The Music Lover Extinction

Long post, this is basically a mini essay, but curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Something I've found concerning in the last decade is how fewer and fewer people, especially among younger generations will discover new music through sheer love of music. They basically only listen to new music, and by that I mean new-to-them, if they're forced to.

In the late '90s and early 00s, when Napster and later Limewire came out, I would spend hours on the computer just clicking through stuff, giving the family computer viruses, stumbling upon NSFW audio files, and occasionally: Something great that I'd never heard before. When MySpace came out, it was an endless rabbit hole of new bands. I would listen to their music players, which often just contained short samples of tracks on repeat, and then I would click through their friends' lists and find new bands. I'd open up Wikipedia and sort "heavy metal bands by country" and go through them alphabetically, hunting down their MySpaces. I would swing by the CD store every chance I got, and would sometimes buy new CDs just because it seemed cool.

The next day at school, my friends and I would trade bands. We'd write down the names of the best bands we discovered through any of the aforementioned means and exchange them.

To this day, I will just kick back and listen to music for hours instead of watching movies, playing video games, and all these other things people seem to do in their free time for entertainment now.

Everyone I went to highschool with did this. My parents did this back in the tape days. Gen-X definitely did this, boomers did it, etc.

Seemingly nobody, unless they are a self-professed "music lover" across age ranges now, does this: Just listens to music for the sake of pure enjoyment.

Instead, what we're seeing is that other entertainment mediums are serving as kingmaker; the filter for who gets heard and who doesn't. It seems to be now, that having your music placed in a trailer, video game, TV show, or film, is serving as a subconscious signal to average people that it is worthwhile, and music which isn't in these things probably sucks. I would point to the examples of Crazy Lixx and Wig Wam. Both Rock bands from Scandinavia had been around 20 years before finding global success. It took the Friday The 13th Game and the HBO show "Peacemaker", respectively, for these bands (particularly Wig Wam) to go from getting dropped by their agent due to "lack of interest in the band" the day before, to playing on National TV the next.

But if you were a dedicated rock fan beforehand, you definitely knew who they were — but it took a mediocre video game and corny TV show on HBO for anyone outside of a dedicated subculture to care. Basically, bands need to become a meme now or have the career Survivor had in the '80s to get noticed, rather than putting out good music, touring, and getting noticed on the merit of simply writing good music. Not quite 20 years ago, when my friends and I were telling everyone about this crazy band from the UK called "Dragonforce", we saw the beginnings of this when the band went from niche to meme because they were the final boss song in Guitar Hero III. After the Guitar Hero craze died off, Dragonforce's music got better, but they wound up demoted to playing the club circuit on a shoestring budget and probably will the rest of their careers.

The only other way anyone will listen to a new band, is if their friend has the aux cable and puts it on while driving. None of the rock music stations I'm aware of in North America have ever played ANY of the myriad of great metal and rock music that has come out, especially out of Europe, in the last 20 years, but Ozzy and Metallica still dominate.

This isn't just a problem with rock music, it poses a big problem for composers.

If you put out a video game remix or TV show theme cover, it is guaranteed to get at least a triple-digit amount of plays on YouTube, even if it's mediocre. You can get hundreds of subscribers out of it, but your original works will only be listened to mostly by other composers.

They don't really like your music, they like how it reminds them of that movie or game they enjoyed.

Would anyone have given the Skyrim Theme or Jeremy Soule the time of day today were it composed just for the sake of it? Would anyone today care about John Williams' music if they didn't already love Star Wars films?

30 years ago, Yanni became a world-renowned composer because people loved his music and his unique, historic concert locations. His music didn't come from a film and it wasn't a meme. People tuned in to PBS to watch is concert at the Acropolis to hear his music there. 40 years ago, in Los Angeles, people would go out every weekend to the Roxy and The Rainbow specifically to hear new bands, and that's how Motley Crue and GnR got record deals. Later, people would buy their records just to kick back and soak that music in.

Today, such people like that are in a clear minority. Where I think this bodes ill for the future of new composers, is that if you are a composer, people will only pay attention to what you're doing if you are already scoring games and films they know. Otherwise, you're probably going in the dust bin.

It will be very hard, under this paradigm, for composers to build any listener base at all without having "scoring credits" to boast beforehand, and they will struggle to get a gig, because nobody will listen to them. It creates a vicious cycle; a trap. There will be exceptions, but they are just that.

It seems like most people are no longer genuine "music lovers", and rather that to most, music is just a companion product to some other entertainment product that they are nostalgic for; video games have been credited with "saving the symphony orchestra", and I think that indicates a culture in decline.

47 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

If you put out a video game remix or TV show theme cover, it is guaranteed to get at least a triple-digit amount of plays on YouTube, even if it's mediocre.

Didn't happen to me but of course this is statistically true. My only published piano cover of a TBOI piece was more or less as ignored as the rest of pieces I published, which I consider normal considering the kind of music I make ngl. It's all about marketing right now, there's dudes in spotify who make "piano albums" which consist basically on improvising a full hour, dividing the improv in ~60 intervals and that'd be it. They get more views than I will get probably in my live, but personally I don't care. I care about the situation though, but not about mine specifically.

There are many signs of a declining culture (or for some, an evolution to a culture of the fast & easy, which I don't like at all). What's the solution though? I spend hours, just like you and some other buddies in this forum and possibly other websites, doing our thing: publishing, reviewing, replying, promoting, signing to competitions here and there, putting portfolios here and there in order to get some commissions. We could just follow the trend and make mainstream music, I'm sure you're perfectly capable of doing so, because I am and I'm not precisely very skilled in DAWs but c'mon it's not like the majority of mainstream has an unseen or unbelievable production value, which is in my opinion the only real value I can give to it (again personal opinion, no hard feelings).

My approach, which I'm aware doesn't solve the issue locally, is just doing what I consider righteous and trying to spread that by acting the way I would want to see more or less portrayed in a bigger scale. I could extend myself more in everything but it's 7:42 and I barely slept today man. Just wanna tell you, for now, that I generally agree with your mini-essay and that I'm glad that there's a good amount of people who despite of the current, say, cultural decline, keeps being loyal to their principles and values whatever they be, specially in the musical aspect.

Kind regards!!

 

Hi @AngelCityOutlaw,

That's a good topic for sure.

I think this trend is not only limited to music alone: anything that requires attention is declining. For many music is just one way of entertainment and with the varieties and the fast-food quality of entertainment nowadays music will for sure decline.

Originality is for sure one thing doesn't have to be shared among the mass. I won't expect an Ingmar Bergman film as popular as the Avengers, and it doesn't have to be popular actually. People seeks originality will find your works good if yours is good in its own way. Of course it will be great if your works are apperciated by more people, but that's not necessarily related to the value of art and music.

I don't think there's a cultural decline nowadays. It's rare to begin with comparing to the mainstream. Rather I think it's a norm artists (if we are) not to be appereciated with their uniqueness and I find it better with this than to flatter the mass even if I have the ability to do so. Of course as my buddy @Omicronrg9 said having loyal prinicple followers is great, but we cannot ask everyone to do that at all. Just keeping doing our own things and having fun in it will be great enough.

Henry

I also don't think that culture is in decline.  I just think that music is given more meaning by stories and other forms of media.  But composers, I think, are also apt to compose more meaningful music when they cater their music to fit a video game or film story.  The music and the events in the game or film combine together in the popular consciousness and enjoy a boost in lucidity and popularity because of their combined co-association.  I think part of the reason why there was such a craze for Wagner's music was because of this kind of combination and increased association between music and story in the often referenced concept of the leitmotif.

I think there may be some truth in this because the current trend is to ram music down people's throats at every possible minute of the day. When you phone some outfit for customer service you're made to listen to a stream of the most annoying music imaginable in the hope you'll hang up. In lifts, in supermarkets there it is, percolating through the ceiling; in broadcast documentaries the moment someone stops talking, in comes that usual pitter-patter of synthesised carp (typo) - sometimes when someone's speaking too. In the gym, there it is, disco music pounding away usually at a different tempo from your repetitive exercise. And the dross of pop music has dumbed so many people down, forced to engage with it as a significant part of marketing an ethos, a scene with its fashions, vernacular and attitude. 

There really is nothing new left in genre. The days of craft and compositional skill in rock is as good as over, leaving a few bands/genres as a backwater as is classical music to most these days. Where's the modern Zeppelin or the Beatles or Floyd? Or Dub Reggae? Once punk had run its course, just about everything had been covered.

So music these days is about marketing. Important to the economy. Behind each "new" style and "artist" (so called) is a hundred departments and dozens of geeks on their music technology gadgets, all programmed by focus groups no doubt. The young have money and little responsibility so lets spearhead selling to them. Gone are the days of music education in schools so too few have music drawn to their attention. It's part of everyone's daily life now, like it or not. And how many of those young people have ever heard live music?

However, as the young start to age many take on a greater appreciation of refinement. I suspect that many aficionados of classical music make a start in their 30s-40s. I may be wrong but still....

The library and one's own home is the sanctuary of (almost) silence. 

My experience online makes me think the opening statement is not true. There are plenty of young people interested in say Stockhausen, they even make score videos of his music and there is a whole accepting community on reddit and discord around classical music. There are more young composers than ever in History.

What I do think is right is that high end classical music will probably never appeal to the wider masses again. We are up into metamodernism and the common folk can't digest even neoclassical stuff from almost a century ago. The only exception seems to be when it is features in a mass appeal movie. This is why I think we need a visual element encouraged in new music, perhaps artificial intelligence will make that a lot cheaper and accessible.

There is a lot of truth to what you are saying.  I do think the attention span of younger generations is getting shorter which is particularly bad when it comes to music.  Everything is accessible instantly and it is easy to move on to the next thing if they are not instantly drawn into it.   As you said, covers and remixes of familiar music does tend to draw more listeners than original music though there can be exceptions.  Until recently, my most listened piece on my youtube channel was a brass quintet arrangement of a Star Wars theme that I did for my brother when he wanted it played at his wedding many years ago, so no surprised it got a lot of views and I admit, I have scattered a few other arrangements/covers within what is mostly original music to try to attract more viewer who then I hope will stick around to listen to my original music.  And I think this does work; kind of out of the blue, an organ arrangement of one of my original choral works suddenly rocketed up to being my most viewed and is on the verge of being the most listened piece on my channel just within a couple years so I guess it is still possible sometimes to strike the right chord in people.

12 hours ago, Quinn said:

I suspect that many aficionados of classical music make a start in their 30s-40s.

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my interest in classical music started in my teens.

On 4/6/2023 at 9:19 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I also don't think that culture is in decline.

On 4/6/2023 at 9:19 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

But composers, I think, are also apt to compose more meaningful music when they cater their music to fit a video game or film story.  The music and the events in the game or film combine together in the popular consciousness and enjoy a boost in lucidity and popularity because of their combined co-association.

I can (mostly) agree with that, but this is even one of those points I think was more true 20 - 30 years ago regarding the first point.

In the past, largely due to limitations in video game sound, you had to hire a composer who really knew what they were doing to compose something that would be interesting to listen to on loop with just a bunch of beeps and boops. Where film was concerned, they were not going to drop 100s of thousands on hiring an orchestra unless once again, you had a composer who really knew what they were doing. You wouldn't give just anybody the job.

But Hans Zimmer and his factory have reduced film music to being as vacuous as lil's wayne's brain after a bong rip; easily worse than pop music, and video games now desperately try to be like those films. Now, anyone can buy some samples and synths (or pirate them) and play too, and they will get the job based on sheer nepotism often via familial connections.

15 hours ago, Uhor said:

My experience online makes me think the opening statement is not true. There are plenty of young people interested in say Stockhausen, they even make score videos of his music and there is a whole accepting community on reddit and discord around classical music. There are more young composers than ever in History.

Well, my own experience is that the vast majority of those composers have little interest in composing much beyond trailer, game and film music and in conversation with them, this seems to be because they arguably like games and movies more than they like music.

There are also more electric guitar players than ever in history, but few of them put music above weed and their rockstar persona.

Most young musicians I ever played with as recently as 7 years ago were outright hostile to learning anything about musical theory, that got in the way of partying and gaming, and this doesn't seem to have changed much. I would say this reinforces my point: I wanted to learn everything there was to know about music, because I was always in it for the music. The only reason I got into writing for games, was because that was where the money was at one time.

15 hours ago, Uhor said:

perhaps artificial intelligence will make that a lot cheaper and accessible.

I'm not sure if I should be black-pilled on that or not lol

4 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my interest in classical music started in my teens.

I pretended to like Yngwie Malmsteen and that's what got me somewhat interested in classical music.

9 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my interest in classical music started in my teens

I suspect we'd class you rather different from "the masses"! 

Trouble is in the UK musical education in secondary schools has as-good-as been abandoned. In former times lessons would include a bit of singing (based on the tonic solfa) and some familiarity with names (called "musical appreciation") so even if the kids weren't interested they'd heard of names like Mozart and Beethoven.

As for Uhor's claim that many appreciate and focus on the likes of Stockhausen, this must be a regional phenomenon. The few students I've met through an acquaintance/professor may have heard of Stockhausen and a few others but aren't interested in more than knowing the names. Even those in the "sound organisation" class seem to centre on more recent proponents of (what I call) electroacoustic. 

5 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Most young musicians I ever played with as recently as 7 years ago were outright hostile to learning anything about musical theory, that got in the way of partying and gaming, and this doesn't seem to have changed much.

An interesting point. Someone gave me a book on "becoming a session guitarist" which I only quickly scanned through. It talked about all the types of scales and things you needed to learn - where I first encountered the term "pentatonic". But the thing I remember most was a remark about "if you want, you could become one of the rare breed who read music," and tried to claim there were a snobby lot in the studio.

But I mean, what do they do if given a lead sheet with just a melody and no TAB or chord notation?

.

7 hours ago, Quinn said:

Trouble is in the UK musical education in secondary schools has as-good-as been abandoned.

It reaches beyond the UK I'm afraid

7 hours ago, Quinn said:

In former times lessons would include a bit of singing (based on the tonic solfa) and some familiarity with names (called "musical appreciation") so even if the kids weren't interested they'd heard of names like Mozart and Beethoven.

That's a good point

7 hours ago, Quinn said:

As for Uhor's claim that many appreciate and focus on the likes of Stockhausen, this must be a regional phenomenon. The few students I've met through an acquaintance/professor may have heard of Stockhausen and a few others but aren't interested in more than knowing the names

In the 2010s there was a lot of infighting among metalheads over celebrities and such wearing Metallica T-Shirts, but when questioned, said people didn't know anything about Metallica or just knew Enter Sandman; they just wore the shirt because they thought it looked cool. Again, they weren't really fans of the band or their music.

At the time, I thought this was just more metalhead stupidity and didn't see anything wrong with wearing the shirt because you liked its aesthetics, and you have every right to do so.

But now, I do think there is a salient point. I would never walk around giving free advertising to a band whose music I didn't even care about.

When I was younger, I remember running into guys my age who were wearing a Hammerfall, Metallica, Anthrax or Children of Bodom shirt or sometimes they'd recognize the band on my shirt. It always resulted in a discussion with a total stranger about the band, talking about our favorite songs, etc. I actually even went out with a girl a few times after she approached me because of my Iced Earth shirt, and told me about how she used to party with them and Symphony X and had huge discussions about the band.

Now, if I were to approach someone wearing a band shirt, there is a high probability its just a fashion statement and we couldn't talk about music at all.

A guitar teacher has also noticed the same thing I'm talking about

7 hours ago, Quinn said:

An interesting point. Someone gave me a book on "becoming a session guitarist" which I only quickly scanned through. It talked about all the types of scales and things you needed to learn - where I first encountered the term "pentatonic". But the thing I remember most was a remark about "if you want, you could become one of the rare breed who read music," and tried to claim there were a snobby lot in the studio.

But I mean, what do they do if given a lead sheet with just a melody and no TAB or chord notation?

There's an old joke:

How do you get a guitar player to slow down?

Put some sheet music in front of him.