Why Music Has Lost it’s Charms (Article)

I never listened to popular music even young...

I listened mainly choral music spanning centuries in European tradition, and Bach andother composers.....

And there is indeed good popular music for sure i listened too .... I like Bob Dylan or Leonard Vohen or Leo Ferré for example till today ...I listen Elena Frolova nowadays for example....Pure poetry...

But commercial music had never any appeal for me.... I never own one single commercial album i can listen to 2 times...( i forgot the one i ever bought, it was the third purchase and i was 13 years old, it was so bad i never bought any other commercial album for all my life ) I bought one Rolling Stone album....I listen to it 2 or 3 times and i discard it... 😁😊

Then commercial music of today for me is pure noise it is worst than Rolling Stone for example....I know i look like a "snub"...I am not, music for me is and has been always a spiritual or poetical event... If not, it is animal disturbing noise for me sorry...

I listen nowadays great actual musicians in jazz and classical, in India or Persia... And some others...

Then music has not lost his charms for me at all...

Commercial music had lost it for me long ago....

Who who read a bad novel Harlequin instead of Charles Dickens or Mark Twain?

And try Dostoievsky and call it a day.... 😁😊

Nevermind tastes, crocodiles had theirs too , music is an education first not a taste....

We take education to learn and develop  "new" tastes.... If not like crocodile we will stay with rotten corpses, they are meattier...  😁😊

Operas and classical was the commercial music of it's time.

Operas and classical was the commercial music of it’s time.

Not true...

Projecting our actual economical categories on the past is not very useful...

First Vivaldi, Haendel and Bach were paid by some Religious or Noble elites not by a general popular market in the modern sense at all...

Second put the word "popular" instead of "commercial" word if you want to be truthful ... Why?

Because the tradition was not about economical consumerism but about learning cultural and spiritual activities, religious or secular, but NEVER based on pure mercantilism but on transmission of cultural values mainly....

Third, music was mainly a spiritual event paid by church for centuries...And with no recording, playing musicians were mostly artists or learning families playings, nothing commercial ...

But you can abuse the word and concept and claim that standing in a hall after buying a ticket to listen Liszt was a "commercial" event...But it will be completely beside the point of whatmusic was meaning at this modern time period...

Commercial music is an invention of this last industrial century mainly....

Then Operas and classical was the popular music of it’s time...Not the "commercial" affair it is today....

And a commercial publicity for an opera in Italy in the 19 century, has not much to do with consumerism marketing strategies of today....Puccini was popular yes, but not a consumers objetc, he was idolized because he was a true artist....This is not commerce, even if there is commercial aspect, the singers must be paid etc, this is culture event first and last ....

Modern pop industry can even create temporary idols who dont have almost no talent at all , one after the others...I will not name one...But they all know how to walk and dance for sure... They are sold with visuals...

I feel the current model potentially can yield a further “democratization” of music commerce.  I’m not sad to see the old model (get signed by a major label, hopefully become famous) die.  The improvement to the current model would be to more fairly compensate the artists that are on streaming platforms.

The doom-and-gloom take is more applicable to film, in my opinion.  It’s easier for artists to get their music “out there” these days.  Artists in film seem to be toast.  No one wants to fund interesting films.  There’s no corollary to modern music distribution in modern film that I can see.  Unless you are lucky to live somewhere where you can hound art house theaters or have access to modern independent films, you’re stuck with the contemporary drivel that passes for cinema.

They made music because they were paid to whether by church or as often nobility. For money, the definition of commercial. No one else could afford such frivolities to commission work. However, it was also consumed by the masses .. so popular and commercial though of what competition I can't speak.