re: Musical taste is dead

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Ed Sheerhan is terrible.

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By what objective measure is he terrible? I don't listen to his music, but the dude is far from terrible.

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rock died again because Rolling Stone decided in the mid-’90s to put an electro-punk band from England that nobody remembers called The Prodigy on the cover

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Many people remember The Prodigy.

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Good music must be discovered. Which requires work.. something else this argument isn't picking up. People are now lazy... so their taste are lazy

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This is false. There was a time when all you had to do was turn on your local FM station to be turned on to great music.

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You'll see in most cases these songs have like 5-10 writers. It is truly pathetic

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There's a good reason for that:
1. usually there are writing teams of 2 that do most of the actual songwriting and lyrics

2. The artist is generally given a credit (or multiple credits if they're a group)

3. All of the people involved in making the beats and techno compositions, and all of the sampled tracks, have to be credited as well.

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There were always great gems to be found via digging, but "good" was at least widely available. Now, you have to dig just to get "good" and REALLY excavate to find "great".

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Spot on

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This is false. There was a time when all you had to do was turn on your local FM station to be turned on to great music.

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There was also a time when you could go to a music store and discover new artists when you felt like buying a CD. Virgin Music was excellent about this.

Not anymore. But hey, you can download a song with watered down sound quality for $.99!

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You can call them whatever you want, but when the entire piece of music is built out of computer sounds it makes it shitty. In most cases it's not just the computer sounds, but the "artist" that has put them together. These programs allow people that have no business producing music to do so.

Many instruments take years to get to the point where you can produce creative interesting music. This is not the case with computer based music. A person can spend a few days working with the programs and be able to produce "beats"

I've played guitar since I was 15 and went to school for audio production so I know this is FACT.

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Just because an entire piece is made on a computer doesn't make it inherently shitty.

I've played guitar since I was 12. I know that you can learn how to play power chords in about 3 months to a year (depending on how much you practice). Artists like the Ramones and Nirvana wrote great interesting songs with just power chords. So your claim that it takes years to produce creative interesting music maybe valid but that has nothing to do with the medium. You can learn how to play guitar pretty quickly. You can learn how to make "beats" quickly too (and yes maybe at a faster rate). But it's what you make with it that counts.

There are artists like Burial, Aphex Twin, even someone who writes pop music like Grimes, that make interesting computer based music.

You're making some good points.

Although, I think a lot of grunge sounds dated.

80s music may sound dated but I still love stuff like Depeche Mode, New Order, Kate Bush, even pop stuff that Janet and Madonna were doing.

It also sounds dated because you couldn't manipulate the sounds as easily as you can now--which I think you were kinda going for here

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However, the kinds of sounds that can be made changes rapidly, causing the music to sound "old" or "dated" much faster than other kinds of sounds.

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However, I disagree with this

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Drum machines, processed beats, and computer synthesizers simply sound, well, shitty, because they are.

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I think they can sound awesome. "Hounds of Love" is one of my favorite records ever. It wouldn't be the same using all acoustic instruments.

I guess I just don't like making these generalizations about music. The beautiful thing about music is that there are so many different genres, styles, etc. If I wanna rock out, maybe I'll play some Zeppelin. If I want to really listen to lyrics, I'll throw on some Townes. Sometimes I just wanna listen to some fun 80s dance pop. Or maybe I want to hear some cool textures and throw on a Four Tet or Burial record. I don't like pitting things against each other. Depending on the mood I'm in, there's a place for all kinds of music.

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You can call them whatever you want, but when the entire piece of music is built out of computer sounds it makes it shitty. In most cases it's not just the computer sounds, but the "artist" that has put them together. These programs allow people that have no business producing music to do so.

Many instruments take years to get to the point where you can produce creative interesting music. This is not the case with computer based music. A person can spend a few days working with the programs and be able to produce "beats"

I've played guitar since I was 15 and went to school for audio production so I know this is FACT.

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John Frusciante is an amazing guitarist who also laughs at your argument. Dude is actually making retro acid house now.

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LOL, as much as a skateboard is a Bentley.

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Your comparison makes no sense. Bentley is a brand of of a car, which is a mode of transportation, much like Gibson is a brand of guitar, which is an instrument to play music. A skateboard could most certainly be considered a mode of transportation.