The truth about why modern music is so awful.

@michaelgreenaudio,

You kind of hit on what I was thinking but did not know quite how to ask.

I have built my system over years/decades with not a whole lot of equipment changes. The more important changes have been room acoustics. In my case, all done by ear. My feeling is this approach allows me to experience most music in a way that's pleasing to me.

@n80 

I thought too late about it but I wanted to copy this to you. (above)

@crazyeddy, the business got smarter and less willing to take risks.

Popular music (creativity) always came from the ground up, the street if you like. But nowadays the industry wants to supply it prepackaged, I don't think they enjoy gambling to find out which tastes will sell. It's probably too competitive out there, and they want a sure return. 

This narrow minded approach has seen the market shrink alarmingly but the real killer nay have been the birth of the internet. If they thought home taping was killing music... 

Oh well, things can change. Remember when someone once told the Beatles manager, sorry boys no contract, guitar groups are on the way out! 

cd318

Popular music (creativity) always came from the ground up, the street if you like. But nowadays the industry wants to supply it prepackaged ...

This is really not accurate. If you go back to the ’50s and earlier, guys like Mitch Miller - who was the head of A&R for CBS records - controlled just about every detail of new releases . That included who recorded what and with whom. There was very little artistic freedom. That didn’t start to change until the ’60s; Clive Davis is the one who brought Columbia into the modern era, as Arif Mardin did at Atlantic. The rise of rock and roll and the singer-songwriter changed the industry, because those artists really had something to say. Most of today’s pop artists just want to be stars and make money. Hence, the "prepackaged" products that result.

If they thought home taping was killing music...

Nobody who really knew what was going on ever thought taping killed music. That was a red herring. Napster, however, did inflict lasting damage because it devalued recorded music.

Interesting that the New York Times had a piece this last Sunday (Feb 3) about the "loudness wars" utilizing digital compression to "destroy" music.  Been a long time since I saw anything about this in the mainstream press, much less a semi-technical article complete with lots of comparative dynamic range charts.