The golden age of (contemporary) music is over - and that's OK.

PolarityMan

Winny_Pooh said:

@bucket, you've totally changed my mind about them.



Nope


The Beastie Boys had a great drummer, guitarist and bassist but time will remember them more fondly. Try playing Chocolate starfish vs the in sounds from way out when you next have some musicians over and please post the reaction back here. LB's best work is easily eclipsed by dozens of 90's cult albums.

FWIW on scuzz and kerrang tv channels limp bizkit are played more than the beastie boys probably by a factor of 20. A greater variety of songs too. 90% of beastie plays are sabotage with the occasional fight for your right (to party) and very rarely intergalactic.

Limp Bizkit nookie, break stuff and rolling get really regular play with fairly regular appearances from my generation, my way and take a look around. I'd say faith even get played more than non-sabotage beastie songs.

lloyd

PolarityMan said:

Winny_Pooh said:

@bucket, you've totally changed my mind about them.



Nope


The Beastie Boys had a great drummer, guitarist and bassist but time will remember them more fondly. Try playing Chocolate starfish vs the in sounds from way out when you next have some musicians over and please post the reaction back here. LB's best work is easily eclipsed by dozens of 90's cult albums.

FWIW on scuzz and kerrang tv channels limp bizkit are played more than the beastie boys probably by a factor of 20. A greater variety of songs too. 90% of beastie plays are sabotage with the occasional fight for your right (to party) and very rarely intergalactic.

Limp Bizkit nookie, break stuff and rolling get really regular play with fairly regular appearances from my generation, my way and take a look around. I'd say faith even get played more than non-sabotage beastie songs.

I'm not sure that Scuzz and Kerrang TV are the be all and end all on how bands will be remembered in fairness.

BB are more widely liked/respected IMO and will probably be remembered more fondly because Fred Durst has a reputation as a cockend.

PolarityMan

True but it's a more reliable datapoint than just asserting something because it aligns with your particular world view. FWIW I like both bands.

PolarityMan

on google limp bizkit also edges it on more hits by just under 400k.

lloyd

PolarityMan said:

True but it's a more reliable datapoint than just asserting something because it aligns with your particular world view. FWIW I like both bands.

I could well be wrong about the outcome, but I don't agree that your version is more reliable-it's a biased view based on the fact that those channels are more metal in content, whereas BB are not.

Like I say, Durst has been panned in the media (I don't know if he's a knobhead or not) BB have been going a lot longer, it's just a gut feeling I suppose, they've also had a member die young, which is always helpful in these kinds of things.

PolarityMan

lloyd said:

PolarityMan said:

True but it's a more reliable datapoint than just asserting something because it aligns with your particular world view. FWIW I like both bands.

I could well be wrong about the outcome, but I don't agree that your version is more reliable-it's a biased view based on the fact that those channels are more metal in content, whereas BB are not.

Like I say, Durst has been panned in the media (I don't know if he's a knobhead or not) BB have been going a lot longer, it's just a gut feeling I suppose, they've also had a member die young, which is always helpful in these kinds of things.

Well that's true but they're a crossover act but a big part of their audience was definitely the skate culture which I'd associate more with those channels. Anystheways google puts it pretty close with LB edging it. It's hard to say which will stand the test of time better but based on the evidence I don't think you can conclude it will definitely be the beasties.

Reverend

Never mind The bollocks may be be considered a classic but most punk fans I know would cite many 80s albums are being far better. 
Limp Bizkit certainly were good musicians but I'm not sure they ever made an impact to compare to that of The Beastie Boys

lloyd

PolarityMan said:

lloyd said:

PolarityMan said:

True but it's a more reliable datapoint than just asserting something because it aligns with your particular world view. FWIW I like both bands.

I could well be wrong about the outcome, but I don't agree that your version is more reliable-it's a biased view based on the fact that those channels are more metal in content, whereas BB are not.

Like I say, Durst has been panned in the media (I don't know if he's a knobhead or not) BB have been going a lot longer, it's just a gut feeling I suppose, they've also had a member die young, which is always helpful in these kinds of things.

Well that's true but they're a crossover act but a big part of their audience was definitely the skate culture which I'd associate more with those channels. Anystheways google puts it pretty close with LB edging it. It's hard to say which will stand the test of time better but based on the evidence I don't think you can conclude it will definitely be the beasties.

Yeah, that's why I said probably in fairness.

I think BB are more widely liked by a range of people, obviously they have their hardcore fans, but they have breakout tunes that appealed to the masses.

lloyd

Reverend said:

Never mind The bollocks may be be considered a classic but most punk fans I know would cite many 80s albums are being far better. 
Limp Bizkit certainly were good musicians but I'm not sure they ever made an impact to compare to that of The Beastie Boys

Thing about classic albums is that it doesn't really matter about the fans of that specific genre, to become a true classic you need to have widespread appeal IMO, yeah you can have cult classics (Tim by the Replacements for example is one, but not many people have heard it).

Reverend

lloyd said:

Reverend said:

Never mind The bollocks may be be considered a classic but most punk fans I know would cite many 80s albums are being far better. 
Limp Bizkit certainly were good musicians but I'm not sure they ever made an impact to compare to that of The Beastie Boys

Thing about classic albums is that it doesn't really matter about the fans of that specific genre, to become a true classic you need to have widespread appeal IMO, yeah you can have cult classics (Tim by the Replacements for example is one, but not many people have heard it).

It does seem that mythology is a big part of it all. The British music press in particular love to spin the "we invented punk" myth. 

Cirrus

The question of whether music is good or not these days compared with the past is one thing, and yep that's usually more about how old you are. I've noticed I'm struggling to keep up and the acts I consider part of my contemporary tastes are mostly at least 10 years old now, somehow I stopped being exposed to new stuff.

I think the point is more how music fits into society today, which is a different kettle of fish and I believe there's a good argument to be made that there WAS a golden age of contemporary music that we're no longer in. This has nothing to do with the quality of music coming out today, and everything to do with how much society as a whole cares about that.

Here's how I see it, and remember that I'm talking in broad strokes here, I know there are exceptions;

Basically, popular music existed because the technology appeared that allowed an industry to build up around selling music to people. A big enough segment of society followed musical trends that it became a shared experience - Hawaiian Slide Music, Jazz, Rock and Roll, Beatlemania, heavy rock, new wave, hip hop, metal, disco, grunge, electronic etc... they were all genres with a broad enough fan base that they were relevant to society as a shared experience, as the soundtrack to an age.

As the 80's moved into the 90's, genres continued to fracture, producing smaller and smaller followings and meaning that music became less relevant to society as a whole. However, the industry was good at promoting and selling records so it could be sustained. Two things needed to happen to end that;

Firstly, music production equipment became more accessible to people on a lower budget, and musical genres sprang up which didn't need large advances, expensive studio time and big budget promo campaigns. And if you can make music for peanuts at home, you can follow your influences, your muse, and make the music you want to make with no regard for genres and without worrying what the average guy on the street would think about it. Suddenly the market is flooded with underground music that blow apart the idea of conventional genres, and fanbases become ever more fractured - music is no longer a shared experience that you can use to define your place in the world. It becomes more of a personal voyage of discovery, and you can be pretty sure that if you and your school mates compare favourite bands, each list will contain acts the other has never even heard of.

Secondly, the development of mp3 and file sharing, torrenting sites, and finally youtube, spotify etc mean that overnight, music has no perceived value - there are literally millions of tracks out there across hundreds of thousands of sub genres and you can get them all for free. Most people stop paying for music, and the traditional industry goes into lockdown; no more investment in new music, so acts *have* to go the self financed, DIY route. The only safe money is in the legacy acts who's fan base are too old to know what Napster is, so contemporary music as shared social experience becomes locked in time in the year 2000. Just to give you a barometer of this, typical Wedding DJ playlists haven't changed substantially in 20 years. The safe tracks that will get the biggest cross section of a room full of random people dancing are locked in time. And all the biggest touring acts today are the ones that broke through in the old industry model.

Does this mean that music is dead, or that music today is somehow less good than the classic acts many here grew up with? Fuck no. It just means that when someone releases a masterpiece today, nobody knows about it and nobody cares, outside a small circle. No big social movement will champion it. Nobody will define themselves to the world at large as being a fan of it.

Today, the very concept of "making it" in the music business is as much a fairy tale as Cinderella or Santa Claus. There's no magical money pit, no happily ever after for the newly signed band. The very fact that modern labels aren't interested in you until you're already a going concern proves that they're not needed. Today, you rise or fall on your own enterprise and business acumen, and on the actual quality of your music. Bob Dylan was great because of what he represented at that time, so his fans opened their souls to him. If he was starting out in 2016, he'd just be some guy who couldn't really sing, in a world where even if you like him you can listen to him for free on your phone, assuming you even have time for that when there's so much more entertainment vying for your attention.

EricTheWeary

Sporky said:

EricTheWeary said:

We had a Discussion on classic albums on here the other day. Pretty much anything described as such was made before 2000, the classic albums of hip hop from the late 80s and early 90s.Grunge gave us the last classic albums with guitars.

And if you'd asked ten years ago, pretty much anything described as "classic" would have come from before 1990.

How many of the classic dubstep, chipcore or post-rock albums were made before 2000?

Being a classic post rock album is not the same as being a classic album. It's ill defined what it is ( in my head anyway) but things like genre defining, cross genre sales, huge sales.The decline in album sales in the last ten years and the increasing change in the way that people listen to music probably means that the idea of a classic album does have a cut off point; the album as an identifiable, significant piece of work ( rather than as a way to bundle and sell a collection of songs)is a minority interest now. I'm not sure that the passage of time will allow anything made in the last five, ten fifteen years to join Bat Out of Hell and Straight Outta Compton because that era has ended. 

Really nothing to do with the quality of contemporary music, but the model of the business that surrounds it and how it is consumed and how it is viewed has shifted enough that we are watching the final spasms of what it was, In that sense the OP is about right: history books may well round up the figures to 1950 to 2000 as a golden age of mega bands and mega sales and music journalism and music lead youth culture. The 21st century gives us an access to music that puts dixieland jazz alongside dubstep which is brilliant in many ways but diminishes the importance of it all at the same time. I don't doubt music made in 2016 can be as good or better than music made in 1976 I'm just doubtful if it will ever get to be seen as important.

guitarfishbay

A very good post from @Cirrus ;

There is less of a funneling effect towards certain acts or genres as there was in the past from TV, Print Media, and Radio.  I doubt we'll have many legacy acts from the 2010's onwards - there will be some, but it won't be the same number as came from the pre 2000's.

Even among the friends I have that all listen to similar genres we're consistently finding new stuff to listen to that say only one person has heard of.  I don't remember this being as much of a thing even 10 years ago.

The internet did have a big effect on the value of music.  There was a Noel Gallagher interview posted up a while ago where he highlighted people would rather pay for a take-out coffee than buy an album that could change their life in some way.

guitarfishbay

We've also seen the rise of high earner EDM acts in recent years, these guys are bigger rock stars than lead singers of rock bands these days - I can't even name a front person from the past 5 years who is as much of a household name as anyone on these kind of lists.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2015/08/24/the-worlds-highest-paid-djs-electronic-cash-kings-2015/#7c97a2193bc9

Fretwired

Sporky said:

There's more good music being made and distributed now than ever before.

The "it's all over" argument only holds water if you're stuck in time.

^^

This @Sporky is spot on.

I rarely listen to 'rock' music these days but there's plenty of genre defying guitar music around that isn't blues rock or insane widdling. The internet allows artists to record and distribute their own music - I'd say we're having a golden age. Just don't go near the radio or Jools ... :-)

RocknRollDave

guitarfishbay said:

We've also seen the rise of high earner EDM acts in recent years, these guys are bigger rock stars than lead singers of rock bands these days - I can't even name a front person from the past 5 years who is as much of a household name as anyone on these kind of lists.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2015/08/24/the-worlds-highest-paid-djs-electronic-cash-kings-2015/#7c97a2193bc9

Indeed. And that is definitely "contemporary music", so if some genres are suffering, it sure isn't true for all genres. Might not float my boat personally, but it is vital and important to some in the same way as the music that I like is to me.

ICBM

ThePrettyDamned said:

Is Scooter ever going to be fondly remembered? 

I like Scooter.

Moltisanti

@Cirrus - superb post

Fretwired

@Cirrus ; .. Good post.

My two cents. I was born in the 50s and grew up in the 60s. Life was simple - music, TV and films were our only entertainment (plus some sport). Music was very important and with limited access to TV and radio channels you tended to see a lot of the same acts and a limited choice was in some ways good. When a new album by David Bowie or Led Zeppelin came out it was a major event - not being far from London it was easy to go to a gig.

Life is much busier these days - kids have lots of tech to keep them amused and time once spent listening to a record in your bedroom is now spent typing crap on social media platforms. Music is not that important - people will tend to listen to music whilst doing something else - commuting to work or down the gym. These days the DJ is the big star ...

My big issue is too much choice. I have Spotify and access to millions of tracks .. too much choice unlike the 60s and 70s.

Cirrus

Fretwired said:

The internet allows artists to record and distribute their own music - I'd say we're having a golden age.

See, I think that's a nice idea but in practice it's not that rosy. The internet allows you to upload your music, where it can be freely heard by anyone who either already knows about you (based on the hard work you've put in), or stumbles across your track (lost in a vast sea of music). Or, you have the money to pay for meaningful promotion (in which case, great. The world's your oyster... assuming you can find an audience that likes you).

The fundamental, underlying reality of dedicating sufficient time to your art to become great isn't changed by the internet. At some point, someone has to give you their money. The internet has made this harder. I know this will be argued to the end of time, but the internet is fantastic technology for giving your creative content away. Any flow of resources in the other direction under that model basically comes down to acts of charity.

That's not to say you can't do what so many do now and use the recordings as loss leaders for other income streams, but how can you reasonably argue that the internet helps when your business model is "give things away on internet because you have no other choice, make money from live shows, merch, sponsorship and intangible brand identity"?

As for *recording* the music in the first place, that's a different kettle of fish. People learn on the go, so there's a lot of low quality shite out there. I should know, I'm responsible for some of it. 

Not to say that people can't find their own, personal golden age of music to live in. It's just... it is personal, not something that spans a whole social group. Those days are over.


Edit: Sorry, I wrote this before I read your last post @Fretwired, I feel like Judas now.