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When do we stop finding new music?

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Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#41

Post by floxy »

tombert wrote: post #15
injidup wrote: post #6

Finding "new" music is a concept that the music industry has marketed to you like being skinny or that cola is a lifestyle. In times past people were happy with one genre or slight variations of that genre for millennia. Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the oldest. As if there is sickness to be found in enjoying something old and we…

Yeah, I agree. I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager, but fundamentally it's not like they're hurting anyone. I listen to mostly late-90's-early-2000's punk rock even still, and I don't think it's a moral failing that I don't listen to the latest stuff all the time, just like I don't think it's a moral failing for my mo…

>I think it's easy to sit and judge someone as being "uncultured" because they listen to music that was popular when they were a teenager

Pretty funny, especially since I just attended a sold-out performance of Mozart's Requiem last month. Back when I was younger, I think the dominant perception was that classical music was "cultured" and popular / current music was lacking in refinement

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#42

Post by ryandrake »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #22

Spotify has financial incentive to obfuscate their UI to tilt people toward mindlessly consuming playlists. This is because labels pay Spotify to put certain songs on large playlists, and Spotify knows playlists are a good habit to push onto their users. Radio was used to discover new music decades ago, but paying a radio station (directly) to play a song is illegal (payola), so DJs had to break new songs, styles, an…

> So you're discovering new music, but none of it is memorable, because listening to music in 2024 (for a lot of people) is often a wall of slightly groovy background noise, with the occasional standout track that you probably toss into your own personal playlist.

Yea, I tried streaming for a while, and found exactly that. When I play some genre-specific stream with a goal of discovering new music, I find it's basically full of unremarkable, generic musak, punctuated by maybe 0.1% memorable, great tracks that I'm motivated to bookmark for later. Are these few needles worth slogging through hours of haystack? After a few years I have sadly concluded "no."

Not sure why this is. Has it always been this way (0.1% great stuff in a sea of mediocre?) or are "content creators" of today just more focused on churning out quantity than artists of the past?

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#43

Post by [deleted] »

reactordev wrote: post #17
nkotov wrote: post #3

I loved this article. I have about 4k songs saved in my "liked" playlist on Spotify, majority of them were from when I was 20 to 24, then it tapered off a lot. I turned 30 this year and I still like to discover new music but not as much as I did in my early 20s.

This is why folks in their 40s+ end up still listening to the same stuff. lol. The article was right about that. Acts like Greta Fleet help bridge those gaps between old school sounds and new music. Electronica has never been easier to get into as well and there’s a nostalgia for those old school synthwave vibes. Like all things, there’s an ebb and flow to music and musical taste over time. You’ll find as you underst…

[deleted]

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#46

Post by andrewmthomas87 »

thefaux wrote: post #10

The author seems to be describing what happens when one's primary relationship with music is one of consumption. It is easy (for me at least) to find new music when you are looking for inspiration in your own practice of making music. Most people don't make music though so I'd imagine it's easy to get stuck in that rut.

I see what you're saying in terms of additional motivation to find new music.

But, is your average person's relationship with music "one of consumption" in such a way that causes stagnation? This comes off as gatekeepy. People may not make their own music, but I imagine many people listen to music as a form of inspiration.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#47

Post by tmountain »

Age has affected my taste in music, but I continue to discover new music as I reach my mid 40s. As a teenager, I wanted to listen to grunge, punk, and metal. In my 20s, I had a strong preference for indie music. In my 30s, I got into blues and American folk music. Now, I’m in a jazz phase and appreciating classic guitarists from the 1950s and 1960s. I have always loved classical music, and I still appreciate a lot of the music from my past decades of development, but I hear a lot of it filtered through nostalgia and historical experiences more than from an angle of objective enjoyment.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#48

Post by coldtea »

noashavit wrote: post #45

I think that it really depends on your relationship with music. I’m no longer in my 30s and still find new music all the time. I wonder why parents consistently listening to older music than their childless peers

New-new music, or just new acts in the same genres that you liked in your early 20s?

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#49

Post by kyllo »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #33
injidup wrote: post #6

Finding "new" music is a concept that the music industry has marketed to you like being skinny or that cola is a lifestyle. In times past people were happy with one genre or slight variations of that genre for millennia. Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the oldest. As if there is sickness to be found in enjoying something old and we…

> Now we are spoiled for choice but are yet still made to feel ashamed if we are not consuming the newest and discarding the oldest. As Actually I've found Gen-z's to have surprisingly wide listening patterns. As a few datapoints I was surprised that my friend's teenager could actually name several Nirvana songs, knew who the Smashing pumpkins were, and also the Talking Heads. (all rose and fell from fame before her…

My friend (who's the same age as me) has a 14 year old son who's learning guitar and he asked me for a lesson. The first thing he wanted me to show him was some riffs from AC/DC songs that came out before I was born.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#50

Post by ryandrake »

ergonaught wrote: post #39

Well I'm in my 50s, and I mostly stopped finding new music when record labels, streaming, and social media destroyed the prospects for people who would otherwise make that new music for me to find. New stuff still arrives (you're not going to predict that me-at-15-loving-Megadeth will much later also love Billie Eilish or Gin Wigmore or Mirel Wagner or ...) but most "new music" is garbage by the standards set by abou…

I'm closing in on 50s, and what I miss the most out of the music I grew up with are actual cohesive albums that work as a single artistic unit. I think the 70s were the golden age of albums, and then slowly we moved towards the world of albums being just random collections of tracks, with one or two good ones and the rest "filler." Now, do many modern musicians even bother to release albums anymore? Seems like it's just track after track now.
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