WHY are less people listening to music? (1 Viewer)

[Gary->dee]

Besides the many other and mostly newer distractions there are these days, if people listen to less music then IMO it's because the new music these days sucks and people don't have the time to look for older and much better music. Most of today's stuff is just noise or kids that think they're really accomplishing something but in reality they aren't. I think generally there are less musicians out there and those that can actually write good music.

When you compare today's music to music of the 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's it's like day and night. Once the 90's hit production values decreased, imaginations decreased, budgets decreased, originality decreased and all we're left with are glorified Pepsi ads. Sure some artists still produced wonderful music like the Chili Peppers, Nirvana and Lenny Kravitz, but even their music was derivative of much better sounding music that came out years before them. Everything just becomes more cliched and copied and in the end it all melds together to form my opinion that music these days sucks which is why I'm still buying Zeppelin, CSNY, Pink Floyd, Beatles, ABBA, and old movie soundtracks CDs. Then again I actually have time to listen to music at work because my job is so damn boring.

That's my rant.

 

[Ted Lee]

i agree that the general consumer does not have the time (nor desire) to sit and critically listen to music. the last friend i knew who did that i met almost 10 years ago. he had a dedicated room, with his gear, two speakers, and a recliner chair. very cool.

i also agree that more people are visually oriented these days. how else can you attribute the success of someone like brittany spears?

mark hastings - not sure if it's your style of music, but check out Link Removed - i listen to that station all day at work. all the music they play (regardless of genre) is great. you (and everyone else) may dig it...

 

[MarkHastings]

I'll check that link out Ted, thanks.

he had a dedicated room, with his gear, two speakers, and a recliner chair. very cool

Yeah, I remember when my stereo system was bought so I could crank up my CD's. Now it has been integrated with my TV, DVD player, Playstation 2, etc. and the CD player is collecting dust.

I remember when I was a teen, I'd be doing things in my room and turn on the portable stereo as background music. Now, that little radio just doesn't cut it and I have to power up the HT equipment to play a CD, by the time I find a CD I want to listen to, I think -Hey! Why not watch a DVD now that eveything is powered up.

 

[Bill Leber]

I have to disagree with the premise of this thread. I don't think people are listening to less music now, just buying less. Concerts are still well attended, despite the grossly inflated prices, and mp3 downloads abound. So maybe the question should be re-phrased.

 

[LanceJ]

Thanks for all these well-thought out responses folks.

I really truly hope this seeming disinterest in music is only because of what some here said is due to other entertainment distractions, splintering markets, etc, and not actually because people in general think music isn't valuable.

But a gut feeling says at least some of that disinterest is caused by a general lack of interest by an increasing(?) number of people in anything even vaguely "sophisticated" (the politically correct rules say that people that like such things shouldn't be vocal about it because it makes others feel bad about themselves--huh???) or that doesn't earn them loads of money. At the risk of sounding like a culture snob, for instance look at the continuing existence of the Jerry Springer Show, Ricki Lake and The Man Show (sure, I'll scratch myself when the fruit o' the looms are in the wrong place but jeez, I don't do it walking down the mall corridor with my girlfriend!).

I used to read a lot of science-fiction, and one short story I always clearly remember is by C.M Kornbluth, called "The Marching Morons". Every time this subject (the dumbing down of culture) comes up, I think of that story. It's set hundreds of years in the future, where only a handful of humans (3 million) like ourselves remain. The other five billion are the result of rampant breeding by (to put it in PC terms) the ignorant and genetically short-changed among us right now. The regular humans keep the others happy by: building cars that make lots of roaring noise with glowing exhaust pipe effects and lots of buttons & bright lights on the dash, but their maximum speed is really only about 25mph because the typical driver is too dumb to drive at faster speeds without hurting themselves. Movies are similarly constructed using deafening music, garish colors and nauseating scents. A news announcer who pronounces Mojave Desert as "Mo-javvy" Desert reports that a tugboat crashed into a "luck-shury" liner because the tug's entire crew was all below decks at the same time. And six rescue divers died because their divesuits were "fulla little holes". This story appeared in 1951 (you ought to find a copy of that story, because the scientists eventually do find a way to rid Earth of the morons. It involves trips to the "paradise" of Venus, where the brochures say clothes trees & ham bushes are plentiful. But the powerful transport rockets have no acceleration couches, just hard metal rooms.........

I don't know y'all, but I think parts of the above story are happening right now in various subtle degrees (Seen the typical mini-system at Wal-Mart lately? Overcompression in music? National ads with glaring mispellings?). But I'm not going to get too paranoid about this: the fact that there are people writing about this "dumbing down" phenomena gives me some comfort that we won't have five billion morons marching through the countryside anytime soon.

LJ

 

[Mark Pfeiffer]

I agree with Bill's sentiment that less music is being purchased, not that people are listening less. If anything, people are probably listening more (more options in the car, more options in the workplace with CD drives in computers, more portable options, easier access).

Is the question, are fewer people listening to the "right" music? I don't think any possible declines are due to classical or jazz being niche or lack of musical appreciation courses. There's the popular and there's the art, and sometimes the two cross. For most people, though, music is a diversion and, I suspect, seen as a youthful pursuit.

Music is sonic wallpaper for the masses, with a determined minority taking it more seriously. Not to justify radio station practices, but research often bears out that people want the familiar and don't listen for long periods of time. (I know, I know, is it a chicken/egg issue?) It's been nearly ten years, but I did music research for a radio station. I was often surprised by the comments I would get. New songs by the station's core artists would routinely be given negative evaluations merely because people didn't know the songs. Weeks later after these songs were familiar, they would get high scores. (Familiarity did not tend to breed contempt in these situations.) For the new/unknown artist, it often took even longer for songs to catch on, if they ever did. Months after a hit song would be in rotation there were regular station listeners who still weren't terribly familiar with it. I can only attribute it to the fact that the average listener doesn't listen that closely. (Unfortunately I don't have the numbers on how my spins it takes for new songs to become "familiar". It's higher than you'd expect.)

I disagree with the notion that music is qualitatively worse than the days of yore. Industry consolidation has been the death of interesting music programming in radio. (Let's not forget that many of the major media outlets also have music divisions under the parent company. Guess who tends to get the ink, air, etc.) Maybe it requires more work these days to find interesting bands/artists, but it is worth the search.

I would be very interested to see any articles/columns that claim fewer people are listening to music. Strikes me as cries of the sky falling.

 

[Karl_Luph]

Good point Bill, there's probably alot more people downloading mp3's.Felix has made an excellent point about proper musical theory & how music is correctly structured and arranged. Gary also made a similar point about the older music being properly arranged. If you ask me, the musicians from those years were so far ahead musically than the one's being passed off now. Just my .02 cents.

 

[John Watson]

LanceJ, I'm sure that the noise to signal ratio is greater now (someone used that term around here recently), but there is still a core of goodness in the world. "Salt of the earth" and all that.

I like Wordsworth's lines about the only great society being made up of the noble living and the noble dead. It exists across societies and classes, and across the ages, as when you read Plato with your mind open, and argue or agree with him, or listen to music composed by some dead white male, that moves you more than all the ephemeral pop stars of the day massed in one stadium ever could.

I vaguely remember a similar sounding sci-fi novel, in which the "children" of the advanced society were kept on their tracks by the washroom attendants. I've never read ATLAS SHRUGGED, but I will someday, because it treats the theme of society being abandoned by what Ayn Rand presumably thought was the salt of society.

PS I bought an elaborate mini system in the mid 90's; as well as the expensive crap flaming out after a few years, it was (for the day) laden with a boggling array of stupid features and colorful displays, giving me "stadium" or "nightclub" sound etc. I think there was even a Karaoke setting!

 

[TommyT]

Indeed, a good point. Music fans are less willing to spend $15 on a CD when they've only heard 1 or 2 tracks from an entire album on the radio or MTV.

Personally, I blame MTV for the breakdown of music in general. These days, if you aren't on MTV, you aren't shite! If you're avant garde they won't touch you until your music has gone gold or platinum. Look how long it took Sarah McLachlan to get on the cover of Rolling Stone; she'd been around for several yrs before they paid attention to her & that occurred only after she invented the Lilith Fair. All of a sudden the editors of RS are saying "Maybe we should do a story on her!"

 

[MarkHastings]

Personally, I blame MTV for the breakdown of music in general

And I wouldn't be surprised if there are a bunch of young people out there who have no idea that the M in MTV means "Music".



Music Videos????? What are those?

 

[George See]

I think what was said before really hit upon it, people want visuals they don't like just listening. I don't know how many times i've been at a concert with my wife and she couldn't see and I asked her why she really needed to see and she just looked at me funny are said something that would imply that i was insane.

As for the argument that all the new music is no good and the older music is better, examples given being Pink Floyd, Led Zeppilin...but you know I'm sure older people said the same thing about Zeppilin and Floyd when they were considered new. I think every decade of recorded music has great music that's worth listening to, including this decade, the current good stuff isn't on MTV or the radio anymore but it's still out there being made.

 

[LanceJ]

John: yea, I always figured every society that has ever existed has had their share of dimbulbs & jerks, and that the number of these people fluctuates in a cyclical manner. It's just human nature. So I think right now we are going through a period thicker with them than say, fifty years ago?

I'm just about to check out a book or two by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to see what all the fuss is about concerning those two guys (the History Channel recently ran a show about the "beat generation" which was very interesting). They seem to have affected a lot of modern writers.

LJ

 

[George See]

Checking out kerouac and Ginsberg is a very good idea, lots of good stuff there...I might Also recomend Richard Brautigan.

 

[Mike Graham]

For me, I've basically been listening to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins CDs (yes CDs, not mp3s!) for the last 5 - 6 years. No other band has engaged me like these early 90s groups did (and I'm only 19!). I pick up the occasional Rob Zombie or Barenaked Ladies CD, but other then that I'm not too interested in anything as of late (although the upcoming greatest hits album of the Stone Temple Pilots would be a definite buy for me).

 

[L. Anton Dencklau]

..

 

[Robert A. Willis Jr.]

I used to buy on average 5 LP's then CD's a month for about fourty years. The past 4 years has seen this dwindle to about 10 a year (though I have been ramping up my purchases of DVD-A and SACD's this year and buy a DVD-V once in awhile).

Finding well performed music of any popular genre is very difficult. Too many singers that can't stay on key or instrumentalists that can't play or hiphop artists that aren't hip and can't hop or jazz artists that have no idea what jazz is.... Furthermore, this business of high compression levels is killing my ears. You really have to work to find good music. I hear this from my students as well so it transcends the tastes of differing generations.

 

[Will_B]

I read a lot about how more & more people are listening less and less to music, but I haven't read a good theory on why this is happening. And I mean actually listening to music and not swishing out a toilet or reading the newspaper at the same time.

No one has suggested this yet, so I'm just saying it as another idea to explore; I don't neccesarily believe it is likely to be true:

The act of actually sitting down and listening to an entire album as the focus of one's attention may have declined due to the war on drugs. Consider, whereas in the 1970s hashish was renowed for accentuating the appreciation of music and increasing attention spans (albeit at the expense of short term memory!), that isn't the norm today.

Just a possibility. I suppose today's equivalent to the double albums of the seventies is the Esctasy-inspired trance/club/whatever-it-is-called music...but that is mainly listened to in clubs, not bought and brought back home, I think.

But the main problem with music today as a whole - I agree with others in this thread - is that radio has killed music. Radio, Clear Channel Communication and their ilk, with it's repeating top 40 songs ad nauseum, not only killed record sales and killed the recording industry, it helped give birth to mp3/file trading (the "new radio"), and these two factors together are helping to give rise to the success of non-commercial artists.

Myself I'm just listening to college stations now - and I've started buying CDs again thanks to those college stations - Erin McKeown, Stuart Davis, the Owl & the Pussycat...if commercial radio started playing music again rather than corporate dictated top40, it would mean better sales for the record industry. They'd get out of their economic depression.

 

[MarkHastings]

Will, I was talking to one of my band members and saying how much I HATE people who smoke pot. She pointed out that she only does it once in a blue moon, then she said that she does it to "relax" and be "creative". She then said she could understand how the old music groups did drugs to be "creative".

I told her that that is the biggest load of horse shit. Creativity comes from inside of you and if you need drugs to release it than I pity you because not only is it releasing it, but it's warping it as well. And how can I repect anyone who can't be creative on their own.

The same goes with alcohol. Why do we need to drink to have a good time? - It's called laziness - We're always looking for the easy way out and not doing things that involve thinking.

So if people aren't listening to music anymore because they are too lazy, then screw 'em. At least most of us here know how to tap into the true experience.

Whoops! Sorry about the rant that just turned into

 

[Marc Colella]

And how can I repect anyone who can't be creative on their own.

I guess there's alot of artists that you don't respect.

Many artists spanning back centuries (musicians, painters, writers, filmmakers, etc) have created masterpieces while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

 

[Seth--L]

Tell that to Berlioz.