The best of tunes and the worst of tunes
 

2016 was incredible year for music. With Bandcamp and Spotify the middleman has been eliminated and the results are tremendous. There is so much excellent music being made available that top whatever lists impossible. It would take a century to weed through it all and computer algorithms are proving more valuable than human critics.

Fortunately, I only very rarely find myself in a situation where bad music is forced on me but this past week or so life has put me in three situations where I had to hear what someone decided was what the public wanted to hear. One was one of those downtown food truck courtyards. I know everyone is going to say well duh but I mean there was absolutely no redeeming value at all in the music they were playing. Like the music at in grocery stores is far better. In all three locations the music was soulless and lifeless. It was as rewarding as fishing in a toilet.

Honestly, with thousands of songs on my 2016 playlist I rarely bump into **** this unenjoyable. How do they even find this ****? It’s like there’s an entire ocean of diamonds but they manage to find the only fugazi.

I think that a lot of those places just don't want to invest the time in selecting the music, so they just throw on a generic genre (or worse, mood) radio station to fill the air.

The local Gamestop has an offensively bad playlist. They played Puddle of Mudd last time I was in there. It's some kind of weird nerd-bro mix they've got going on and it's awful. They must be trying to cater primarily to the Call of Duty/Fifa crowd - because it's either awful contemporary pop of the most annoying kind or rock music from the pits of hell.

Thankfully, I rarely have a reason to go in there.

And yes, I think Puddle of Mud is offensively bad music.

I know there’s no answer that’s going to satisfy me but how could such ****ty music make it on to any sort of mood station?

Best way I can think of explaining is that it's in the best interest of those radio stations to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but appealing to the lowest common denominator yields the most shallow results.

Wouldn’t silence be preferable? Does silence offend people?

At least it wasn't Xmas music. Beware... it's coming.

I think that music has an insulating effect, so to speak. When they play it you have one less thing keeping you from being alone with your thoughts, and a thinking customer isn't worth as much money.

The music helps silence the voices inside your head telling you to kill everyone too. Come on! We all hear those, don't we? Don't we....?
:shycouch: :ar_15s:

I do despise Xmas songs.

Frown yeah that makes sense. I guess it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that music specifically designed to be neutral pisses me off so bad. I won’t return even though the tacos were good. It’s too irritating. I guess they can’t please all the people all the time.

Couldn’t they just play like Van Morrison or something?