MattKC wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 8:55 am I'd say I generally disagree, not in the sense that I really like today's music, but in the sense that every generation has hated the music of the generations younger than them. If you can think of an era or genre of music - even iconic ones that are beloved nowadays - you can be sure there was backlash for it from the previous generation(s) at the time, so I feel any comment about "music nowadays" vs "music back then" is going to be highly subjective.

That being said, I do think digital distribution, particularly streaming, has very likely negatively affected the music industry and its willingness to take risks. There was a time when interesting artists were sought out by agents and A&R representatives because there was a lot of money to be made off physical album sales. Managers would mortgage their own houses to bet on an artist they thought could make a hit record. Now that the only money to be made is $0.00437 per play on Spotify, it's not surprising that major labels nowadays just wait to see whose SoundCloud mixtape happens to go viral on TikTok. The only real money to be made in music nowadays is live tours, or licensing to TV shows/movies/commercials.

Sure, you could argue that major labels are obsolete when a SoundCloud mixtape can go viral on its own, but you're still probably making virtually no money, and the widespread accessibility of music distribution arguably makes it just as hard to stand out from the crowd as before (if not harder). You could also argue that streaming makes people more likely to consider songs disposable; songs come and go constantly, and when you have nearly the entire catalog of officially published music at your fingertips, each one of those songs may start to feel less individually valuable.

So I think for the most part fashion is fashion, there are plenty of songs from previous eras that could be considered repetitive or uncreative (we just tend to only remember the good ones), but I also think the music industry arguably has been in a unique decline/struggle in recent decades.