The real reason music is getting worse, according to Rick Beato,

CliffsNotes?

Okay. Digital recording and making music too accessible.

quote:

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Summary?

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- Experience, skill and craft produce better results than duffers with a lot of tech.

- Investing in music as art rather than another commodity results in better quality overall.

- AI will eventually remove the need for actual musicians.

He ain't wrong.

I agree. I think he is saying that new technology gives rise to the multitude of crap like Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, various "rap" artists, but there is still a ton coming out by talented traditional musicians who can play. His gripe should be more with the consumer than the musician. Music sounds worse today because young people are more likely to get into garbage than before. I wonder if Beato hated Kraftwerk when they came out?

Right….all music sucks. Right?

There’s like 4 songs that are good

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Does anybody listen to Led Zeppelin and lynyrd skynyrd anymore after they turn 15?

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-10 / 10

Give us your top 5 artists.

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Give us your top 5 artists.

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Not in any order

Magnolia electric company
Neutral milk hotel
Corb Lund
John Edmund
Parliament/funkadelic


ETA: these aren’t my top 5 they just have some good stuff. I don’t really listen to music as an activity

It's the give and take of the times. There are a lot of great artists we likely never heard of back in the day because the barrier to entry was so steep. There are more artists today that can get their foot in the market and then let the market dictate who is "good" as opposed to labels telling us who to listen to. But on the flip side, there is a lot more junk and noise to rifle through to find the good ones because there is no gatekeeping to push the greats forward unless they already come with a self-built content package and community following.


I like Rick...he's a musical genius. But I think his grey hair is showing a little too much on this one.

In a nutshell, Beato is saying that music is inherently less creative and more homogenized because of the plethora of easy to use tools/apps etc that are available now, and mostly not used with any real depth. This is parallel to his comments that once you use computers to make music (starting with sampling decades ago), computers are inherently going to be better at that.

On a pop music level, from the little I see, this seems to be true. It's not necessarily true in various niche genres but they certainly aren't immune to it. A lot of this is objectively true, not just old farts doing the usual complaining. Actual analyses of harmonic / rhythmic differences in top tracks across the last several decades have shown a significant decline in the last couple of decades. (It was already falling but got a lot more homogenized in this century.)

Something else that he didn't mention that I think is a factor, and was alluded to in this thread - people don't actively listen to music as a primary activity much any more. Due to the convenience of accessing it now - almost everyone has a vast music library in the palm of their hand - a lot of music listening is background "mood" soundtrack. That means the lack of nuances and creativity are much less noticed.