The Decline of the Music Industry

I’d agree with Zapp.

The entire world is now facing a creative death by algorithm.

Only numbers count, and mavericks are no longer welcome.

Freedom is undesirable and free speech intolerable.

The consumers are divided, discombobulated and programmed to willingly get injected with processed garbage. This is the age of the earbud.

The music industry did not help things by the way it huriedly sought to discard one of digital audio’s few advantages over analogue.

Just whilst driving today I was listening to The Jam’s 1997 compilation Direction Reaction Creation. This 5 disc box is highly regarded by some over on SHF but after a couple of hours I began to feel a little sick listening to the sound.

I don’t know exactly what terrible thing they had done to the sound. It seemed ok on a casual listen but then I noticed that on the harder tracks such as Modern World, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, Start, Going Underground etc there was a horrible sensation of flattened dynamics.

It was as if the edges had been toned down in favour of a little more smoothness.

Smoothness (via compression?) that the originals never had! 

So now I’m going to have to find some earlier CD pressings that sound halfway decent. That don't sound as if the music is being sat on by a large record company executive.

Anyway we shall never give up, we’re still human beings, not numbers.

"creative death by algorithm" 

Can i borrow you this marvellous expression? If not i will take it anyway....

I apologize.....

Maybe the death of music is because for the most part, life is too easy.  With the coming generation, things are really sucking for them.  If they can get away from synthesizers and learn some skills, perhaps they can turn that angst into something rebellious and interesting?


I think it is one of the reasons for the rise of black/ethnic "pop" music through the 90's into the 2000's. Everyone else had it too good, so there was not enough "emotion" to drive the song writing.


Please don't take what I am writing as racist, I am looking at influences and how that differed by race. I find it interesting.

"White" pop had a peak in the 80's. It was a reflection/culmination of life. Hey, look at us, we have prosperity, no one is trying to nuke us today, walls are coming down. Let's celebrate life. Prior to that, there was lots of angst about any number of things, so songs either reflected it or escaped it.  You of course still had good stuff after, but "happy" that is so meh/80's.  However, those that didn't get to partake in the enlightenment still had angst and perhaps even more anger. That gave rise to black pop music with edge, and we could say the "escape" of latin.

It's funny, because looking at China, they have a developing music scene, but it is like U.S. radio in the 50's --- all shiny and happy, because that is all that is allowed. I wonder if there is not some interesting underground as I am sure there is a lot of buried angst.

Please don’t take what I am writing as racist, I am looking at influences and how that differed by race. I find it interesting.

Your reading of the society conditions related to music are so filled with ignorance and biases that i cannot even correct you in few words...

I think you were arrogant and now i think you are pathetic....

Do you really think that poverty affect differently people depending on race?

The reason for the decline is decline in general education, music included, and technological dependency....Time spend on a computer is not time spend on study and playing violin....

Bob Dylan was litterate for example that has nothing to do with race....And Rap is all in the text, metaphor and poetry....Because of the situation of black people in US the most strong expressive means chosen  was Poetry on a beat....

 Education subordination to money explain  social condition not races distinction....

That’s okay mahgister, I think you burned out too many brain cells and you ramble because you like to hear yourself.


However, dismissing what I wrote, while taking a childish and lazy way out, gets you no honors, at least in my book.


If you don’t want to live in reality and talk about the real world, then you go ahead and leave it to the adults who are not afraid of more difficult topics.


You, the op perhaps, and zappa say "decline of music" but what you really mean is decline of music that you like or appreciate. Not everyone feels that way, and if you think factors that affected large swaths of society as a whole do not influence music and the people who make it then you have lost touch with reality. Poverty may be poverty, but if a poverty rate of a portion of society goes from 25% to 5%, then you will have far less music about poverty in the portion of society. When is the last time you heard a song about the Russians nuking us?

People are more educated and more diversely educated than they have ever been. Most popular music is created by people with a passion for music, not because their parents forced them to study violin. If there is never another violin virtuoso alive, my life won't change and neither will most others, though I am not sure who will perform the next Star Wars theme.