re: Proof of why music has sucked arse this century

Right. There is a lot of good music out there these days and it's never been easier to find music to listen to. Really this entire thread kinda sucks. Looking at what are the best selling albums of the year has never been the way to find good music. At least, not in my lifetime anyways. If you need any proof that musical popularity is fabricated and pushed on people to try and steer culture, just look at how many supposed "country" artists are supporting liberalism while trying to talk about living country life in their music. It's absurd. The numbers on what music makes the charts have always been fabricated.

Fair warning: this is tl:dr territory. If you have a short attention span this isn't for you.

Ever wonder why you get inundated with pop artists, hip-hop, latin beats, rap and no new amazing sounds and songs from rock bands anymore on the radio and you end up listening, through whatever streaming service you subscribe to, to the same rock classics, alternative and grunge rock you've heard a million times before because there's just nothing new being played in the top lists being popularized?

I read an article that describes the state of the music industry now and it describes why Rock (guitars, bass, drums, lead singer) has died as a national style of music.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 de-regulated the radio industry, which allowed large companies to own vastly greater numbers of radio stations than they were permitted to before. This led to massive consolidation of radio station ownership under one or two companies, the biggest being iHeartRadio which was formerly known as Clear Channel. This put an end to stations that were programmed by local employees who understood the particular tastes and musical history of their region. Central, standardized playlists meant that even "rock" and "alternative" format radio stations were now being centrally programmed by corporate headquarters. This led to a decade-long period of dominance for groups like the Lumineers, Imagine Dragons, and OneRepublic. Most of these groups are Christian, many are Mormon, and their music sounds much more like "Contemporary Christian Music" or CCM than most of what got played on rock stations before 2008 or so.

While this was happening, the software that musicians use to create music on their personal computers became very powerful and very easy to pirate. Apple's success with the iPod led to a successful line of laptops which became the primary instrument that young artists started using to create music. "Trap" is best understood as the sound of this software. It is much easier to make an entire song with a DAW than it is to find 2-3 other trained musicians willing to form a band with you, and if you succeed in making something people enjoy, a solo DAW producer has to split the proceeds with fewer people. The economics haven't favored rock bands for some time. You can also see this dynamic play out in other genres like R&B, which has become increasingly digital despite the importance of live instruments to the classic sound of the genre, and even country, where autotune and looped beats are now much more common than fiddles or steel guitars.

To make matters worse, touring is now much more expensive than it was in the eighties when the American hardcore punk scene established the foundations for all the underground rock scenes that broke into the mainstream during the nineties. Gas is more expensive. Rent is more expensive. Police surveillance has become much more extensive and technologically sophisticated, which makes it harder than it's ever been to have DIY shows or even loud practice sessions without pissing off entitled homeowners and getting the police called. It's just not really possible for working class people to band together into groups to play shows and go on tours the way it was, and rock music requires active scenes to harden musicians' chops and inspire them to evolve their sound.

Under 20 year olds have plenty of interest in the aesthetics of rock music, which remain popular in the mainstream even as the actual sound and practice of rock music disappears. They would absolutely be starting bands and touring and pushing the sound forward if it were possible for working class teenagers to do that without losing prohibitively large amounts of money. Over in Europe, rock bands continue to be a bit more popular than they are in America, because they still have public-owned radio stations that will play new young bands where cities are much closer together and therefore it's easier/cheaper to tour and popularize a band's sound and create the organic growth of a public's demand to hear more. It would theoretically be possible to turn the US rock situation around with some focused, local intervention, but our government doesn't seem to have the appetite to do anything but orally service lobbyists for the entrenched oligopolies.

I worked in the music business during my college years, and back then a group like Bruce Springstein's E-Street Band (just as an example) could go from garage band status to regional acclaim and then get a hit single that suddenly catapults them into a national act. That just is no longer possible but it's not for lack of talented musicians. It's only because the economics are no longer there to nurture it.

Sad times. Now we're getting AI music.

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Outside of general boomer whining, what's the political angle on this?

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It's been Affirmative Action in the promotion of music this century.

It's all about promoting women and minorities in the music industry.

That's why the music sucks.