The future of Music? (big question)
 

Hey,

Just wondering what way you guys see music going into the future? I know its a completely wide open question but I'd love to hear your thoughts
:pssst:

Your on Musicbanter, surely this question has been asked a million times before here.

Music is just a passing fad. It isn't even ranked that high among those who know.

haaaaaa thats so funny. Bookmarking that now.

42.

But seriously, it is a very broad question. Do you mean what will be the mainstream trends, where we'll explore sonically (etc)? Could you narrow it down maybe?

Well, mainstream has been playing it extremely conservatively recently. Generally, only pushing pretty girl, and boy pop acts, and cliche riskless hip-hop. My theory is that the music industry itself has had a massive chunk taken out of it's ass due to it's inability to control/compete with the Internet.

People are sitting on their computers, and not going out and seeing shows. So, music will become more, and more, studio focused. Live shows more focused on repeating what's heard in recordings as a duplication(more pre-sampling), and apart from the biggest of money making acts, music will become even more regional.

Personalities will sell more than units so focus on building the personalities behind music will continue. Remember, most of the music loving audience has turned to the Internet for it's eclecticism, and ability to allow one to seek his or her own individual niche. Record producers need to push acts that are "easy to listen to"(IE... Incredibly simple yet incredibly over-produced) that are paired with an assisting set of visuals so the listener feels he or she actually understands what the music is "saying" better.

Themes will be generally inoffensive from a political/social point of view. Taking safe viewpoints that attack collectively unpopular. Most of these pop stars will pretend to be 15 year old girls even in their mid to late twenties. It'll all be about image, selling, and image.

Essentially, we'll have more, and more, and more Britney Spears of the future. Music not focused on mentally stimulating, but creating a sort of spontaneously impulsive, inoffensively undynamic, safely predictable set of repetitions that immediately catch the listener not forcing the listener to listen all too hard.

The industry is going to crash even further down, but it's not all bad. The best bands going now rarely charge 25+$ for tickets, and the potential for regional more communal music communities grows as the mainstream - terrified of losing it's throne - sticks to the safest most conservative money making formulas.

This sounds less like a prediction and more like just a description of how things are right now.

I don't see the current trends changing anytime soon.

Exactly.

You never see evolution. One day you wake up and have six fingers and a tail. It just happens that way.

In all fairness, if you examine the melodies that made jazz, and classical than compare them to the melodies that make rock, hip-hop, and pop... You'll realize there isn't much evolution going on in music.

As technology grows there's so much potential in growth of a musicians capabilities. This was a very VERY strong ideal in the 1800s, and early 1900s. However, somewhere down the line people started realizing the more advanced technology got, the easier music was to create.

Therefore, instead of using technology to evolve, and expand the knowledge base before. It was brought in focus to destroy all previous knowledge, and try to build anew. Which basically actually means technology sent music back in time, because it forced music to continually attempt to recreate itself from it's primitives.

Once what is becoming popular finally pulls itself out of those primatives, it's already gotten what most people consider stale, and thrown out to be completely rehashed again.

Then again, this is a phenomena that effects generally the mainstream. I mean, in the definition of time, Taylor Swift is concurrent with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum just on completely different planes. So it's not like music in general is devolving, just that mainstream music can never grow because it's been caught in this loop since the 1950s, and it loses a little with every reset.

It's only a shame that the best and only way for most new music to stand out is by trying to build on a pretty much completely buried knowledge base of music lost under ridiculously large piles or rubble.

It's just damn massively disappointing that mainstream music is so incapable of maintaining an evolving constantly progressing knowledge base of music rather than simply throwing everything away, and trying to recreate it.

As long as there are people complaining about the contemporary mainstream musical climate, music will evolve. The reason why we see so much crap these days is that there is more music made today than ever before, thus more crap is made as well. And given due time, some of today's crap may be tomorrow's nostalgia. Just think about what the 20-somethings today go nostalgic over.

If anything, this is a confirmation of my point. This **** will become nostalgia until something like Led Zeppelin/Nirvana/System of a Down comes around and mysteriously breaks into the mainstream giving a little bit of hope before it crashes down again. Sad thing is - with the exception of Led Zeppelin - even the bands listed are very limited, poppy, and short of the true potential of excellence music can reach.

When one of them breaks out we'll experience a brief moment of sunshine before it's sent crashing down again, and this stuff crawls out leaving us twenty years from now saying "Could be worse, could have been Gaga and Katy Perry".

LOL. Wut? System of a Down is a "moment of sunshine"? :laughing:

I'd argue that for a band that was as huge as they were, they had a lot of the aspects that many other large acts lacked. Their songs were very intricate, and varied by mainstream standards especially due to a lot of the under the surface experimentation in rhythmic shape. System of a Down may not have been all the way down the path to where thing should have went, but they're a damn start.

http://risselada.com/pictures/ctcbanquet041.jpg

If you examine the melodies that made Jazz and classical and compare them to Rock and Hip Hop, of course they'll be similar. That's because they evolved from the same thing. Western Music will always be Western Music, there will always be common elements which remain palatable for the Western audience.

There is a lot of sonic exploration going on consistently. But "evolution" musically speaking is a very fleeting concept. For example, the compositions of John Cage were considered ground breaking. His compositions influenced everybody from his own students and fellow art music composers to rock and metal bands. Yet, John Cage isn't a popular artist. He is remembered among music aficionados but not the general public. His overall contribution to music is invisible to most people.

Pop is the most visible genre in our musical spectrum. Yet, it is the slowest moving. This causes many people to think that "music nowadays sucks" and that it's going nowhere, but the answer is there are things going on behind the scenes with people you and me have never heard of that will have lasting impacts on future generations.

There's nothing in here I really disagree with. You have to understand, though, when I say look at the melodies, I say look at the decreasing amount of depth, and intricacy in them. Music evolves, and devolves, in many different places, and in many different ways.

However, mainstream music tends to sort of go by this whole cycle of focus. Where as attributes of the less poppier genres jump up, and sort of saturate pop. Then it takes flight, but ends up leaving a lot of the listeners behind who don't want to keep up with it, and it comes crumbling down to the ground again.

Music as a concept doesn't suck, and behind the scenes there's wonderful musicians all around the world who are having little impacts in their own ways. But mainstream music seems to be stuck in this constant loop of destroying itself before it can commit to a direction, then immediately jumping to a new one, or completely starting over in a direction it already went before.

David Cameron will do something annoying, piss everyone off and we'll see a punk revival. History repeats itself. I hope.

The future of music is even less choice.

The whole thing will become owned by less companies as worldwide conglomerates eat each other up where one persons say so will dictate almost everything what's done.

Yes you can say the internet gives more exposure but there's less & less money in it meaning independents can't afford to function and bands have no time to develop their music. And with the amount of music around it becomes a much more disposable commodity and the whole thing just becomes a melee of bands desperate for your attention with the better ones finding it even harder to stand out.

I'd argue that they were basically just another crappy nu-metal band in an era of crappy nu-metal.

One has to remember though, that most people aren't really interested in music (and no, cranking up the stereo for the weekend party, which most people do, alone doesn't count) and thus, not at all interested in digging deeper. My point is, however, that we who are interested also do our best to dig up something more profound than the background muzak on the radio, and some of us also try to cook something up ourselves that others might appreciate. But wether you're into "just" exploring even more obscure bands/artists for listening, or writing and performing new music, it all takes a considerable amount of dedication and as long as that community as a whole persists, good music* will continue to be made and evolve in the process.

If you'll excuse a not entirely accurate analogy: Think about scientists and inventors, those who really carry the technological evolution forward. As a part of the total population there aren't many of them, and there are not that many who in addition are very interested in their work. I.e. most people don't really care for science and technology, even if they all benefit from it. Those involved in it, however, carry on anyway since they know they may be gratified in the end, either upon seeing their own vision finally becoming realized and maybe even become acknowledged by others in the scientific community, or upon the commercial success of it when the masses acknowledge it (or rather, the fulfilling of the need it grants) through which he/she can make money.

Just the same, every - and I dare you to find an exception - popular mainstream musical genre has evolved from an at one time or another underground movement in which bands and artists has dwelled upon their own vision and maybe even the acknowledgement from the closest inner circle.

(I don't know if that made sense, but it sounded good in my head)

* "Good" music as I see it could be summed up as any music containing an artistic depth and vision in itself, in contrast to what I like to call "utility music", the thing you hear on the hit radio etc. That's not to say that artistically valid music cannot be commercially successful as well.

I'd argue that's absurd. System of a Down were only nu metal on their surface. I don't think they were the most original band on earth, either. But for a band that was literally selling #1 chart topping albums, they're quite a bit expansive.

Unlike most acts in that position they:

A) were live focused, and could preform their songs without additional production. You didn't go to their shows to see lights, and dancing. You went for music.

B) Albeit, they heavily exploited their political viewpoints to get over(and really very little of their music was related to), they were still selling themselves on music. Nobody got into System of a Down because they wanted to compliment Serj Tankian's Wardrobe.

C) They TRIED to include some influences outside the mainstream norm. Sometimes you hear a bit of an operatic tinge in Serj's voice, or some jazz/swing like bass work, whatever. Sure many bands before this explored it, did it better, and made massive success doing it(Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers) but very few were able to keep as firmly in the spotlight as System of a Down did. From Toxicity to Hypnotize they were pretty much consistently selling number one albums, which means they could be an influence on direction. They were the biggest act in music at the time they were big.

D) Even if not known for their virtuosity they played off each other well as a unit. Yes, the guitarwork was retardedly simple tuned down power chord bull****, and they overused the whole "SCREAM sing SCREAM sing with dual harmonies SCREAM" thing. However, there was a lot of ambition in the arrangement especially during their ultra-frantic songs.

System of a Down appear as a shining moment to me because of these thing, and because they stayed somewhat popular as these things were going out the window. Not that System of a Down is a shining moment for music in general, but it is for the direction of mainstream music which is going back to the way of the Madonna(And Yes, I'd prefer even truly abysmal Nu Metal like Limp Bizkit, or Linkin' Park over this any day).
I'm not bashing the music community of more serious listeners(a seemingly dying breed). I'm just saying my comments on mainstream music. That's why I say I like the fact the music industry is crashing. It makes good music less about finding the best of all time, and a more exploitative experience. Plus, I'm all for people making their own music. In fact, if people are doing it with the guarantee there's a 95% chance they won't make a dime, it's proof that the love of music is more important than the industry.

They most definitely were not the biggest act in music when they were big. And whatever you say they did or didn't attempt to put into their music, at the end of the day the result was no better or more interesting than the other nu-metal garbage of that time period so what does it matter?

in the future drums will be so fast that only robots can hear them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!

I think this is my favorite response so far :)

I didn't interpret your comments as bashing?

Anyway, I don't see how the "music industry" is crashing, it's rather changing its ways of distribution (at long last). Your last sentence pretty much sums it up though, what I tried to get through.

:laughing:

Indeed...

6x7.

I think music will be fine.
Altough sound quality may descent, I think computers and the internet will create an entirely new music scene within now and 15 years. With a lot of free sharing and little gigs and festivals.

Of course, there are musicians like Khonnor who are gaining popularity solely through the use of the internet. Not to mention many young people of this generation are able to expose themselves a bit easier to music of other eras and genres (like myself). I remember watching a music documentary talking about how music in the 50s and 60s were just like plastic dolls - mass produced, uniform, and lacking. Then, tons of bands exploded out of nowhere and started an era of experimentation and musical progression. Perhaps history WILL repeat itself, and we'll see this happen in and outside the internet? Eh, but then again mainstream has always existed... there was the Little River Band and Peter Frampton in the 70s. But what do I know?

I agree. The fact that I can record a full length album for a few hundred dollars in my bedroom if I have the instruments already means that music you and I love will always be around. That didnt use to be the case.

Sadly, this is what I see.

Especially with the way the world powers are going to shape up in 30-40 years. Freedom of expression is going to decrease, if anything. Music will likely, over time, become a form of sedation rather than expression, like it was a thousand years ago. Especially once it begins to become invasive. You'll be able to make your tunes that respond emotionally with you for sure, but will you be able to show them to anybody? Will you ever make people feel the way you felt? Fat chance.

I get the idea that 'underground' music is easier to find now. You don't have to be part of a scene. Just a couple of good music stores and the internet will do the trick.
Forums help, too.
I don't know if that's a good thing by the way. Some bands tend to lose their originaltiy once they get some sort of fame.

What exactly do you mean?

It will become kitschy and expressionless again. Think 'mainstream music', but it's shoved down your throats even moreso than now. Music really isn't half the 'market' it will soon be. Musical inventiveness that occurred around the Renaissance, or any of the other major artistic leaps, was a breaking-free of the oppression that occurred during the dark ages. It's a reaffirming of the same suppression that the dark ages brought.

I think there's always been a non-mainstream scene as long as music existed.
I don't think we should be worried.

Well how far ahead is anybody thinking? I'm thinking anywhere from 50-100 years. The world is going to COMPLETELY change by then, based off of the kind of power China will become, and its ties to other powers; their influence IS going to come to matter in Western Civilization like it never has, as well as parts of Europe. A lot more suppression will exist in everyday life. Yes, there is ALWAYS mainstream, but the mainstream will not be easy to avoid. Or in the other sense, it will be easy to avoid, but there will be nothing else to catch up with.

For instance, China has already banned several music websites ( see http://www.scaruffi.com/boycott.html for an example [and no, I don't read Scaruffi, but a friend link it to me.] ). It will not be as 'easy' to find the 'underground' scene as many people seem to think. It will result in impersonal, calculated suffocation.

I don't know, I think this is a bit extreme. It's an interesting Red Dawn like theory but seems to be thinking a little too outside the realistic scope. Albeit there have been attempts in America to Censor the Internet(Hillary Clinton was huge on it) we're too self indulgent of a commercialism society to let anybody take our porn away from us. I doubt we'll let them take away the music. China may be a growing military super-power, but if they take over the first world, it's not likely they'll keep a hold of it for very long. People in their country can get around their censors.

As for the unbearable-ness of mainstream music. I think that comes from human laziness. Just cause people don't sift through free music it doesn't mean it's not there(take a visit to archive.org if you believe otherwise. Albeit... too many people doing avant-garde ambient noise... dammit, a little is ok but learn to play instruments. Anybody can put effects on the sounds of planes flying by, and birds, and slap in static).

Thing I wish though is that people would go out, and mingle more with the regional audience. Find artists/musicians to connect with directly, and support. Connect with other people directly like I'm hoping to try to do more, and more, over the next few months,

Who says it's just going to be governments that do it?

At the moment there are only 4 record companies that control about 99% of what you hear on radio & tv.

What happens when they become 3, or 2. Or even 1 owned by a Rupert Murdoch type figure?