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When do we stop finding new music?

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Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#441

Post by thaumasiotes »

SamBam wrote: post #318
IncreasePosts wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't ask for examples, I'm familiar with what race these artists are. My point is if the music actually is so different, it should be noticable and describable without knowing the race of a particular artist. So how would you describe the black music that describes only black musicians but not white musicians from this period, and vice versa.

"Should be describable" is a false metric. We can hear differences between categories and not be able to verbalize what we're hearing. It's the same for anything -- you could walk through a museum showing abstract expressionism and action painting, and feel that one of the styles speaks to you, and yet not be able to put into words how the two styles are different. The brain can categorize much more easily than it ca…

> We can hear differences between categories and not be able to verbalize what we're hearing. It's the same for anything

For some reason, the view is widely held that internal thoughts are expressed in words. This would mean that anything you can think can easily be verbalized.

The fact that this view is quite obviously false seems to bother very few people.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#442

Post by thaumasiotes »

pxc wrote: post #303

I expect it'll never happen to me. My dad was still actively seeking out new music when I was a kid, streaming college radio via the Internet before Pandora, Last.fm, or Spotify were things. He's in his 60s today and he still listens to new music (in a range of genres) all the time. If novelty in music is actually important to you, this won't happen to you.

> If novelty in music is actually important to you, this won't happen to you.

One of the most traditional - and important - uses of music was to preserve the oral record, which existed in musical form to make it easier to remember accurately.

I wouldn't expect novelty in music to be important to many people.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#443

Post by coldtea »

goosejuice wrote: post #418
coldtea wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New popular music. The mainstream went from quite decent to crap within the last 20 years or so. One could always find stuff to listen to their personal echo bubble, but not as much in the wider shared pop culture space.

A peek at billboard 100 from 2004 might surprise you. Same themes, new style and production. That said the rise of trap, particulary the repetitve autotuned bars, certainly hasn't helped in the lyricism dept. You'll of course find great talent in every generation. While I don't like the majority of the current top billboard there's some talent behind those tracks.

>A peek at billboard 100 from 2004 might surprise you. Same themes, new style and production.

That era is already after it has been going downhill.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#444

Post by 10729287 »

I'm mostly into punk/hardcore myself but music is probably one of my numerous passions that never seems to fade and nowadays I love to listen to radio to be exposed to music I wouldn't be exposed thru algorythms. Sometimes I don't like it and it's ok, but I often encounter great discoveries. https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip is perfect for it. Give it a try !

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#445

Post by ElFitz »

tombert wrote: post #60
floxy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

I think it kind of goes both ways? Maybe the word "uncultured" isn't right, but I feel like when I say "I don't really listen to much that was written in the last fifteen years", people kind of act like I'm some kind of luddite. I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest people go way back and listen to the classical stuff. Personally, I've never really been able to get into classical music outside of movie…

> I also think a lot of people feel like the smartest people go way back and listen to the classical stuff. […] and for awhile I was kind of embarrassed by that fact

That says a lot more about those who think that it does about than those who do or do not listen to "classical" music.

> Personally, I've never really been able to get into classical music outside of movie soundtracks,

Not implying it will or should be the same for you, or even that you should try it, but in my limited experience headphones and speakers have hardly ever done any justice to "classical" music.

It also seems some of it needs the listeners to have lived a little, so it can resonate with them. As an example, I couldn’t care less for operas as a teenager. Fifteen years later, two live operas are among the few pieces that have so far managed to make me cry.

But in any case, to each their own.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#446

Post by wittierusername »

atoav wrote: post #383
lapcat wrote: post #168

I find it interesting that GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... The 1980s are still doing quite well among all but the oldest generation. Is it possible that music may actually be getting worse? Corporatized, consolidated, computerized. Look at Hollywood now too: everything is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot…

I am not sure about the whole thing. When I was a teenager (so roughly the decade from 2000 to 2009) I hated my guts of any contemporary music, most of what I liked was from the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s etc. Nowadays I have quite some things in my record collection from my teenage decade, some of which I discovered only a few years ago, some of which I knew and liked back then, but it wasn't popular music back then. I alwa…

As someone constantly seeking out new music (recently for example, I've been working backwards through the 1001 albums you must listen to book), I inherited some of my family's old vinyl collections including stuff that was like 60 years old.

So so much of it is awful. It's interesting granted, but people ignore that the charts were filled with bland covers of other popular songs even in the 60's.

Hip Hop is a great showing of survivor bias. Sure, Tupac, Biggie, Beastie Boys etc are classic but people are rarely listening to the bland safe music from that era. So so many songs where the rapper couldn't think of anything more inventive than "oh you're having FUN well wait till I go and get my GUN I'll shoot you dead and you'll be DONE"

In 30 years, people will hear Kendrick's discography and think "god no one makes meaningful hip hop anymore" while forgetting about the "pop music but instead of a guitar solo, it's a bad rap verse" or the vast amount of emo/trap/SoundCloud stuff where the good stuff is rare.

The exciting thing about living now is the ease that someone can send a link to me. Constantly my friends and I are finding recently released or decade old music that we can simply message the other and say "you'll love the production on this" - whereas for years, you saved up your pocket money and bought one album and that's all you had until you could afford another.

People who say modern music is rubbish rarely make any effort to actually find any. You've kids now talking about bands like Arctic Monkeys but they don't realise the indie landfill of shite guitar bands that all had the same look, same twangy sound, same trajectory. For every Panda Bear/Animal Collective - there was 100 bland animal based bands all copying the same formula in the hope of being as big as Pigeon Detectives lmao

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#447

Post by thirdsun »

the_gastropod wrote: post #28
fancymcpoopoo wrote: post #7

Very difficult with streaming. Rdio used to have a slider to recommend more unusual music. No other service has this that I’ve found. They keep playing the same songs and artist forever.

I still mourn the loss of Rdio. It was far and away better than any other option. It's such a bummer it lost out to Spotify.

So true. I remember those days very fondly. There was a real community of listeners back then. Within that circle you shared albums and playlists, commented on and discussed them.

Plus, it had a persistant queue that could handle single songs as well as albums and playlists as individual items which could be moved freely. Everything I was interested in was added to the queue and I could be certain it'd still be there tomorrow. Sort of like a musical backlog.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#448

Post by shellfishgene »

Jipazgqmnm wrote: post #432
dudefeliciano wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a freeform radio station near me do you have any suggestions for similar online radio stations or playlists?

- https://radioparadise.com/ (!) - https://fip.fr

Radio Paradise is really excellent, I think the name is kinda off-putting to people looking for good music though.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#449

Post by dghughes »

It's like junk food next to you in versus in a cupboard upstairs. One you eat now impulsively the other you won't eat due to the effort needed as minimal as it is it still slows you down.

If you put in a cassette tape and let it run you would usually always listen to it in order. To some extent a CD too but it and vinyl were easier to jump song to song.

Radio was even more uncontrollable it made you wait for your favourite song while it played other songs. Sometimes a day or two waiting for that new song to appear. Radio mercilessly teased you too. Even Top 40 radio shows you had to wait not knowing was your song now higher up making you excited but it meant you had to wait, excitement grows. Or was it lower down and it played sooner (a dreadful feeling) or you missed it completely!

I've noticed this over the years that more and more I rarely listen to anything new just what I know from years past.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#450

Post by contrast »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #291
wbl wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go listen to Straight Otta Compton and then Vanilla Ice and you'll get it. Or for Swing Count Basie vs. the slicker more commercial Glenn Miller but it's subtle. And then Coltrane and Orman and Davis come and change the whole jazz world.

I didn't ask for examples, I'm familiar with what race these artists are. My point is if the music actually is so different, it should be noticable and describable without knowing the race of a particular artist. So how would you describe the black music that describes only black musicians but not white musicians from this period, and vice versa.

There’s an assumption to your argument that I don’t believe holds true, that there is such a significant difference that it should be easily describable.

Talking about the arts is difficult. In everyday conversation, well known phrases for describing the arts include “I know it when I see it” and “if you have to ask, then you’ll never know”. I’m a fan of “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. It just isn’t easy to describing differences in performance and interpretation.

Since it’s widely recognised that describing music is difficult, and since you’re familiar with the artists in question, perhaps you could accept the point in good faith or put into words why you don’t think they are any different?

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