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Why we listen to new music

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Re: Why we listen to new music

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very cool, I've been thinking about making a similar thing to discover new music but for a few bands I checked this does both provide bands I know to be similar as well as bands that I don't know. This seems to be powered by http://www.gnoosic.com/ , is this the only source of data?

I'm guessing that The Mars Volta may be one of your pet loves. I worked this out via ... ESP ;)

Indeed! But that wasn't what I tried. Just tried that one though and a few limitations pop up. Omar's solo projects turn up a large distance away from the band, lesser known bands that I consider to be very close in sound don't show up close to it. And there are multiple entries for Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, with and without the dash.

I'm starting to feel that depending on users to provide explicit lists misses a lot of interesting data, unfortunately.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#52

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…

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.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methods of discovering and promoting new music change over time, especially compared to the peak days of a niche electronic music artist in the 90s. Tik Tok is an absolutely massive recent source of new music growth [0], Taylor Swift and Beiber are absolutely massive artists with almost unparalleled influence across multiple genres, their riding of new vibes throws off tsunami wave effects. They’re doing their job, a…

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 sound of West Africa -> London onto American radio.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#54
As I’ve aged I’ve discovered that new pop music tends to be a reflection of the current youth culture and it’s something I’m not interested in. I still listen to new music produced by artists that were in their prime when I was younger though. They aren’t culturally relevant but either am I any longer.

I’ve also found that I enjoy digging into older music And genres I would have never considered when I was younger. Robert Johnson is about as primitive as can be but it truely is fantastic blues, a genre I never much cared for. Or finding different folk music from way back, or genres like Bluegrass and their fast picking guitar legends like Norman Blake.

So yeah it’s not new music but it’s new to me. But what I wouldn’t give to hear what Kurt Cobain would be making today if he were still alive.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#55
post #16

Since internet I listened to all new music from the 20th century. A lot of "old music" from foregone age was new to me. So new music is a relative term. However, and that is my personal opinion, most new music from 2000-2020 I think is total utter crap, I rather listen to something from 1914 with horrible sound quality than something from 2014.

> most new music from 2000-2020 is utter crap

This statement is easy to react to and argue against. I almost did. But it’s true. The same is true for music from 1900-1920, or any era.

The difference is we have a record of all that “utter crap” now, and it’s ever present. If you want to find some old music that is crap, go to a consignment store and pick out some random $0.50 records. You can’t find baroque “utter crap” because who would bother to hand-copy the music notation for music of that quality?

Also, time will filter out the great works.

Digging for new music can help keep stuff alive that deserves to stand the test of time. It just takes more work than some people want to do, which is fine. Keep digging up cool computer science topics, so I can go to hacker news rather than sift through all the “utter crap” out there.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#56
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny I'm the same way I think. I used to be so into music, I was always listening to something. I had a massive collection of pirated music lol. Always looking for something new to check out. When edm and dubstep blew up I was always out at shows, festivals, random dj nights. Tried writing a lot of my own music, even had small release Then idk I got my first job out of college around 24 and stopped searching or even…

I'm sure if you speak to an 18 y/o today they'll tell you there is a scene. But give them 10 years and they'll be saying the same as you. I think it's just how our brains change. When we're in our late teens, striking out into the world everything is new and full of possibilities. We hoover up new experiences and crave novelty as we find our place in the world. But later on in life that's no longer necessary - we ent…

I have seen it being referred various times that musical interest and emotional connection to it really develops and peaks around the age 14

E.g.: https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/is-14-a-magic-... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-s...

I think the book "This Is Your Brain on Music" also talks about it, but I haven't read it yet. https://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/04...

I have never dug deeper on it, but it rings very true for my own case and friends I talked with about it. To the music that awed me when I was a teenager, most intensely so Scandinavian melodic death metal, I still to this day have a stronger emotional reaction than anything I listen to before or after that period of my life. Even tough I don't listen to those songs anymore that often and there are plenty of modern songs in similar styles that I do think are better in many aspects, that just don't have the same goosebumps effect anymore.

And I think the main difference here is me, not the music that has changed, that has gotten better or worse.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - it must get so dull. Only if you listen to dull music. Perhaps pick higher quality stuff? A good portion of my collection was originally written before 1750: Bach, Palestrina, Tallis, etc.† Some CDs I've had for >25 years and they are still as fresh as the first day I listened to them. And even a different take on the same composition can be il…

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.

> not even in the 80s

Not the OP but personally some of most innovative music can be found in the mainstream Italian scene of the late '60s - early '70s (including music film), you've got former "musique concrète" composers (or people interested in that type of music) like Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni, Armando Trovajoli or Ennio Morricone himself now composing music for the masses, I don't think anything similar has happened since then (I'd dare say that nowadays the "music for the masses" has nothing to do with avant-garde music). Add an extraordinary voice like Mina's to one of Morricone's compositions and you can get one of the best songs of all time, "Se telefonando" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXX4PdW7dLM

Re: Why we listen to new music

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - it must get so dull. Only if you listen to dull music. Perhaps pick higher quality stuff? A good portion of my collection was originally written before 1750: Bach, Palestrina, Tallis, etc.† Some CDs I've had for >25 years and they are still as fresh as the first day I listened to them. And even a different take on the same composition can be il…

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 just in case I've got a blindspot, please post a few links to some of these tracks that use cutting-edge music production to produce such novel sounds (I assume you're talking about something besides autotune). I'd like to give them a listen.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#59

Listening to new music has got to do with openness and as we age we tend to be less open to new experiences. I think best way to listen to new music is not just about a new band or new albums but more about new genres. I used to not enjoy jazz, found it elitist and quite frankly I didn't even get it. About 10 years ago I started listening jazz and anything that's got mixed with jazz, like jazz-funk, or jazz fusion an…

> as we age we tend to be less open to new experiences

Well, as we age there tends to be an accumulation of experience, so it's also to be expected that it becomes more rare to come across a genuinely new experience in everyday life.

Re: Why we listen to new music

#60
post #16

Since internet I listened to all new music from the 20th century. A lot of "old music" from foregone age was new to me. So new music is a relative term. However, and that is my personal opinion, most new music from 2000-2020 I think is total utter crap, I rather listen to something from 1914 with horrible sound quality than something from 2014.

> most new music from 2000-2020 I think is total utter crap Oooh here we go. What music have you listened to? Popular music or the very long tail of new artists and bands that are now able to produce and release good music from their home without the big publishers (although spotify, soundcloud, apple music etc are now the big publishers). Because I personally disagree. I'm more into metal myself and I dig a lot of t…

>Anyway I object to a statement "this is utter crap"; you're presenting your personal opinion as a hard fact which is a big part of everything that is wrong today.

That is how you interpret my personal opinion, I never said if things are wrong today, I just stated that today's new music is utter crap in my opinion. There is a lot of good music played by nowadays musicians.

I have no problem with you disagreeing with my personal opinion, but I do have a problem with you telling that I imply other things than I am telling.

>"this is utter crap", I never said that, there is a difference between "I think" and "This is", Don't twist my words, you are being dishonest in this conversation for doing that.

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