Why we listen to new music • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we listen to new music

#101

Post by glitcher » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #24

Art (and music) is not something for endless consumption. Music is something we tie to our experiences, to our life, to times we've known, etc. There's no real need to always seek new music, obsessively, unless you particularly enjoy to (or you have business reasons). You're not a bad person, or more shallow, or lesser art lover, for not doing so (in fact many very deep creators of art had a very limited set of artis…

> Art (and music) is not something for endless consumption

I strongly disagree, although I would say it is completely a matter of personal preference, so I'm really only disagreeing for myself. I'll admit I'm somewhere in the middle between the 2 ends of the spectrum you describe, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the endless crate diggers as "less deep" as other listeners. Sounds like a personal bias to me.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#102

Post by anthk » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

readarticle wrote: post #53

twic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What influence does Justin Bieber have across multiple genres?

One simple example is his feature on the Despacito remix that completely and utterly dominated 2017, a solid year+ before Drake & Bad Bunny “started” the recent trend of huge English language artists featuring on Spanish language tracks and vice versa, that’s Latin pop, reggaeton, pop, and rap right there alone. Don’t let that imply Drake isn’t even more influential though, man almost single handedly brought the soun…

Just like Enrique Iglesias or Shakira.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#103

Post by bluntfang » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #87

bluntfang wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've been listening to...since middle school This feels like an appeal to tradition or nostalgia. I'd argue you're attempting to create the mentality you had in middle school, not that you like it more or less than other music.

But music is art! Any reason for liking it is perfectly valid. How weird would it be to tell someone who enjoys drinking chocolate milk that they don't actually like it because it reminds them of their school lunches.

>How weird would it be to tell someone...they don't actually like it

where did I say anything about OP liking or not liking thing?

Re: Why we listen to new music

#104

Post by severine » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

jkubicek wrote: post #94

john61 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Beethoven Sonata is always new music each time you listen carefully or play it for yourself. It depends on the quality and richness of music. Fastfood music wears off quite fast. It is made for the trash, so the industriy can sell more trash. Bach wrote music for god, as he wrote.

There’s plenty of pop and pop-adjacent music out there that has depth, complexity, and holds up well to repeat intense listening. Radiohead, Flaming Lips, most of El-P’s work. What I think is completely missing in today’s music is the prevalence of covers. If you want, you can spend a lifetime listening to Bach sonatas, by any amount of different performers, but if there’s a specific Radiohead song you like, there’s…

I get your point but maybe not the best example, as Radiohead has been covered and remixed innumerable times...

A sample: https://www.whosampled.com/Radiohead/ (135 samples, 336 covers, 36 remixes listed)

Re: Why we listen to new music

#105

Post by partomniscient » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

mattkevan wrote: post #25

Listening to new music is one of my favourite activities. Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - it must get so dull. There's so much good stuff out there, and it's so exciting to find an artist, genre or new combinations of sounds I've not heard before. Bandcamp is great for this – better than Spotify or Apple Music. You can explore by artist, genre tag, label, and by people who have…

Even though we appreciate it, the suggestion systems indirectly create a self-similarity of tastes amongst users.

This can happen at varying levels though, where all the unique 'we are all individuals' congregate and realise they're a subculture.

It completely distorts value / signal vs. noise over time and creates herd following behaviour.

Even youtube/google/alphabet realised this and eventually stopped recommending the same videos to everyone.

How many of us got exposed to PewDePie and the like because of the supposed wisdom/democracy/lowest common denominator etc. of the crowds?

We should cherish the moments we have when things like Bandcamp allow us high quality exposure to different things.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#106

Post by drawkbox » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

lowercased wrote: post #96

mattkevan wrote: post #25

Listening to new music is one of my favourite activities. Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - it must get so dull. There's so much good stuff out there, and it's so exciting to find an artist, genre or new combinations of sounds I've not heard before. Bandcamp is great for this – better than Spotify or Apple Music. You can explore by artist, genre tag, label, and by people who have…

> Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff I have a lot of emotional/memory attachments to certain music - it ties in with a lot of specific events in life. Listening to those 'same old stuff' albums/songs can take me back to places when I want to reminisce. I can get some of the same feelings, even smells and tastes sometimes, with the 'same old stuff'. Not all of those are 'old' like de…

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Music can take you back to points in your life in a way that few things can.

People should always listen to new and old music, like books or movies/shows, sometimes repeated listens, viewings, or reads, can open up new aspects of the music, something you didn't see or hear before.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#107

Post by pajaroide » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

mattkevan wrote: post #25

Listening to new music is one of my favourite activities. Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - it must get so dull. There's so much good stuff out there, and it's so exciting to find an artist, genre or new combinations of sounds I've not heard before. Bandcamp is great for this – better than Spotify or Apple Music. You can explore by artist, genre tag, label, and by people who have…

I do both, old stuff and new stuff depending on the mood. Lately I've been exploring some genres I didn't even know existed like medieval speed folk (Perkelt is a group I like) and Dungeon Synth (Fief is my favorite so far).

Re: Why we listen to new music

#108

Post by meowface » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #24

Art (and music) is not something for endless consumption. Music is something we tie to our experiences, to our life, to times we've known, etc. There's no real need to always seek new music, obsessively, unless you particularly enjoy to (or you have business reasons). You're not a bad person, or more shallow, or lesser art lover, for not doing so (in fact many very deep creators of art had a very limited set of artis…

In my opinion, this is no different from saying there's no need to watch new films or TV shows that come out, or even older ones that you haven't seen before. Why do that when you can just watch Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, the Godfather, and 2001: A Space Odyssey? Why check out books you haven't read before when you have [insert childhood favorite]?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with repeatedly returning to old stuff you like. But I don't see how people can be satisfied doing nothing but that. Fantastic new art is being created all the time, and the amount of people creating art is also increasing all the time.

The point of endless digging is to try to find other stuff that you may end up liking as much as, or perhaps even more than, the older stuff. It's not simply to consume for its own sake: it's to discover things you otherwise might be missing out on and would be thankful you found. How can you even know if that'll happen or not if you aren't exposed to lots of new things?

Also, what does it even mean to "endlessly collect" music in the modern day? You just listen to stuff you haven't heard and turn it off if you don't like it and save it to a playlist/favorites list if you do like it. There's no cost to trying albums you haven't heard before, like there was in the past. If you do really want a physical copy for whatever reason, it's easy to listen online first and decide whether or not you should get the physical copy.

This seems akin to lamenting that people are "endlessly collecting" new shows, films, and documentaries by browsing Netflix.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#109

Post by lowercased » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #90

lowercased wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Beatles have yet to be beaten in pop music" They set a standard which was followed/copied for decades - self-contained music group writing/performing their own material. And they were really good at it. The one thing that didn't get copied from them in most cases was multiple singers. They didn't really have a 'front man'. They had a lot of harmony singing. These are keys missing from most of the bands that copi…

I think there's another difference too, which is the intense practice. Long before they became famous, the Beatles were working musicians, performing live many hours a day for years. (And "many hours" was further expanded through the use of performance-enhancing drugs which would be more strictly regulated nowadays.) Nowadays, there are a lot more distractions. Musicians are too busy working on their social media gam…

it was certainly a lot, but... it wasn't quite as much as myth seems to have it built up to. Mark Lewisohn's "Tune In" does a great job of cataloging all the early year work/practice. There were sporadic months where they didn't play much at all.

But yeah, the whole business today is a much different world from the music scene of the 50s/60s. :)

The "8-10 hours per night in hamburg" were intense, but they only did a few stints of a few months at a time there. I think Lewisohn added up after their first trip in '61, they had something like... 800 hours of stage time under their belt. It's a lot, certainly, but not the 10000 hour sort of thing people sometimes think. BUT... what's interesting is that there basically weren't any other rock bands at all with that amount of "stage time as a unit" either. It was a relatively new thing altogether, certainly in the UK...

Re: Why we listen to new music

#110

Post by ubercow13 » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #58

rotoradiator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, you are fully missing out on the advances of music production. The sounds producers can create nowdays were not available in 18th century, not even in the 80s. If you consider as music only what you can write down as sheet music you are missing out on so much. Thats why finding new artists, who can make unique sounds, not just melodies, is so rewarding.

I used to think this way too. "How could the Beatles possibly still be relevant? There's been 50 years of progress since then! You wouldn't buy a PC from the 60s, why listen to music from the 60s?" And then I actually gave the classics a try. Not all types of technology obsolete themselves like computer technology. The Beatles have yet to be beaten in pop music, and Bach has yet to be beaten in music in general. But…

I don't think that's what they are saying. Even if he is still the best, there is interest to be found in music past Bach. Otherwise, why did anyone bother continuing to make music?