Is music getting worse? A response to Rick Beato's video
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- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2024
- Rick's video: • The Real Reason Why Mu...
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The reason music isn't as good as in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, was that music was at the center of youth culture. When I was young we lived with music nonstop, albums were anticipated, and music was on all the time. Now it competes with social media for peoples attention, good music gets lost in a deluge of input.
Music is now soundtrack to living, not something to focus on.
From a technical standpoint I think it's also important to understand how we got here. "Easy" costs less money, time, hair, relationships and many other things. When you hear that some crazy thing was done to get the vocals or something on a record from previous decades (like say the vocals on "I'm not in Love" - 10cc) it might be a cool story about how that recording was made but the "good old days" weren't always as good as anyone remembers and I guarantee that often the engineers who did those things NEVER wanted to have to do them again.
Most of them probably at one point told a rep from the manufacturer of the gear they used "you have got to make this easier to do". Thus was born the new version of that product(s) and the next version and the next version and so on until we got DAWs and plugins and editing and 200 tracks if we want them. You can't control how or in what context those tools are used. You can only control how you use them.
Many people have no idea how many hit records were recorded with feminine hygiene products stuck all over the drums. Now we have products for that that don't make a mess, work better and take less time (which like it or not is equal to money) to deal with. Lamenting about that is like resisting water being wet.
"All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted" (Neil Peart)
A Bee couldn't convince a fly that honey was better than shit.
An important aspect in all this is the Lens of History; we don't remember the bad and meh songs from decades ago, but the great works have endured the tests of time and so we still celebrate them. And anyway the most important value of art is in the creating, so absolutely it's a good thing that making music, video, stories, whatever, is easier today. Glad you agree with reason, not Beato. ;)
Thank you
What a lovely take that was, Jim. I think you're absolutely right. It's certainly sad that instead of having something out of Songs In The Key Of Life topping the charts, we have some Cardi B song or whatever, and I get why Rick gets frustrated with it, but that's it, you just gotta look elsewhere for the good stuff now, and it's certainly out there. Cheers!
Another massive point Rick misses, although I suspect he is fully aware of it, is that if you take a random year from the charts in what he would call the golden age, you are still going to have dozens and dozens of basically crap, formulaic songs that no one remembers. He compares the bands and songs of the decade with todays top 40 streamed songs. Apples and oranges.
Thank you Diego!
Some of the best music ever, just in the niches... Great video Jim X
I haven't seen Rick commenting on King Gizzard yet, so I don't think I can take him seriously on this topic. I think the democratization of making music has only made it better because there's no corporate suits filtering what we all get to hear until it's just the lowest common denominator on the airwaves. Prince, for example, has so many B-sides because suits were limiting his brilliance from reaching us.
Yeah, pitch correct and computerized instruments have made crappy music but it was always going to be crappy and formulaic even without those tools - at least now, the music consumer can discern for themselves instead of needing someone with money to promote it to them first. There was a lot of crappy stuff promoted to us by "hitmakers" too.
True, true.
I too like the idea of expanding musicmaking capacity to a broader population, because a real gem may emerge. Still, the bulk of what is produced remains extraordinarily bland and in order to effectively sift through the junk, a person requires an educated palate. So, how does a human develop an educated palate when middling music dominates? Regardless, what vexes me is that many established talents seem to use various electronic tools as a crutch, resulting in uninspired formulaic orchestration. Although this may indicate they are out of ideas and/or can't be bothered to create something new, fans still consume their latest noise.
The good thing about the use of technology to make music is that anyone can do it. The bad thing is that everyone can do it.
There has always been much more "bad" music than "good" (subjective terms, but you know...). If the ratio has always been, and remains, 10 to 1 (a random number chosen for illustrative purposes) then, as more music in total is produced and released, the greater the number of "bad" is versus "good".
So, there is probably more good music made now than ever, but there's much more bad too. It's just much harder to find the good for the tsunami of bad.
Yes, there's lots of good music being made, but it's much harder to find it, too. We don't need gatekeepers, but we definitely need guides more than ever.
Absolutely we need sign posts and guides! Great point
It’s really hard to get excited about Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift etc when you grew up with Pink Floyd , led Zeppelin and Genesis!
Haha! Yup
Love your thinking on this. Here was my response to Rick: I have been playing music since 1965, learning dozens of instruments, and synthesizers, and programs and such, and the new AI tools are simply the best of the composer's and songwriter's helpers to have ever been available. And as always, pioneering spirits will devour them for all they are worth. Finally a way out of the pathetic echolalia that is the current state of music from the snail world. Such beautiful music being created now at long last, and in every genre and language. Same goes for art. Check back in 50 years.
This is one of my favourite discussion topics 😆 Having listened to music since around 68/69 I realized certain things in the development of music. First of all, back in those days, music was art, the musicians composed the music, they personally liked. The job of producers and sound engineers was to help them to make it sound good. If you were lucky, your music was spread by radio, by mouth-to-mouth propaganda of the fans or you were lucky to have a record deal with a company, which invested money into to for advertisement and touring. Over the years the composing changed so far, that many bands didn't just do their thing, but tried to hit their fans taste ... some where successful and developped their music, other became boring. All through the 80s and 90s there were lots of new genres created, so the music scene in general always had some exciting to offer.
A big difference between back then and nowadays is, that we spent our leisure time to listen to music, playing our records over and over again, having the covers in hand, looking at lyrics, bandmember names, sometimes also at the names of producers and engineers. Another interesting part was reading the "thanks-section", because this way you could find out who knows whom and didn't have to wonder about later changes between bands or any kind of cooperations or side projects.
Nowadays, especially since the streaming services came up, many people "consume music", they hear but don't listen ... and I've experienced plenty of times, especially with younger people, if you ask them, what they listen to, they can tell you a genre, but don't know bandnames or song titles ... in my eyes a real sad development ☹ there's no more appreciation for the artist or his music.
But I've also realized, that many older folks have started using playlists created by their streaming services. I have my own personal opinion to this : If I want to listen to music, I pick it myself from my collection or maybe look for it in utube. The only ones, whom I let recommend music to me are Jim, his subscribers and maybe a handful of other channels.
And as my main interested nowaydays concerning new music goes towards prog/progmetal/neoprog/artrock I am very pleased to have my eclipsed music magazine. I mentioned many times before : 10 times per year a magazine full of news, reviews and a sampler CD with 10 songs. Of these 10 songs I usually know 1 - 3 artists, if I like 1 band per CD I'm having 10 new bands per year, that's pretty much nowadays compared to listening to radio : 100 new "songs" and if you are lucky, you like 1 😆 I've also watched several videos of Rick Beato, and I especially like when he judges about the actual most played songs in the world. He listens, plays a bit on his guitar, explains, what the songs consist of. My highlight was this one time, when he finally judged the number 1 song, and after disliking the songs nr 10 - 2, he said : Oh, it's a song ... meaning all the ones before where something "created" and not composed to be liked by the listeners.
So let's all be happy with Jim and some of the other channels, which have good music and interesting reactions ... most of the time 😂🤘🤘
Awww, thank you Rudi! I’m so grateful for this community and the passion and enthusiasm of the audience. We know there’s great music there. And so does Rick, he needs the clicks 😜
I think a somewhat essential thing here that is missed is that most artists, perhaps even more so than powerful to to devaluation of recorded music (a lot of artists really struggle to make much money off Spotify), make most of their money from touring and playing live, so I'm not entirely sure that having to perform live has gone away at all really.
Live is where you can see artists shine. Watch/hear performances from Haken, or Tool, or Steven Wilson to be blown away by how good these artists are.
So glad you made a response to that video. I really enjoy Rick Beato’s interviews and some of his content! But he is off the mark here for sure! Music today is still alive and great music is being made. It is just not in popular radio and does not receive exposure. Producers are seeking the next big pop artist , the music that will sell right now. It is sad but is the world we live in. Nice video Jim! Much love and respect!
Thanks Eric 👍🏼
Great take,Mr. Jim! I know that you reactors get credit (monetarily or otherwise) for the amount of hits/likes you get for your content. I'd like to commend you in particular,for introducing folks to lots of prog music that some folks would never have heard if it weren't for your channel. It's a wonderful tool to introduce people to new discoveries in music! Maybe some of it doesn't get huge numbers of views,but you make it available and that's HUGE! my favs will always be anything Neal Morse related. His material deserves to be heard by the masses--top mof the heap,for my money! So thanks for any/everything you'v reacted to so far by him. Hope you keep riding that train! ;-) Cheers, and keep up the great work,bro! T
Thank you for noticing…. If I was in this for the money, I’d be making videos about Comfortabley Numb and Dimash every day!
@@JimNewstead I hear ya,matey! If you get to it, Neal Morse Band epic 'Alive Again' (live OR studio). Or Spock's Beard - Snow album. You'll love 'em! Cheers, T
Nice thoughts, Jim. Thanks for sharing. Yes I agree it's the world we are living in, with lack of real education. What you said about music can be said about politics. We just have voted here in France and I'm shocked that people vote as theey listen music, going to the easiest without thinking about the consequences. All the best to you.
I think I need to make a follow up to this, as there’s many more thoughts occurring as I read these comments. Thanks
So true with there is still incredible music coming out. Check out Thumpasaurus! All the guys are in their 20's and are just so good. They are like a mix of Primus, Devo, Mr. Bungle, Tenacious D had a funk baby. Please check them out, Jim! Really any song is fantastic. And they are even better with their live recordings 🤯
Sounds fun!
Totally agree with you Jim.
I stopped listening to mainstream radio about thirty years ago because of the lack of quality, fantasy, musicianship. Thirteen in a dozen we call that in the Netherlands.
Everything sounds more or less the same. If a song has success with a certain ooh aah ooh sound, every other ‘artist’ will do the same afterwards.
Thanks to channels like yours, DailyDough or JustJP we are able to hear the other and most of the time much better music you won’t hear on mainstream media.
Awww, thanks so much buddy!
Diminishing returns.
Some good points Jim.
My old man take...I listen to as much if not more "modern" prog music(post 2000) than classic seventies prog. Modern prog may never capture the originality and beauty of those old masters, but it still has much to offer.
Ps, Just as all hope was lost, I rediscovered my love for creative, inspiring, and beautiful music about 5 years ago. Thank you Mr Wilson (and your Raven).
I grew up in the late 60’s-early 70’s. I’ve seen many prog bands perform live. Genesis with P.G. , Pink Floyd (the Wall live) King Crimson, Camel, Gentle Giant, Renaissance, Tangerine Dream, and many more. The greatest, most emotionally draining, concept album live show was Steven Wilson performing Hand.Cannot.Erase.
Yes, Steven Wilson has been at the forefront of the modern age of progressive, intelligent music.
I agree with you completely. Nice one Jim.
Problem is Jim, the good music and the bands that that still exist that you mention, aren't getting any air time with the radio stations, and that results in bands breaking up while the over processed music in the charts has free reign and makes the money.
So maybe the problem is with the tastemakers and gatekeepers of popular outlets, TV, radio, etc…..
@@JimNewstead And their ability to bombard their targeted audience, because they can.
I think you're right Jim. There's always been an ocean of mediocrity around and just a few swimming-pools worth of true class. Having always been an enthusiast of music that is not the most popular and easy to find, I don't think it's much different now to find great music than it ever was.
In the 1970s, I discovered quite a lot of great music by listening to Alan Freeman's Saturday afternoon radio show. (I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to watch The Old Grey Whistle Test!) Nowadays, the big broadcasters don't seem to cater to my taste at all, but there are some podcasts that do.
I really think there’s a gap in the radio schedules for a specialty show on, say, 6 music that caters for the adventurous music we all like!
Short cuts doesn't make better musicians but it brings down the quality so people won't be so shocked when A.I. takes over the human element of creating.
Short cuts don’t make better musicians, I agree, but it can make some already good musicians more efficient and improve their work flow.
Hello. In 2016 the band I was in recorded in a studio with an engineer and a session drummer and bass player. They were not producing us. Just there to record. The band had a Female and male lead vocals depending on the song. Also thinking like Beatles or Queen etc. we thought it was fine to have different genre songs. A Shoegaze, some americana like songs, psychedelic. Their advice to us was due to streaming. To focus on one genre and one vocalist. It was terrible to hear. But probably right.
Very tough for a band playing individual instruments to get a deal and become promoted now. Some can work social media to create a buzz. Touring and creating a culture/following is the way to grind out a living now for most but not all.
I really think people who things were better in the past just got some serious nostalgia goggles on. If one really feels that way, how about farming you own food, use a stick to create a fire, etc.. even fire requires a certain amount of knowledge, perhaps they should go back even further. Whenever I listen to Beethoven I often wonder: what could this man have done with modern instruments? Perhaps nothing, maybe he'd be in a blip in the crowd. There could be a Beethoven out there right now and is getting drowned out because people are too busy and can only tolerate "content" as background noise of their daily grind..
Oh I think without doubt that the 70s and 80s were a completely golden age for music, experimentation, innovation, excitement, innocence and playfulness that’s missing today in mainstream music. But incredible music is being made and it’s very hard to see it hidden in plain sight amongst the dross.
Hey Jim! Plenty of good music out there, but you must seek and find it. Listen to what you like and then play the heck out of it❗️👍😎
Exactly my friend!
@@JimNewstead 👍😎
Good quality music is invisible / not pushed, due to streaming services owners looking for lowest cost (read: AI) content.
Rick tends to simplify things imo, NOTE MY OPINION, The Beatles are a group he holds up in high regard, quite rightly, however none of them could read music. Nor for that matter could Bob Dylan, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer or Stevie Wonder, amongst many other famous musicians. Also The Beatles had a "fifth Beatle" in George Martin which he conveniently overlooked in a previous video. Back in the 70's (my decade) we had music "factories" producing singles much like we do now. Things haven't changed that much just the ease to make music.
I thought Rick's argument was convincing, although I know he gets a lot of vitriolic criticism from people who feel they need to defend modern music. Certainly the relative ease with which you can make music using modern technology has led me to try my hand at it, even though I don't consider myself a musician. I don't particularly care if what I do is good or bad, I'm just having fun with it. But that identifies a large part of the problem: people like me can create rubbish at the push of a button, and the easier it is to do, and the more people who do it, then the more the proportion of rubbish will grow relative to the stuff with real value and staying power. So statistically music must be getting worse on average, and not everyone has to time or knowledge to enable them to find something better. It's easy to say that there has always been rubbish music made, but it was made by musicians and we have a historical record of sessions played by Jimmy Page, or Ritchie Blackmore, or James Jamerson, or The Wrecking Crew, that still makes it of some interest.
I certainly hope I didn’t come across as vitriolic, because that was not my intention. I wish he would use his amazing platform to showcase amazing modern music. He is in an almost unique position to be able to do that.
@@JimNewstead Sorry, that wasn't aimed at you. I was on another forum where it seemed to be open season on Rick Beato. Actually Rick has released another video explaining how he does support new music. There's a balance to be found between promoting the music you love and trying to generate revenue from your channel. There are new artists out there whose music would get a lot more views than the artists covered here or on Rick's channel, but at the sacrifice of any pretence to integrity and the loss of the core demographic that makes up the current audience. I think Rick's reach is probably a lot less than people ascribe to him.
Some music is meant to make people dance or feel some kind of way. Analyzing it in the context of music theory and technical music structure isn't always the point so there's that. Dance music as just one example, to someone who is an aficionado of creative music structure might sound obnoxious and droning but just sitting there listening to it isn't the point of the music and you can't use it credibly to judge the state of music today based on your subjective opinion of it.
When you take a chart/list of top selling/listened to/downloaded music, chances are pretty good that a number of those songs fall into that category. Therefore using your subjective opinion of the music on that list to judge the general state of music that one might sit down and listen to today just doesn't work.
It's true as you say that music is everywhere now. The record company/record store/radio station triad is no longer in control of music distribution the way it once was. As a result you have to look harder and in many more places. What you find when you do is governed by the odds of anything. More choices automatically means more good and bad on whatever scale you are using. In Rick's case making video after video after video about how that sucks or how it results in music he doesn't like doesn't help anyone.
My point to him was let it go. Top ten charts on Spotify is a pointless place to look. What's popular can be determined by so many things that it's pointless to resist it. Rick is at his best when he picks something he feels is good, shares it with people and explains why he thinks it's good. If there isn't enough time in the day to find it all he has a boatload of subscribers who I'm sure would love to share what they think is good and he would have material that could be had for decades to come. Longer then he would even want to do this.
Ha ha!!! I was thinking about responding to Rick’s video too!!! Because he is DEAD WRONG!!!!
👍😎
I like Rick Beato. But he is really off on this particular conversation!!
You still should Scot!
@@TheProgCorner Did you guys watch the follow up video?😎
Music is a reflection of society. Or course it's worse now. The world is hardly a great place to be young. Minds are poisoned by the internet from a young age now.
Mainstream music is mostly awful. I agree. Look between the cracks.
Music changes, tastes change, technology changes.
Music has been fluid always in human history.
I completely agree with you Jim. Music is subjective, what I like others may not and I find that in the last few years, as I've got older my tastes and horizon's have changed and become broader. However I'm not a fan of the stuff that clutters up the charts and is played on certain commercial radio stations, sometimes it's hard to discern what is a song and what is an ad, that leaves me cold. For example The Beatles, in 1962 record their debut single Love Me Do, five years later they release Strawberry fields forever, an amazing evolution, and development in musicianship and songwriting, but they have utilised the recording studio to achieve this sound, that mixed with talent. I love landscape photography and combine that with my passion for hill walking, now I have taken some shots, that friends have said are truly stunning, and I can see what they mean but that is because of the technology in my cameras, what I can do with all the tech in my Nikon. So I would never call myself a Photographer, far from it. I point the camera, set up the focus and shoot. And so it is with music and all forms of media and the arts. There is both good and bad music, it was the same in the 50's, 60's, 70's right through to today, and it will be the same throughout time, long after we are all gone from here. It's just we have to look a little harder and dig a little deeper to find the good stuff.
Dig, and ye shall find!
My only contribution to this discussion will be purely factual and therefore quite boring but here goes. Since its easier to make music now, its evident that there is more music made today, numerically, then ever before. Obviously then, statistics comes into play and it seems harder to find comparatively good music today, then it was before it became easy to produce music... Maybe one spicy thing in this contribution then would be the opinion that rarity affects our brain in the sense that we find value or beauty in rare things.
Listen to the new Adrianne Lenker album or the new Vampire Weekend album and then say music is getting worse. You won't.
Beato’s argument only applies to pop music, which is only a narrow slice of the music being produced worldwide. In fact, there is tons of great new music out there. And much of it does have a considerable following. You won’t find it on the Spotify Top Ten, but who cares. For most of my life, the top ten has been garbage. There have been exceptions. Instead of bitching about lame pop music, Beato should be using his channel to discuss exciting new music. But he doesn’t.
PLEASE you need to do more Dead. 50 years ago they released Mars Hotel. It precedes Blues for Allah which you have covered. Please do it. You’ll love it as I do
Oh dear, it's the 'There is good music, you just have to look for it' argument.
Ok, let's deal with this once and for all. When someone says music is terrible nowadays, it's implied in the statement that you are talking about the music that is promoted, played on the radio, the music you have easiest access to. Or maybe I'm wrong - maybe you, and others making this silly argument, require a statement to mention every detail so that nothing is implied? Sure the statement will be 400 words long, but we can't have you being in any confusion, can we? Therefore, so long as you can imply what the statement is referring to, when you say that ridiculous 'look for it' statement, congratulations, you are agreeing that music now is terrible.
If this is unclear, let's try it this way. Nobody is saying that isn't another Lennon and McCartney changing the face of music right now in their basement. The point you are missing is that they cannot get out of the basement because the promoters, radio, record company etc is insisting on drivel. That is, in the past you didn't have to look for it - good music was in your face, recognised as good, promoted, on the radio etc. Get it? Did some geniuses in the past slip through without getting the attention they deserved? Sure. But let's compare that with an industry today that literally wants to promote mediocrity.
TLDR - I shouldn't have to look for it🙄
Ok, next point - 'just because it's easier, doesn't mean it's bad'. Oh dear. The statement that music is bad now is, again an implication of a general state of affairs. Generally, if something is easier to do, less effort goes in to making it good. There is no point in highlighting a few examples where a modern day musician had it easy but got lucky and produced a good song - most haven't. In fact, if easy methods have no effect on music quality, then there should be millions of brilliant songs now since so many people have access to create music now. Unfortunately, most of it is drivel, because easiness creates laziness.
And then, just like clockwork, the next silly argument comes through - 'yes, there's rubbish now, but there was rubbish then also' 🙄. Ok, this is an easy one. Was there rubbish then as there is now? Yes. So, all I need to hear from you now is the non-rubbish from modern music. That means, I just need a the Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie for modern times? Now, of course, many more could be mentioned but let's give you the best chance possible. This does not mean mention your favourite band or popular artist. No, you need to name three artists (not artists that I have to look for, see above) that changed culture, experimented with the pop music formula, introduced new techniques into their work, continually changed and matured throughout their career - in summary, remained different enough to obtain both critical and commercial success.
Of course I know he was over simplifying the argument for an internet audience. He absolutely knows there is great music out there, better than great. But he needs the clicks, and showcasing unknown but utterly incredible artists won’t bring in the numbers he needs. This video has now received over 2 million views in 6 days. That’s a nice little earner if you ask me!
I appreciate much that Rick does, and as an educator and informer he’s second to none. But with 4.3 million subs he could do so much good for the scene. I couldn’t agree more that modern pop music is trite, bland, soulless, utterly unconvincing, cynical, formulaic and indistinguishable from everything else, but that wasn’t my point. I didn’t want to rile you up, I’m sure you’re a lovely chap, but the inconvenient truth is the music that is incredible, unbelievably good doesn’t get the oxygen it needs to grow. There have been few acts that have had global and culture defining influence after the 70s. A few. Michael Jackson, Radiohead, Metallica, maybe even Eminem. But where is the clamour to hear Steven Wilson’s latest record, Devin Townsend’s, Leprous, Ren, Haken, Mr Bungle? Who’s championing Von Hertzen Brothers? Why isn’t the bbc ( I’m in the UK) playing iamthemorning or Heilung, or Snarky Puppy, or Sleep Token? The music is invisible. I don’t think that’s because there’s rubbish being made, but because those that choose what the public hears promotes the crap about the quality. That’s a different argument altogether.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment on my video, and hope to see you around here again some time! Cheers, Jim
@@JimNewstead No worries mate. I just hear that 'you need to look for it' argument so many times, and all that means to me is that the person saying is agreeing that the mainstream stuff these days is dreadful. All the best 👍
Rick is critical of chart music today but does little or nothing to use his platform to promote good modern music. Which is either because he doesn't know what good modern music is, or he doesn't think that would get as many clicks as his rage bait videos do.
He needs the clicks…. Feed the algorithm!