that the pop music from the same decade was the worst ever produced. If anything, pop music since 2000 has had no identity. If the 80s was the decade of New Wave, and the 90s the decade of Alternative Rock, the 00s was an eclectic mix. There was the Nu Metal movement, which turned out to be short-lived; a resurgence in some 90s acts like Green Day/Gwen Stefani; and a growing broader interest in rap/hiphop thanks mostly to Eminem.
However, the biggest influences were the double-whammy of American Idol and Britney Spears causing Idol singers to be the primary marketed form of pop music. Many of these Idols even write their own music; however, the likelihood of being beautiful, marketable, skilled at singing/playing an instrument, AND being a talented songwriter is very low, causing song quality to fall low on the priority list. People will buy anything if it's marketed right, ya? In the old days, Idols like Elvis had their songs written by other people who were actually good at doing so; sure, many of the British Invasion bands wrote their own songs, but not all. Artists back then had more raw skill, so their songs had more complex compositions to show it off. On the flipside, recent music tends to be overproduced, with too many studio musicians, and editors inserting synthesized sounds with computer software (as opposed to standing at a synthesizer keyboard, pressing keys in realtime.)
Thanks to the Internet, there's better awareness of older music. If you want to listen to some obscure song by some obscure band from 40+ years ago, a quick trip to Youtube and you can hear it in seconds. As opposed to scrounging through used record stores for hours to find a song you've never heard before. That means current acts have to compete for mindshare with all this older music. It's also much easier to listen to music produced in other countries; I never even heard of J-Pop until the Internet put it at my fingertips (although if you check Amazon Japan, much of it is crap that sounds suspiciously like American pop.)
Considering how many more ballads were aired on radio in the past, I'm surprised songs have slower tempo nowadays on average. Perhaps that's due to increased prevalence of rap and hiphop, which tend to be more down-tempo. Dance tracks are probably more common, and seem about the same tempo as they were. The Loudness War has been well-documented. I imagine songs have lyrics that are sadder and more focused on self due to end of the civil rights era and increased wealth stratification leading to increased individualism, and more prevalence of rap/hiphop which tend to have a more negative tone.
Lyrics are more repetitive, I predict, because the hook is repeated more. More often lately, it's just repeated over and over and over, the song having an A-B-B-B... ad nauseum structure. Ok I got it, you want a catchy hook to easily market the song. But you know what songs I like most? The ones WITHOUT any identifiable hook... because the entire song is amazing despite it having multiple differing sections.
But wait, it gets worse! Major music labels decide what acts to pick up based not only on subjective listening, but also by algorithm. They now use algorithms that compare their songs to existing hit songs. If it's close enough to what sold before, then they get a second chance. In other words, they're (at least sometimes) selecting for musicians that ape what came before, ensuring it sounds same-y and not original. With the steadily decreasing music sales, the labels are likely getting increasingly conservative, even less likely to sponsor acts that break the mold (i.e. established genres) too much. That's why this decade has the same Idol domination of last decade; airbrushed airheads and smooth douches singing love songs. Every time I hear a new song I like that I hadn't heard before... it turns out it was from last decade, or a cover of one. Go figure.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Even metal has gone shit in recent years. It's all emo crap these days.
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Is not worth living
Red Hot Chili Peppers vs oat gruel. People burn their mouths on jalapeno, Can't have any of that
What about the pop music from the 50-ies? Or even before that. If you take a short enough time, you will see a trent.
And music in the 'past 10 years' was always bad. Because listening to music will be connected to memories and often nice memories. You will stop listening to music you do not like and perhaps even listening to music that you previously not like.
I clearly remember when the 80-ies where shit music. I remember the Boom-boom-boom of repative music of the New Beat.
Correlation is also not causation. Much of the music is easier to be put online, so more can be analized. Also: repetative music is easier to make, so easier to put online.
Yes, we do not have the Rock-Opera of the 70-ies anymore where you had to listen for 10 minutes for a single number. That is now called an EP.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Michael Jackson died in 2009. Pop music became the worst in 2010. Coincidence? We've also recently lost other pop greats like David Bowie, Prince and George Michael.
Personally, the only pop music I really listen to is from the 80s. That was the best decade for music.
There is some evidence suggesting that as a species we are on average becoming more stupid https://www.livescience.com/37.... Would it be that much of a surprise if a less intelligent species found simpler music more attractive?
As to sad and angry, well, at a grand scale is there anything much for our species to feel particularly chipper about?
Music reflects the times people live in and we've got a lot of things that need fixing - best get started!!!
The current decade has always been the worst
That's bad for me. I always seem to be living in the current decade. I guess I was born at just the wrong time.
No the problem is compression or the loudness war:
https://www.cnet.com/news/comp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
When people say that music used to be better in the old days, that is actually true, it was better in the old days. Music in the old days had more dynamic range. Today it's just loud and flat.
A real shame when the Cure's Disintegration actually had "this album was mixed to be played loud" in the liner notes.
Pop pop pop musik Pop pop pop musik
So are you saying the Bach decade shits all over the Vivaldi decade?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
While the OP is probably right, it is not something new. In the 80s and before, there was Rock 'n Roll and Disco. While Disco was very repetitive, most songs had a kind of storyline. A good song has a chorus that is a little bit ambiguous, so that it still fits if the last verse has a "twist".
In the 90s, the guitar was re-discovered, but all storylines were stripped, and that music was called Grunge. While the instruments of Grunge and Rock 'n Roll are the same, they couldn't be further apart.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Whilst I find it somewhat interesting that music is more egocentric now than before, the declining quality of pop music is of no concern to me at all. I don't even need to listen to anything new. As the article states, it's now possible to listen to whatever you like on the internet and there's more excellent music already recorded than I will ever have a chance to hear. So I don't really understand why people complain that modern pop music is crap. If it's crap then just don't listen to it.
soylentnews.org
I remember (popular) 80s music being worse than the 70s. I also remember 90s music being better than the 80s. I remember music after that being terrible. There is a reason the 70s bands are still touring and the 80s ones aren't.
He said metal, and you pull out Grohl?
The big question is WHAT is pop music, The line on what defines it is pretty wide now a days.
Same impression for me. And I have been listening to heavy metal since 1982, none of the pop music for me.
My currently two favorite bands are Muse and QOTSA.
The fourth study is picked out, so let's start there. Of course the 'current' era is the 'worst', I bet that will be the result whenever you carry out a study like that. Previous decades have natural selection, only the strongest survive and all the pap gets forgotten / never played again. But the decade you're living in is a) not finished so you have limited scope to pick hits from, and b) unfiltered, you get all the good and bad mixed together. So of course it feels worse.
In the UK there's a radio programme that does the whole Top 40 from whatever week was exactly 50 years ago, and it's almost universally pap. Take a sample Top 40 chart from each decade and play that to your group, and then tell me what they think of that, rather than just an uncontrolled opinion based on memory.
Todays pop music is written by algorithms. And it doesn't sound too bad. Because we listen to music so much repetetive and meditative ambient/trance like, 'boring' music has become the norm.
The progressive pioneers of Electronic music showed us what would be coming, now it's here and part of the mainstream.
This is simply a classic evolution of artistic style. A song from 1920 sounds naive and childlike to us today, the sounds we listen to would sound like industrial noise to someone from that era. This is normal and music will continue to evolve to gain new subtleties and lose others.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
1. Pop music has become slower. Pop music is not music made by a computer to get repetitive beat to become some other genres.
2. Sound consistently louder. Invest in a better studio that will make music as the talented artist instructs. If the artist cant tell the studio what they want due to lack of skill, the studio will just make the product loud.
3. When pop music became worst. Artists did not face a Vietnam draft. See Vietnam on TV. The computer change of the 1980's that still needed classical musical skills. Lack of skills and lack of emotional drive over a decade produces a lack of artistic creativity.
4. Song lyrics. People putting music groups together want a group thats controllable and can sell on good looks. Lyrics can be created by anyone for a wage.
Without the life skills, politics and passion of one person to write lyrics the music will fail.
In the 1960's and 1970's people had to learn how to be musical. What would sell. How to write music and lyrics. In the 1980's only a select few could afford a computer system to do music, had musical talent and got accepted as music that would sell. Recording time was expensive and a real craft, an art. You had to pay your own way or get some to pay for music to be recorded and sold.
That was a loan that got offered to people with music skills. People with no music skills did not get invested in, did not have their music in shops and on the radio.
Your music had to have merit to even get considered.
With todays computers, low cost equipment more very average people are trying "music". The results are new bands that are created on looks not talent to sell.
Past music had to present in ways to avoid TV censorship in some nations. That really motivated and advanced the needed musical skill set.
The listen audience in 2018 is starting to see a created band with people creating the music and lyrics for them. Moving around to created music on the set of a horror movie does not present in the same way a creative musician recalling a war, their politics, their wealth, their poverty. The way censorship had to be worked around created professionals. A generation that had to know classical music, computer programming, the limitations of an audio signal processor, MIDI, how to work in a studio setting.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Pop music is not created anymore. It is manufactured, based on a known recipe of repetitive beats, a breathy oversexualized, Autotuned voice track crooned by a pop star that is valued more for their looks than their talent.
Labels don't employ singers or artists anymore. They employ entertainers, because a good portion of revenue comes from touring, where only the best lip-syncing dancers fill sold-out stadiums and pretend to belt out their most popular tracks for two hours. The Loudness Wars confirmed that the quality of the recording no longer mattered; it merely needed to be loud enough for radio airplay.
What is sad is finding Profit always being the #1 priority, which is why pop music is manufactured to fit into a proven revenue model. The fact that it's become simpler and more repetitive tends to show how lazy you can be to entertain the simple masses. Johnny Crooner and his iPad "band" can probably crank out a Top 10 hit in less than an hour these days, and rip off (a.k.a. "sample") a dozen hit songs doing it.
Short for *Popular*
Hence selling as many as possible, otherwise it's not *pop* music, no matter how hard it tries to be.
If the selection doesn't make you happy, there's a plethora of genres out there that you can look into.
I tend to rant.
With the exception of groups like Postmodern Jukebox and other live-recorded artists, most music today is written with software. Loop-based software. The way it works is you first define a "groove", a short, typically 4-bar pattern that's as catchy as you can make it. Now take those 4 bars and repeat them 32x, add 1 or 2-bar patterns as occasional transitions, and presto, you have a "pop" song.
The problem is that software makes it so easy it entices people without real skills to write. This is similar to when laser printers and WYSIWYG editors first came on the scene, and suddenly everyone was a typographer and a graphic artist. *shudder*
You still have to have real talent as a songwriter. The software makes it "easier", not "better". Stevie Wonder can do it, for example. The vast, vast majority of other people cannot.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
A-ha are currently touring, Depeche Mode still produces music and I think I heard something about Duran Duran also still touring. R.E.M. was until not that long ago active, Pet Shop Boys still exist and from time to time a new album is being made... just like with every decade, there are a few bands that "survive" the high time of the music they came up in. Some change and adapt to the new beats. Some don't and continue with the same kind of music, both with varying success.
Some quite memorable tracks have been made in the 80s. And a lot, a great lot of trash. Like in every decade. You only remember the good ones, the bad ones fade away and since only the good ones remain to be played on the radio, over time it seems that past music was better. It wasn't. It's just that only the good ones survive until today. You might notice that you get to hear very, very little Eurodance on those networks playing "the hits of the 90s". Because most of that stuff was forgettable fast-food trash, mass produced and without any lasting value.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't listen to radio metal.
Eat the rich.
...in the 70's, just about every other song contained notably many and various permutations and combinations of the words "baby", "yeah" and "orright". It was a really lame formula and unfortunately it seemed to work.
...that by 2100 pop music could be compressed to reach near nil length!
Michael Jackson died in 2009. Pop music became the worst in 2010. Coincidence? We've also recently lost other pop greats like David Bowie, Prince and George Michael.
Personally, the only pop music I really listen to is from the 80s. That was the best decade for music.
Michael Jackson died 8 years after releasing his last album in 2001, which was also the last year any of his work was in the Billboard Top charts. No doubt he had a lasting impact on pop music, but his days of creating music died far before he did.
George Michael died 12 years after releasing his last album in 2004, which was a comeback effort after nearly a 20-year gap since he last released any original music.
Coincidence you say? No, not really.
Agreed. Metal, IMHO is having one of its best times right now. There's so much extremely good stuff being produced it's hard to get it all. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of crap as well, but a lot of good. Just none of it gets played on the radio. Hell, at least around where I live the "metal" stations have been dubbed the "metallica" stations because that's pretty much all they play. Turned on the hard rock station I listened to when I was a kid 20 years ago, they're still playing almost the exact same songs as back then. God clear channel ruins everything.
In the 80s there was the rise of The Hit Factory (not Factory Records) churning out the same crap time and time again because it was cheap to produce and people who just wanted something to dance to that wasn't disco bought it in droves.
In the 90s was the rise of indie where artists and listeners alike were fed up with the repetitive crap that dominated the charts in the 80s and some originality crept back into the mainstream. But dance was still hugely popular so it evolved into the choons and amfems that are still popular today and indie devolved into repetition.
Then came the rise of the "reality" shows that popularised some nameless nobodies, preferably with a sob backstory involving a granny dying of cancer, who just pranced around lipsynching to overproduced pitch corrected crap as the whole spectacle was considered more important.
So long as you don't slavishly follow what the singles chart gives you, there's plenty around to suit everyone. It's just not difficult to find, as it has always been.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Punk music became louder, simpler and more repetitive before it was cool.
Santana, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, Boston, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, among many others.
Then of course there's Frozen's "Let It Go" which is really just Katy Perry's "Firework"...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Making it easier for AI to compose music by making the target easier to hit. Headlines of AI composers hit 10 years early.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Here's Aphex Twin making the track Vordhosbn using ProTracker, a 90's tracker-style app, which were the forerunners of the modern loop based software tools like Live and Fruity. Even the rhythm isn't the same across any two bars. The problem isn't the software, the problem is the person using the software.
https://vimeo.com/223378825
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
You want better metal.. listen to bands like Elder, Mastodon, Sylosis, and for a real breath of little known fresh air, DVNE from Scotland.
Silence is a state of mime.
What are liner notes?
Beware of the Leopard.
They put metal on the radio?
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This is much of why. Dynamics are gone for many recordings and 'remasters'/reissues. I think one of the reasons I like Tool is that they pay close attention to dynamics. They are rhythmically great, and lyrically great, but Adam Jones is not a very new idea driven guitarist.
When dynamics are gone, and all is compressed (dynamically) together, it gets very tiring to my ears, very quickly.
Silence is a state of mime.
Trump being elected is pretty much unarguable proof that at least some humans are getting more stupid.
Totally agree.
How stupid does one have to be to run probably the *only* candidate that was worse than Trump against him? Hell, the Dems could have chosen almost anyone else and beat Trump easily.
We could be discussing President Sanders instead of Trump if the Clintons and DNC leadership didn't engage in election fraud in the primaries.
Want to know who to blame for Trump becoming POTUS?
Blame the Clintons and DNC leadership. THEY are the most responsible for Trump's victory, not the RNC. Hell, the RNC hates Trump almost as much as the Dems do!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
What passes for pop music today sucks because it has stopped being about music; it is all about making money off the "artist" who actually isn't. There are few actual bands and many "groups" are more dancers than singers. The singers don't actually have to be good, relying on autotune instead. The music is usually recorded in advanced by a team of musicians who don't go on tour, the music and lyrics written by a handful of people behind the scene looking for the right combo to get the next number one song.
Music today is the equivalent to internet memes: The same thing with different shit thrown on top to try to make something popular for a few days.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Commercial (radio) music in general, mostly utter shit and has been for a long time now.
The study started with pop music in the 1970s. I thought music from the 70s was just the worst - overall. What do others think?
We need a few additional AIs to write all this modern crap.
And now get off my lawn with your boombox.
'Angry'. 'Uneducated'.
There ya go, insightful analysis. Not.
Actually, the lemming comment is equally valid accusing our youth of following whatever meme they are being fed at the moment.
Me? I'm an aging white cracker homophobe post-Republican conservative, and I love Camilla Cabello, Lourde, Khalid, Halsey. I still prefer 70s power rock/metal, Led Zeppelin is with Pink Floyd the eipitome of power rock, and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window (the Beatles version, please) is a blues song. And the Blues is God's music. Mostly. Bass305 is worth a slot in my playlist still, FSOL was and is a revelation, Air is my guilty pleasure, Moby is clever, I do NOT CARE that Toni Childs is white, Sara McLachlan can sing that sad shit forever, and Madeleine Peyroux seemed like a scared little girl when I first heard her, and it's wonderful she's still working at this. Yes, I'm a fool for female voices. Between Mahler's First, Ravel, Handel, and Beethoven I have enough, so Tchaikovsky is dessert. Puccini is enough.
But try to expand the musical horizons of my 15 yo FD? Oh, dear God, she kinda likes George Clinton, thinks George Michael is saccharine, Boy George is some weird inside joke, Snoop is old but cred, Will Smith is an actor, Hammer is a tool, and I'm stupid trying to share my decrepit music with her. All the time I realize that her radio is filled with the same 8 songs all day long, she prefers 'gangsta' rap from men who she would file restraining orders against if they were in her life, and has the modern version of picket fence/station wagon/2 .2 kids/dog/cat/vacation on the shore, which is total devotion/two against the world/total bliss/rule the world. I pray that dream is broken gently, but the music is corrosive. And she knows it, but it's like a drug. Actually, it's a drug. Yes.
I'll pass on having to explain how Baby, It's Cold Outside and Acid Queen are less sexual than anything she's listening to. That is not so easy after all.
And so it's the Deja Vu all over again.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It only plays what the big music producers want to push onto the public and make popular that week. Go online and discover some independent (indie) bands that haven't sold their souls to get big record deals and can make songs/albums how they want to. The musicians craft is alive and well but it won't be found on the FM dial or on a top ten list.
For Canadian indie music check out CBC Radio 3.
Well, radio "metal" :-)
Eat the rich.
http://www.cdmasteringservices...
#DeleteFacebook
IMO the multitude of songs using the same chord progression, which is something that bugs the crap outta me about many pop songs, wouldn't be so god damned grating on my senses, at least, if they changed up the tempo, and the timing, how many bars each chord is played, etc... even those couple of simple steps make an overused progression sound a bit better, and a little fresher.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I'm an aging radical centrist who despises racism, know-nothingism, homophobia, and falsely-entitled, right-wing bloviators.
And I agree with pretty much everything you've said about music ...
Check out my novel.
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
You think you've found your groove
Well, I'm here to set you stray-e-ate
It's not that hard to prove
Your music ain't that grey-e-ate
We say we hate it
And you know that it's all sad
We say we hate it
And you know you should feel bad
We said it hurts our ears
We almost lost our mind
Not heard such crap in years
Your drummer must be blind
We say we hate it
And you know that it's all sad
We say we hate it
And you know you should feel bad
Oo, we hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
You know it's come to this
I think it's only fair
Stop writing all that shit
And take it off the air
We say we hate it
And you know that it's all sad
We say we hate it
And you know you should feel bad
Oo, we hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
" The music is slower, melodically simpler, louder, more repetitive, more "I" (first-person) focused, and more angry with anti-social sentiments."
None of these mean "worse" per se. While I admire this kind of analysis, I reject the idea that it permits broad scale subjective value judgements with the scent of "objective truth".
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Personally, the only pop music I really listen to is from the 80s. That was the best decade for music.
Except 80's hair/glam metal was awful, which is part of the reason it was swept aside so quickly by grunge.
As an aside heavy metal had a renaissance in the 90's after dumping the 80's hair metal crap, but for the most part metal stopped being pop music so not very relevant to the original article.
You must be from either New York or California to have such a deficient view of middle America.
Yes, it is becoming simpler, louder and more repetitive. The drum machine pounds out a repetitive four-bar pattern. The melodic background is a loop from a synthesizer. The human singer just chants four or five words over and over while a machine keeps him or her in tune with the synthetic background. There are very few actual musicians working in pop music these days. All a producer needs is one keyboard player and a looping recorder.
It's worth noting that much of the top-5 songs in the past 10 - 15 years have all been written by the same tiny handful of songwriters.
Obviously Max Martin tops this list, and has been writing #1's since at least 1997. He has dominated the pop charts even more in the past decade. He has either written or co-written most #1 pop songs you can think of for the past 5 years. He also produces the songs he writes for the singers that release them. Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, P!nk, Kelly Clarkson - every single one of them had a #1 with Max Martin in the past few years - and some (Timberlake) since the beginning of their careers.
Whenever I hear that a song by Katy Perry is a "dis track" against Taylor Swift I just go "They're written by the same guy!" In fact he might be suggesting these tracks to specific artists with that kind of press in mind.
Martin himself might be single-handedly responsible for the actual stats this article outlines.
And when it's not Max Martin, it's one of his protegés, e.g.: Dr. Luke.
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
"Woke up, got out of bed, started to work but did some Coke instead, I love that woman, I love that sweet cocaine."
IDK if it was Cocker or Leon Redbone, but you'll never see that in reruns. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
The record companies are making music no one wants to download anymore.
"radical centrist" seems an oxymoron.
Consider that the hit making machine(s) analyze their works closely to see if they fit specific boundaries of a model developed to fit music, now considered "content" into their formulas.
YouTube play (used to be radio play) time, viral capability, on-tour dynamics with choreography, and the disposable nature of artists and trends.
This isn't about artistry, it's about making money. The indy-music isn't about pop-music or even a specific genre, and with the death of live music (everyone's staring at smartphones), touring becomes wholly the crux of serious marketing money.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the quality of current music distribution isn't targeting you, it's targeting the bell curve of making its shareholder return-- and not your tastes. It has to sell internationally, and be re-marketed to cultures outside of North America successfully. Is it "dumbed-down"? Not full of localized themes, protest or otherwise because they might piss-off other cultures. Everything's safe, if slightly smokey, but there is no possibility for zeal, or novelty.... or the excitement of days gone by.
When AI meets pop hits, we're doomed. Oh, wait.....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Absolutely. And that is why Radio Caroline - a 1960's pirate radio station is doing rather well as an internet stream and as a local AM radio station in the UK. It features a lot of 70's album tracks. Hear the streams on this page http://www.radiocaroline.co.uk...
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I commute quite a lot, and sometimes my podcast app does not work and I am forced to listen to music, after about 20min it all sounds the same to me, the same rhythm the same unimaginative lyrics. There are no phrases on the level of "Where angels fear to tread" (which comes from a book AFAIK).
I guess the ultimate goal is the "Disaster Area" from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L. Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277 (1953).
I can mathematically prove that all music since I was a teenager is vacuous noise.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You make a good point. Most of the best pop music in the world is available in places outside the USA and Europe where new genre's are still being invented. The problem with Europe and the USA is that the music business has a formula which shifts product and they are not changing it.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
. . . set on you.
Written by Rudy Clark, first recorded by James Ray in 1962, further popularized by George Harrison in 1987.
It's very repetitive.
What's old is new.
There was a story on public radio (haven't yet found it again) a few years ago about the simplicity of pop songs reflecting the mood of society.
It's compression. Audio compression levels are way up over what they were 20 years ago. I can't listen to many modern recordings because they no longer have any dynamic range to them. Repetition is generally what makes a hit song a hit song. Simple catchy, highly repetitive musical phrase.
What is destroying pop music are the music corporations, namely copyright laws.
Laws sponsored by immortal music corporations and ignored by the human dummies are basically making a finite pattern of notes into intellectual property that can be owned by a corporate entity for generations.
Look at Robin Thicke. He puts out a catchy R&B tune, and he gets sued, not for "stealing" a performer's melody, but the backbeat of a Marvin Gaye song from 1971! That's over forty years ago!
So what do you think is going to happen when there's a finite amount of possible good sequence of notes to make up a song (including bass riffs!) when its intellectual property for over a century!?!? No more new songs, you have to pay a corporate owner to "reformulate" it.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
On point 4 - young people finding old music and finding it better than 2010s pop - this may just be a case of 'survivorship bias'. The dross will fade away and the good stuff will stick around, but for newer music from the 2010s, the dross still hasn't had a chance to fade away.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Because modern country music, that staple of conservatives, is an example of high art. Most modern country music is basically pop with a dobro and a guy or gal singing in a fake southern accent.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
He found that songs have steadily become more repetitive over the years...
When I was in my mid-20s, I began to grow weary of repetition in pop music. I noticed that most songs had about 20-25 unique words and the constant repetition of a few words was becoming irritating. One day, upon hearing Knights in White Satin by the Moody Blues, I was intrigued by the non-trivial words and especially the music. Not long thereafter I discovered classical music on the local PBS outlet. I began weaning myself off pop music and listened more and more to classical music.
This was probably an early instance of my brain beginning to mature and leaving behind childish music that was not at all challenging or interesting.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Could it be that the internet and smartphones are providing so much information that our brain actually prefer simpler things nowadays ?
postbigbang noted:
"radical centrist" seems an oxymoron.
It's really not, though.
A centrist is one who believes that the greatest good for the greatest number is generally found in the center of the political discourse - and achieving it typically requires compromise on both sides.
A radical centrist is one who believes that the greatest good for the greatest number can best be achieved by standing the loudest mouths on both extremes of the political shouting match up against a wall and shooting their stupid, uncompromising asses ...
Check out my novel.
One is heavily into 80s classic rock and the other is into classical-y music (stuff like Two Cellos and Pentatonix). They are both aware of modern pop music but quite uninterested.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Indeed. This article is limited in its overview. For one, there are different ways for music to be "complex". It can have complex melody, complex rhythm, complex textures, complex timing, and complex lyrics, for example.
As a general rule of composing and performance, you should not have all these factors be complex at the same time: it sounds like noisy mud. A few are into noisy-mud "modern art" sounds, but the rule stands the test of time for popular music. Human physiology cannot typically absorb that much complexity: you have to judiciously pick and choose what factors are complex and which are simple.
While I agree modern pop music is simpler melody-wise, it has more "texture", in part because there are more tools and synthesizers to do more things to sound. The total complexity has remained about the same, but the profile of the complexity of the factors has changed.
Similar change happened in the past. Baroque music was melodically complex and intricate. However, the rhythm was relatively simple. The early-middle classical era (around C. W. Gluck & Haydn's time) shifted to simpler melodies and less layering, but more complex timing. The pace slowed down and sped up in a more complex manner than baroque music. The baroque composer George Frideric Handel complained that the "new" style was "too simple". He wanted to kick the new composers off his lawn.
Change is the same as it ever was.
Table-ized A.I.
Did mr. Betteridge's head just explode?
Oooo, sign me up for radical centrism! I like your brochure.
The above research is interesting, but doesn't mean that pop music is getting worse as the author indicates. The change in tempo, lyric repetitiveness and focus, and simpler chord structures may just reflect changing tastes. I think any argument that complicated song structures are objectively better than simpler ones is going to sound pretty silly, especially for popular music. No one wants to shake their ass to odd time signatures.
The point that people across generational lines say that pop music from the 2010s is the worst is somewhat compelling, but I'd bet that people would say pop music from the current decade is the worst no matter what decade it was. What would be more interesting is to look at only the votes for worst decade other than the current one, as those people probably gave it some real thought instead of just remembering whatever atrocity was playing on the radio on their way to work that morning.
alternative rock is IMHO the best it's ever been, popish and similar if not better than the 80s pop.
Pop today is too geared exclusively to pre-teen girls and the inner city.
Country died in the late 90s, but had a good run from the mid-20s to the 90s. Now it is unrecognizable female oriented pop with a country twang.
The worst thing that happened to these music genres was consolidation of media properties for these genres under Viacom MTV Networks in the late 90s, 2000 and radio conglomerates that followed their lead 1990+.
Well, I've read many places that people tend to become more conservative when times get tough. I have long suspected that the conservative movement in this country, and elsewhere for that matter, has been up to all sorts of mischief large and small. From robotic astro-turfing of message forums across the net to talk radio to crashing the economy back in '08 there has been a vast right-wing conspiracy to drive the citizenry to the right. It's been working very well.
Most examples of new Pop Music have a number of traits in common:
Some sort of "anthem-like" sound bite.
Short, easily repeated chorus.
Center around some sort of fleeting crisis, or "drink enough and it will go away" problem.
Loud Bass is also included, to justify the listener having those bass-boosted, noise cancelling headphones they drop $200+ a pair on.
As for the social trend: Everyone is a bit less happy, and more than a little paranoid about the changes in society. Things like whatever Prez#45 has done lately, or North Korea, or the BitCoin Bubble taking their dreams of getting rich quick down the drain with them.
It's little wonder pop music lines up with the feelings of the times. Louder helps you drown things out. Darker reflects the mood of the people. Repetitive being their day to day grind through life...
Go Figure.
available from before the 2000's.
Seriously, I really don't listen to modern music ouside of blue october (which may be considered "classic" now too).
Some of this may be due to the draconian copyright rules around music. I forget if it is 12 or 7 notes now but it's crazy restrictive.
I would look for public domain songs to base the melodies on so you don't get sued.
Plus, after a period of musical instrument experimentation the range of instruments has become fairly standardized.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
==This into that==
Funny this topic came up today. My first waking thought was a desire to insert this into that. Sleep is amazing. True story.
This = Mel Brooks voice-alike from Springtime for Hitler in Germany with the line "don't be stupid, be a smarty, come on join the Nazi party".
That = the first skinhead refrain in Aqua's Barbie Girl with the line "come on Barbie, let's go party". You'd need to find a slightly longer version of this refrain to make the splice, but that's far enough for me for now.
I had only ever listened to Barbie Girl once (about six months ago), but it was enough to trigger some form of pattern recognition while I slept after another Producers micro-binge yesterday.
Damn if I couldn't get Mel to rewrite (and dance) that entire Danish disaster.
Mel's got the moves, too: High anxiety
==Slightly off-topic addendum==
Not that lawsuits have anything to do with the sad state of lyrical insight these days.
Of course she's not a sex pot.
==Geek sex-pot dumpster dive==
What Would Sex-Pot Barbie Look Like in Real Life? by Meagan Tintari
Ouch. And I do mean penetrating pencil neck pain. WTF, Meagan?
Arithmetic is hard: The given precision ranges from two to five significant digits (for equivalent values). ..." should probably be "Barbie, assuming a 1/6 scale, ..." ... ...
Presentation is hard: the tables aren't row equivalent (a healthy girl has different measurements), and aren't column parallel either (that might make it easy to read).
Geometry is hard: "Barbie, at 1/6 scale,
Sentences are hard: A healthy 19 year old girl [] come from CDC.gov
Punctuation is hard: A healthy 19-year-old girl [] come from CDC.gov
And—geek drum roll—the two ellipses in the quotation above (standing in for colons after "measurement" and "Post") is from the original.
==Final irony==
As a final irony, the UK measurements in the original were actually rendered using U+2033 : DOUBLE PRIME for the inch symbol, but I had to ditch that small sequin of geek enlightenment to format for Slashdot.
Which is why many kids I spoke whith who were born in the 2000s like the music of that and earlier eras often better than the music that is made now.
-- Cheers!
>"radical centrist" seems an oxymoron.
Not in a highly bi-modal system
horror vacui
I'm a communist who listens to everything from classical to mathcore, including a majority of what you listed. I'm sorry your 15 yo's taste is awful, but if I'm honest most of what I listened to at 15 doesn't hold up either.
would like to have a wa-oh, oh-wa-wa-word with you.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I C(SNY) what you did there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When you say "Pop" music, I think that the "Pop" determination is made by radio stations and record labels. While, like Network TV, these distribution channels may have the single largest block of listenership, does it have even half the audience in any age demographic? Information technology allows us many different ways to get music, and we have fragmented our attentions among them. The distribution channel that designates "Pop" is run by business people who have been trained to believe that the only real product is maximized investor returns, so it's not surprising that this genre is skewed towards a product that maximizes something other than musicality. However, lots of music that these distribution channels don't classify is being created all the time and reaching listeners by other methods. Using "Pop" to make a determination about current music, is like using Network Television to make a determination about visual entertainment. The prevalence of "Realty TV" will seem to suggest the bar has been lowered, but if you're not including all the various new material available online, you're not close to seeing the whole picture.
You're not even sharp enough to notice we aren't a group.
It is like if somebody says, "I like rainbows," and you start asking to subscribe to the newsletter. We can tell you're trying to be an asshole, but there is nothing beyond that, not even a childish insult, just the raw intent to be an ass.
You must be a kid who wasn't alive at the time if you think the 80s was only hair metal. The best stuff by Metallica, Megadeth, Sepultura, King Diamond, Danzig, Manowar, Gwar, Slayer, Napalm Death, Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse came out in the 80s.
The 80s sprouted a lot of other great genres of music like new wave, new romantic, synthpop, electropop, dream pop, avant-garde, techno, house, trance, IDM, alternative rock, post-rock, shoegaze, worldbeat and downtempo.
Music from the 80s just makes you feel good when you hear it, unlike the "mainstream" (OTA radio) music of today. It was the most creative decade for music since the Romantic era.
Don't listen to radio metal.
Indeed, look for good bands elsewhere. I found YouTube is surprisingly useful there, in three ways:
1) The "Up next" column contains a mix of stuff I already have seen/listened to (might have to switch off cookies now that I think about it, but I digress) and similar stuff. The "similar" category is often a good start for finding other good bands.
2) Some guys have created YouTube channels with their preferred music. In some cases with permission of the labels, or at least they claim so. As an example, the channel of "Black Metal Promotion": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCWehBejA23yEz3zp7jlcg. As far from radio music as you can get...
3) Another version of 2) are forums where people post links to music on YouTube.
Interestingly, those links are not often killed off via DMCA takedown notices. Either the (small) labels cannot afford an army of lawyers or they are appreciating the free publicity. As in, losing some sales to freeloaders is still better than to languish in obscurity.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Aighearach remonstrated:
You're not even sharp enough to notice we aren't a group.
It is like if somebody says, "I like rainbows," and you start asking to subscribe to the newsletter. We can tell you're trying to be an asshole, but there is nothing beyond that, not even a childish insult, just the raw intent to be an ass.
In all fairness, though, you have to admit it is a handsome brochure ...
;>
Check out my novel.
You must be a kid who wasn't alive at the time if you think the 80s was only hair metal. The best stuff by Metallica, Megadeth, Sepultura, King Diamond, Danzig, Manowar, Gwar, Slayer, Napalm Death, Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse came out in the 80s.
Absolutely there was some good metal from the 80's, but the article is about popular music, not good music. Generally the bands you listed weren't hitting the top of the billboard charts or filling stadiums like the classic [and mostly marginally talented] 80's glam/hair metal bands.
FWIW, I was born in 1980, Megadeth is my favorite band, I'm a big fan [still] of Gwar, Metallica post black album is shit...
Best does not equal popular, and the article is about pop music. In the 80's glam/hair was pop music, not thrash metal.
Interesting post. I'm a white cracker too and I have no idea who Camilla Cabello is but I love Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and George Clinton. I loathe George Michael but Tchaikovsky is cool in my book.
I've no idea what an "FD" is. I don't really care for Boy George but Snoop is alright. Beethoven is cool and I think I have a Handel CD somewhere.
"the Blues is God's music"
Which God?
I also like Blues for Allah by the Grateful Dead., God (or Allah?) help me.
"It;s cold outside": (there's no kind of atmosphere) - obviously a Red Dwarf reference
"I'm the gypsy, I'm the Acid Queen!" - obviously a Who reference.
Deja Vu - oh my god,you have me listening to David Crosby again -
"I'm a fool for female voices"
So am I Whether it's Donna Gaudhcaux or Grace Slick or Janis Joplin or Trish Murphy I love them.
I call rap music "complaining to a beat".
Metal itself is okay, just ignore the whiny, detuned pop that passes for metal from that country that's very good at producing entertainment.
I've found Spotify's recommendations to be quite good, but you have to be in a "niche genre" like metal. If they put you in the pop music bucket, you'll just get endless waves of shit.
Other than that, I follow a couple of good labels on Bandcamp, and I regularly read the Toilet ov Hell metal blog. They have good reviews and cover some really great underground stuff.
Eat the rich.
Go fish out any of the CDs that Linda Ronstadt recorded with Nelson Riddle. Or virtually any single song. Kinda reminds you of the current flavor of sexploitation hip-hop so popular with kids, if all you do is focus on the words.
And so I am convicted.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Her first album has a couple of great tunes, one an anthem. Not at all bad. Her second is a tough sell. But I'm a fool for bass, so I was probably suffering an endorphin rush.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Look at the people. Isn't it amazing that the apparent most needed aspect for singing is to be attractive?
Now lookk at 15 years ago. While there were attractive people, there were also some barkers as well.
Given that modern Pop Music is written by computer, the voices are aoutotuned and most lyrics mean nothing, and damn, those sure are a bunch of hotties who can twerk and dance, and the biggest takeaway is:
Everything else matters a lot more than the actual music.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Music has become a commodity. Meanwhile, production companies are more interested in sales than creativity. Perhaps it is all just a factor of commercialism? Or maybe I'm just to old to know what good music is supposed to sound like.
All new amplifiers goes to eleven! :-D https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think the "Pop" music scene is just the death throes of the old record labels. An intentional decision was made in the early 1990s to phase out studio production music in favor of much cheaper to produce rap and pop. What we have today is the result of almost two decades of that business model. The cheapest to make with the least creativity necessary is being aggressively marketed. So many of the extremely creative and talented musicians just aren't playing the pop game any more. Have a look at bandcamp.com and pledgemusic.com and you will see that a record label is totally irrelevant to getting music produced and distributed. If you get crowdfunding to cover the studio and mixing costs then get listed with Amazon, iTunes, and Google you have your music in production and distribution. Anyone still think a record label and an agent are necessary? Hopefully the cream will rise to the top. But, currently, any old garage produced track can be in the market. And the old outmoded production houses are flooding the market with pop clone millennial whoops. There is a lot of very good new music out there but you have to look for it and say a prayer to the gods of Serendipity that you find the gems among the dreck. Looking at my music purchases over the last couple of years there are some old names and new. Ian Anderson (Yep, Jethro Tull's flautist is still going strong) Ruelle Woodkid The Real Tuesday Weld (totally bizarre but you can't get their tunes out of the head) Aaron Chupa (I sill think of Chupa as a Jamaican candy bar.) Lindsey Stirling Steeleye Span (Summer of love was their first album. folk/rock for over 40 yrs) Tuatha Dea (Watch their videos. You won't see Appalachia the same ever again) Mean Mary Pentatonix Blackmore's Night The John Butler Trio (If you can sit still to their music, you are in the crowd for Walking Dead) Care if it is dynamite music even if not in English.... WagakkiBand Sekai no Owari Faun Shakira Living by a trending list is for clones.
NRRPT/RCT