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When do we stop finding new music?

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Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#501

Post by goosejuice »

iraqmtpizza wrote: post #460
goosejuice wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. Even then it's highly subjective and behind almost every one of those songs or albums is a handful of brilliant writers, producers and session musicians you probably never heard of. I'd say it's never been better. Music is more accessible which means more folks get exposed to it…

If you consider the top charting music and the typical fart noises uploaded to soundcloud which have 3 listens, yes it is worse. If you're only considering your 25 favorite new songs out of tens of millions then sure, it's better. But also there is recency/novelty bias which counteracts and may overcome any past/nostalgia bias In conclusion, if all you're doing is listening to music alone in your apartment then it's…

Music only matters to the producer and the listener. It's deeply personal.

I think you're missing the point.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#502

Post by thaumasiotes »

pxc wrote: post #496
thaumasiotes wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For me, at least, the desire for new-to-me music isn't paired with a disdain for repetition or tradition. It's more like that I want to discover more traditions and connect with them, and to develop a better intuition for how the constituents of my musical universe are interconnected. The traditional use of music you highlight really resonates with the way that I listen to music, incidentally. I joked recently with m…

Where did I say people engage relatively casually with music? I highlighted a form of engagement that is (a) extremely serious, but (b) actively undermined by novelty.

You're right that a lot of people seem to view lyrics as being at best an annoyance; I've seen multiple people on HN argue with a straight face that in order to translate a song from one language to another language, it's not necessary for the meaning of the new lyrics to be similar to the meaning of the old lyrics.

This is not a sense of "translation" that I'm familiar with for other linguistic phenomena.

I've also seen people take offense at the idea that the concept of a "song" might involve singing.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#503

Post by lapcat »

goosejuice wrote: post #500
lapcat wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. But there's a crucial difference between what's out there and what people are listening to. There's a lot of obscure stuff that not many people are listening to. Whereas the top charting music is what millions of people are listening to. It matters a lot what's getting marketed…

Define obscure. Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because if you have a desire to find music that you like you just have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet connection. If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.

> it's all there for free with an Internet connection

The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is massive. Almost everything is available on the internet, but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

> If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.

So what is the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music", which again, you haven't addressed.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#504

Post by karlgrz »

mindcrime wrote: post #490

OK, I didn't read TFA yet, but here's some anecdata for you: I'm 50, and literally 15 minutes ago I'm on a conference call with some colleagues in Brasil, and while we were waiting for a pipeline to run, I started asking those guys about other Brazilian heavy metal bands (other than Sepultura) that I should listen to. They mentioned Sarcófago, and in the process of reading about Sarcófago on Wikipedia I discovered Ra…

I'm just 40 but it sounds like we are like minded in a lot of ways. Never stop being curious. There's always something new out there. The joy of discovering some obscure metal band with 7 followers on Spotify or bandcamp that you intensely resonate with is unmatched. It's one of my favorite experiences.

One of the things I've learned about myself over the past decade is I'm an outlier in terms of the listener profile. I crave albums over songs. That crafted experience an artist creates for the listener makes it all for me. Perhaps it's because I'm also a musician, but something about a group of songs becoming greater than the sum of it's parts has an endearing, emotional impact on that listening session. I think a lot of playlist driven listening loses out on that.

Cheers, thanks for sharing.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#505

Post by tyrust »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #403
cesaref wrote: post #389

The useful metric with these sorts of things is to ask yourself, when was the last time you tried something that you didn't like? For expensive experiences, say, going to the theatre, it's hard to see shows you don't think you are going to like, as the price pressure makes you choose 'safe bets' as the cost/reward is somewhat weighted in one direction. For something like music, the above used to be the case, as typic…

>We really need music search which follows more interesting routes through content rather than just 'people who like this also like' or 'here's another album by someone you already listen to'. I wish we had something like /mu/ flowcharts[1] but in a more general way. So after playing a song you can get a question or a prompt of what you liked and get some suggestion based on the input. But IMO, music recommendation p…

last.fm is still around, although I don't use it for recommendations.

I've recently enjoyed using RYM to find music. Start with an artist/album I like, click on the genre, and try out the top-rated artists/albums.

It's a manual version of the flowchart, you're right that it'd be neat to automate that. I haven't even tried using RYM tags, but they'd probably be useful input, too.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#506

Post by noashavit »

SamBam wrote: post #330
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

For me it's the lack of time or headspace to keep up, and the lack of time to go to concerts. Pre kids we did a lot more of that.

That makes sense!

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#507

Post by kjkjadksj »

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…

Music was always like this. It used to be even more like this 100 years ago. How many twelve bar blues songs use the exact same chord progression? Maybe thousands if you managed to catalog them all. Maybe hundreds with the same lick between verses. As music started being recorded you had people writing dozens and dozens of songs a day to be owned by a label. They’d find some starlet with a voice and give her a book of these songs from the basement to record on the album and market her for a few years. If anything we are reverting to this model more today, as bands are no longer in vogue as much as individual artists whose material they perform has probably 20 writers credited.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#509

Post by lapcat »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #507
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…

Music was always like this. It used to be even more like this 100 years ago. How many twelve bar blues songs use the exact same chord progression? Maybe thousands if you managed to catalog them all. Maybe hundreds with the same lick between verses. As music started being recorded you had people writing dozens and dozens of songs a day to be owned by a label. They’d find some starlet with a voice and give her a book o…

> Music was always like this.

This is not an informative response to the observation that "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."

Also, there has been a lot of corporate consolidation in the music industry, the film industry, in almost every industry.

Re: When do we stop finding new music?

#510

Post by goosejuice »

lapcat wrote: post #503
goosejuice wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define obscure. Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because if you have a desire to find music that you like you just have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet connection. If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.

> it's all there for free with an Internet connection The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is massive. Almost everything is available on the internet, but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack. > If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced. So what is the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller prefere…

You shared a single infographic without a source, but taking it as fact I would take a guess that it's easier to discover old music now and there's more music to listen to thus flattening the curve.

I'm sorry that it's difficult for you to find what you like. My tastes are very broad and I find new artists every week just listening to Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube while working. My wife and I and our friends share music that we like with each other. We see live music and get exposed to openers we've never heard of.

That said music is a big part of our lives.

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