re: How much does this factor in to todays music being raw sewage

Jade Bird - Little Boy
The Struts - Could Have Been Me

Nice reply* - to OP's cents vs. scents.

Might add the whole business of being scene/seen has changed with both the online and digital revolutions.

Gone is the day of absolutely needing a label to get your music out there. So the sheer volume of other avenues/mediums now means there's a lot less filtering of what we hear. And consequently a lot more options to hear music that money-mined people wouldn't have taken a risk on... and with less filtering a greater chance for the shitty to be heard. It just goes along with there being more options.

And there's also the familiarity factor of being offered the same something over and over. Now with 3sec sampling, you can run through an artist's whole catalog in spurts, for next to nothing and then forget about them. Like OP said - parts of a penny and done. However back when you had no control radio vs internet, it allowed a song to grow on you. If not from being force feed into liking or hating, then because because of the album format and buying the thing. . . And having the b-side or half of the other thirteen grow on you (and so you buy more).

Plus you can buy it now for life and just download another copy for free. It's not so with hard copy LP's, tape, and CD's. I've bought quite a few of the same over and over again.



*Thanks, for the interesting take.

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Midget Death Squad

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Agree completely. Streaming services didn’t hurt music. It just changed the way we access music and the way bands get it out there. It’s hard to definitively say that pre streaming was better or vise versa but IMO music would be in a much worse state today without pirating and streaming that began in the 2000’s. Radio was being bought out at the time by clearchannel and payola was pushing shitty artists onto the radio, like Nickelback.

I never truly discovered my musical taste until I started searching on my own through band forums (similar to this one) and downloading music to see what I like. I bought more physical copies by far after pirating and streaming became available than before. It was too much of a risk before because I didn’t want to spend $15-20 on an album that may just have a couple good songs than me going to buy an album that I love and appreciate because I’ve listened to it several times. I know the label is getting most of that but I also am going to concerts for those bands any time they come around.

To sum it up, Streaming has mad music better IMO. Those that are unhappy with the current state of music would have been as unhappy or more unhappy without it, as most of the stuff available would be ultra filtered and watered down crap.