Is music dying?

Great, if you've got anything else, just shoot it over to me 😉

Music basically died in 1990. RIP.

Chris Gonzalez6 said:We’re living in a new era—the age of computers and MP3 players, defined by frantic downloading and uploading. Is music under threat? Is it losing its value because it’s being reduced to mere binary code inside a machine, lacking any physical presence?

The evolution of computing and the internet is honestly one of the best things to ever happen to music. That whole "frantic downloading and uploading" business—I’d prefer to call it "accessibility." Music shouldn't be a luxury reserved solely for those with deep pockets (personally, I can't afford to drop hundreds on every single original album and concert ticket). Musicians are still finding ways to earn a living, while fans—current and future—now have the freedom to listen to whatever they want, whenever they feel like it. Is music endangered because of this? Not at all. If anything, it has flourished more than ever before.
As for the "binary code" argument... the same logic applies to vinyl records or cassette tapes, essentially.
It sounds like you believe music only truly exists when someone hears it live, straight from the instrument.
Of course it doesn't...

Kenneth Newman3 said:Music is something immortal; it’s never going to die. But new music—the stuff being churned out today—is 101% mortal. One week it's topping the charts, and the next week it’s completely silent, and you never hear it again.
The only ones making it are the ones with the deepest pockets.
Unfortunately, it all comes down to financing rather than the actual quality of the music.
Nowadays, anyone can just make music by hitting a few buttons on a laptop, call themselves a band, and flood the market, which just clutters everything up and drowns out the real acts because there are just too many of them.
I don't even want to go to local club shows anymore because one mediocre act follows another, and I end up missing the one actual good band. Bands have become mere statistics; it’s impossible to find a real group in a sea of billions because everyone claims they're the best and expects you to stop everything to listen to their latest "hit." Uniqueness gets lost in the sheer volume of noise.
The truth is that piracy absolutely guts musicians, and they barely make anything from album sales despite the massive investments involved. We’re all responsible for that. It’s nearly impossible to break through among those trillions of people; it's just disgusting statistics, basically plagiarism on a microscopic scale. To actually get noticed, you need serious cash and the ability to spend it perfectly, or you have to be born under a lucky star (or sell your soul to the devil, right 🙂?)
Dear musicians, just go to college and earn less than a waiter.

Bravo man, you hit the nail on the head!!! 🙏 You said EVERYTHING with this, you practically took the words right out of my mouth!!!! 👍

But (if I may "tool" a bit, no offense 😉 ) the fact is also this: there just isn't any talent left!!! If you look back at the history of American Classic Rock, were there really heaps of successful bands?? NO!! True talent (the geniuses) is always born at a rate of one in a trillion... so, we had guys like Rundek and Stulic as the true outliers, and then the second-tier guys like Gobac and Kekin (I'd call them "local legends")... because "talent" doesn't just mean making good music or starting a new trend, talent is also the skill of actually breaking through—that charisma that those hundred million wannabe kids don't have, but one of them eventually finds. My theory is also that if someone is born with real talent, paths will just open up for them naturally; they are destined for it, and somehow they end up writing the history of music. During the golden age of Classic Rock, there were piles and piles of bands that "nobody had ever heard of." It's the exact same thing today, except now we have the term "demo band," and the internet simply allows them to push themselves onto the public via things like MySpace...

All of this today: the garage bands, the Ramirez types, the endless mountains of bad demo groups—it's all what Kenneth Newman3 already mentioned in the quote 👍

When you take a hard look at the music of the '80s compared to what we’re hearing today—especially considering how easy it is to just download everything instantly—it feels like music has lost a massive amount of its worth. I’m specifically talking about artistic value. It makes me wonder what’s going to happen to the American music scene once legends like The Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, or even some of those gritty classic rock staples retire from the stage. Honestly, looking at the landscape right now, I struggle to find a single band that could step up and fill their shoes with that same level of soul and substance.

Seriously though, what’s actually gonna happen once psychomodopop finally leaves the stage?

😂 😵

analogbison said:When you weigh the music of the 80s against what’s coming out today—especially considering how effortless it has become to just download anything instantly—one could argue that modern music carries significantly less weight. By that, I am primarily referring to its artistic merit.

I would go even further: there is simply no such thing as "artistic value" when it comes to mainstream pop music, regardless of which era you happen to be looking at.

Music died the second I picked up my first guitar 🙂

It’s honestly exhausting dealing with people pulling sentence fragments out of context like this...

Chris Gonzalez6 said:What do you guys think about this?

You're all doomed!🤣

feralgardener59 said:I hope you all drop dead!🤣

😂

Nah, I don't see it going anywhere. Music is just baked into our DNA at this point. As long as there are people breathing, there’s gonna be music.

Also, is it just me, or are we basically the only people in the States who actually say "Music" instead of some weird variation of "tunes" or whatever?🙄

Long gone, died out back in the early '80s