Did the internet kill music?

I am not just talking about album sales

I am talking about an over-saturation of music. Because people have an unlimited access to basically the entire world of music, this naturally de-values music.

Music naturally becomes less valuable, less enjoyable, and less memorable because there is literally an un-ending world of music sitting there to be explored. The growth of music is infinite as well, because people are uploading their new music every single day.

The basic economic rule of "scarcity" explains that more scarce something is, the more valuable it will be. Music is not scarce at all, it is as accessible as drinking water out of your faucet.

What incentive is there to continue making music when basically anything you post on the internet will just be lost in an endless ocean of free music?

I am sure I am not the only person who feels like music has lost it's magic since every album imaginable has been uploaded to the internet for free.

Nothing holds my attention because I am completely over-saturated in music at all times.

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They said the same thing when recordings were invented.

And it's only going to be worth even less and less

i feel it
but i also love living in the future where humanity is faster than humans

no

>Did the internet kill music?
>Nothing holds my attention because I am completely over-saturated in music at all times
Just turn it off, and stop projecting your feelings on the rest of the world.

Take a look at RYMers who treat albums and artists like pokemon cards.

And to be fair, recordings probably did de-value music to some degree, because people can re-listen to their favorite songs over and over instead of just hearing it performed a few times live.

But the devaluation that records caused also caused a cult-like fan worship of people like The Beatles, Elvis, ect. ect. because the music was easier to distribute to the masses. This de-valuation ended up being a fair trade-off economically because of the mass-distributed records (sold for money).

There has not been a trade like that with the internet. Music is just free and the experience is over-saturated. Same goes for watching a live show, you can watch your favorite band play live on their most recent tour if you want.

The de-valuation of music that the internet caused has just made music less important, less sacred, less novel. People's respect for musicians is probably at an all-time low at this point, since everybody and their sister has an EP on bandcamp/soundcloud/YouTube.

This has also lowered the quality of music. Since anybody can upload an album they recorded, a good portion of music is just not interesting. Musicians in general are not interesting anymore, they don't have interesting ideas or thoughts on anything.

no, not at all
if anything, the internet saved music
there are a lot more people making music just for the fun of it and not for profit these days and sharing it with people via the internet for no reason other than they want to get their music out. they don't have to worry about marketability or shit like that because they can put it up themselves

faggot

child molester

True. Music is dead. Might actually be time to find a new hobby, y'know, something that's actually difficult and time-consuming to make.

>Did the internet kill music?
no if anything it just might save it now that artists don't need big labels to promote / popularize their music

the better question would be:
>Did the internet kill the music industry?
unfortunately not yet and not nearly fast enough, the music industry is what kills music and needs to be destroyed

t. poptimist retard

>the music industry is what kills music and needs to be destroyed
shit artists are what's killing music and bandcamp and soundcloud are rich with those

>there are a lot more people making music just for the fun of it and not for profit these days and sharing it with people via the internet for no reason other than they want to get their music out. they don't have to worry about marketability or shit like that because they can put it up themselves

Yeah that is why music is shit now and it has become de-valued.

Not only is it over-saturated, but a huge portion of it is just some talentless basic-bitch hobbyist uploading some garbage.

With varying degrees of this quality of music, the musical experience has been de-valued for people to some degree. The mystique around musicians has also suffered as well, as musicians are not respected or taken seriously because so many people are uploading garbage music.

Music that is good or interesting usually has some marketing to it, because people are willing to put money behind good music most of the time.

it killed the way that people experience and listen to music
but did it kill music?
fuck no
there is now a nearly infinite amount of music out there on the internet.
good music is definitely valuable, and with the vast amounts of music you can find on the internet, that good music is more readily available. and if you know exactly what you are looking for, you can find that exact thing. some times I want ambient, droney soundscapes devoid of any form of percussion. some times I want extremely fast electronic music. some times I want rockabilly music made in new york.

the internet changed everything and now it's up to you to change with it. change how you find and appreciate music.

t. faggot

faggot

>unfortunately not yet and not nearly fast enough, the music industry is what kills music and needs to be destroyed

How? The music industry is not inherently bad. A wealthy music industry is supposed to put their money behind artists or acts that they believe the masses will connect with for some reason.

The current music industry is just computer algorithms predicting what they think people might like, so yeah that is a problem. I am not even sure how much that is damaging music all-together though since there is such a large selection of music to choose from.

It doesn't matter if there's a fuckload of music if most of it isn't worth listening to. The "scarcity" good music hasn't changed in a significant way.

music shouldn't be a popularity contest

what is wrong about what I said? attempting to experience music in such an archaic way when the accessibility of music is a fools errand.

>the internet changed everything and now it's up to you to change with it. change how you find and appreciate music.
>change how you find and appreciate music

Reality is not subjective to perspective, that is the problem. You cannot "force" yourself to enjoy music in new ways, you can only take it for what it is.

The music experience has been devalued. Yes, of course there is more music than ever, but that is not necessarily a good thing.

Music will become as interesting as drinking a cup of water at some point, considering music is about as accessible as water these days.

>The current music industry is just computer algorithms predicting what they think people might like
a hundred times this

just look at the flock of millenials who turned to a no-name like ryo fukui thanks to youtube algorithms while completely disregarding actual classics in the genre

or people who know floral schoppe but don't even know diana ross

if this keeps on memes will become classics and actual classics will become forgotten

If anything, the internet has led to less creative music being made, not more of it. There's a near-infinite amount of classic, acclaimed music available to stream on YouTube for free, but who's taking advantage of it? Nobody, they listen to the same shit they always have and don't even try and branch out. Every kid these days is trying to hop on the fucking sadboys/cloud vapor rap train instead of using these resources to learn an instrument or better themselves. It's all memes and instant gratification.

Part of the reason that the music industry just uses computer algorithms to write their hooks and marketing is because of the over-saturation of music

Instead of putting their money behind a risky/edgy artist, they just take a safe bet and produce something that is statistically likely to turn profit.

You cannot take risks on edgy music when there is already an over-saturation of music sitting there. If something is shitty, people will not listen to it and will just turn on an artist they like from the internet.

Futhermore, anything new and daring has already been tried. That's why nearly every formerly talented artist that released something this year (Kendrick Lamar, LCD Soundsystem, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) sounded so stale: because they've either completely given up or are desperately grasping at straws trying to find a "new" sound. For the one's that have given up, the next best thing to do is shoot for the Top 200 hoping to get some money out of all this before the market collapses in on itself.

How much does being a poptimist earn you in CuckBucks?

>What incentive is there to continue making music when basically anything you post on the internet will just be lost in an endless ocean of free music?
Find your people, people to whom you are close spiritually. Play for them. Don't care for the rest. There's no magical "universal audience" to which you have to appeal.

>You cannot "force" yourself to enjoy music in new ways, you can only take it for what it is.
I have spent the last few years changing my tastes in music, seeking out artists that create the genres of music I enjoy, and now I enjoy tumbling down the musical rabbit hole. one of my favorite youtube channels is drillobite, they upload loads of electronic/idm type stuff and that's always a great way to find independent labels, artists, and new music in general.


>Music will become as interesting as drinking a cup of water at some point
this implies that every drop of music you find on the internet is just the same as the drop of water before and after it. sure, I'll listen to some boring tap water type stuff here and there but every once in a while I'll find something that way more interesting

does your argument also work with literature? what about film? classically drawn art?

perhaps you've spent the last x amount of years sticking to your tap water with the occasional sip of the diet soda the music industry pushes down your throat through the top 100 on the billboard charts, but now there's a way to get some tasty ass drank and you're just too lazy to go looking for it

>poptimist

top kek i have never heard this term before


>anything new or daring hasn't been tried

I mean, there doesn't seem to be anywhere to go. People who try to do something new just sound like try-hards making completely unenjoyable music

every genre-blend has been tried, all of the weird post-modern shit isn't very good.

Unironically, one of the things I enjoy listening to most (besides classical) is "Post-modern Jukebox" where they do jazz/swing covers of shitty top-40 songs.

There is a theory in art that when everything has been explored, artists naturally return to the past, or minimalism. I think that is what is happening right now.

youtube.com/watch?v=XCX56h12dT4

Seriously one of the few new-musical ventures that I actually enjoy listening to

define poptimist to me? all I get from that buzzword is "pop," and I listen to very little, if any of it.

>poptimism
>consumerism
>treating music like pokemon cards
>devalued
>unlimited (lol)
>rym whining
>cuck
>bad political opinions

just kill yourself if you don't enjoy the world anymore, faggot

at least the musical collectors obviously get some sense of satisfaction from it and ostensibly listen to at least some of it

these whine threads are the worst

maximum faggot

>you cannot force yourself to enjoy music in new ways

No I am not talking about enjoying new forms of music. I am a classical musican so I like going down the rabbit hole of new and old classical music. I am constantly finding new types of music that I enjoy

But this does not change the fact that this music is over-saturated. I always know that I can get on YouTube and find a new album or musical works I have never heard before, and that naturally de-values any music that I currently have in my posession.

Sort of like free internet porn ruining the experience of buying a playboy magazine (or some may even go as far to say it devalues sex but I disagree with that)

>Does your argument also work with literature? what about film? classically drawn art?

Well those styles of art have not had the same radical change that music has.

Many people argue that the digital photograph being shared on instagram/flickr has devalued the experience of buying a landscape painting. I may agree with that, except I like the novetly and aesthetic of owning an oil-based landscape painting.

Surely film has suffered the same fate as music to some degree. The internet probably plays a role in why Hollywood uses computer algorithms to predict what films will turn a profit as opposed to filming something challenging and risky.

Box office sales are way down, and people have YouTube/Netflix to watch instead.

You would NEVER see Hollywood put money behind something like "Fight Club" today. For it's time, that was a somewhat risky film to release. But it doesn't matter, they filmed it anyways because what else was the consumer going to do? They had to give it a chance.

>if you have any criticisms you don't enjoy the world anymore

Why do people get so triggered when their bread-and-circus hobbies get critiqued?

It is important to do re-evaluations of your interests and hobbies for the sake of personal growth

>I always know that I can get on YouTube and find a new album or musical works I have never heard before, and that naturally de-values any music that I currently have in my posession.
>Sort of like free internet porn ruining the experience of buying a playboy magazine (or some may even go as far to say it devalues sex but I disagree with that)
this analogy implies that the music you find on youtube, even if it could be of a significantly higher caliber, is inherently lesser than the music you have in your possession. are you arguing about the music itself of the medium?

>Well those styles of art have not had the same radical change that music has.
perhaps not as radically but they have been changed with the advent of the internet.
I would buy a blown up digital photograph and hang it on my wall, and I would do the same for a conventionally illustrated piece of art.
the nice thing about film nowadays is that film studios aren't nearly as bound by advertisements and corporate funding. netflix doesn't have to worry about people saying a netflix original is too edgy, since there is such a wide variety of other stuff to watch.
going back to the analogy you made about porn vs playboy, do you think finding a good series on netflix, or even youtube, devalues the series that you may have a boxset of at home?

altogether, I truly do not think that the internet killed music in any way. setting arbitrary values to music, other than emotions and criticism of the music itself, doesn't seem right. the emotive album I found on bandcamp the other day is just as valued and valid as the emotive album I picked up at a record store.

Remember when they said "home taping" is gonna kill the music industry? And MP3s? And how they phased out Digital Audio Tapes because they feared its perfect copy capabilities was threatening the industry?

I wish the music industry was dead at this point

This is why people want to abandon capitalism. IP is becoming less valuable and robots and AI can produce the rest.

So the internet is replacing all the old industries. Maybe 20 years from now the entertainment business will have imploded and we'll rely solely on grassroots support and independent producers for music and movies? Maybe the concepts of "mainstream" and "underground" cease to exist, and people just join small communities for the things they like? That'd be a nice future, art without corporations and lobbies getting in the way.

>maybe everything will blow up

I cannot imagine a scenario where this process reverses.

>maybe things devolve into small communities

Then there will be no money behind any music or art and no incentive. Talented and intelligent people use their intellect on things that will be profitable for them, which is a problem we are having right now.

I would say we are already at that point where the line between mainstream/underground is getting blurred and people just divide into small groups and support the things they like.

There's already no corporations or lobbies in music. Record labels have little power these days anyways.

>abandon capitalism

This is what it looks like when capitalism is removed from music. Now it's just a bunch of people throwing their content out there and whoever thinks it's worth something will put some money towards it, as an act of charity or something.

>implying good music comes from talented and intelligent people who make lucrative choices

Recorded live music still is not remotely close to actual live music, and even when we reach a point in technology where they are close, the human energy will never be present in a video

Yes but this one of the small novelties used to justify the relevance of live music

not good

Talented and intelligent people, yes, but lucrative choices? Hardly. Talented people rarely phone it in and play something that pays.

The majority of successful musicians are actually savvy intelligent people who understand propaganda/marketing, or they are managed by somebody who does.

The age of the poor down-trodden underdog is over. There won't be anymore Kurt Kobaines who are just depressed slacker pieces of shit but make "emotional" music or whatever.

The world of music is too fucked for that now. Anybody who makes it is very smart.

and for all the shit artists you cherrypick there are also some great bands out there self-releasing things.

>How? The music industry is not inherently bad.
Oy vey schlomo who is paying you to shill this late at night? I wish the current music industry was just computer algorithms, sadly I don't think that many people are interested in shitty hip-hop/rnb mixed future house or else they wouldn't have to market it down our throats and gullible retards eat it up to feel "progressive" or "in the know". It's all a game the executives control. God bless the DIY scene for not needing to follow this shit.

...

>implying Cobain was dumb or even an underdog
The guy really badly wanted to be a rock star and he worked hard to get it...but he also underestimated how tough and stressful fame is, so he couldn't deal with the pressure and instead...just blew his head off. End of story.

Yeah dude the internet also killed porn since there's an over-saturation of porn clips because people are uploading their amateur videos every single day.

you heard all of this in a Trent interview sometime last month, didn't you?
(didn't you)

>I've discovered a new prejudice--I don't like live albums. That's why I've never gotten into bootlegs, and it's certainly why I allow groups as vital as the Stones or the Who pass from my mind for months or even years. For one thing, live lps rarely contain much new material, and although I thrive on live music--the Who at Forest Hills literally set me up for the album--I believe that life must be painstakingly translated onto vinyl. The visual excitement and concrete community of the club or concert situation cannot be duplicated on a phonograph, the vibrant sound can be reproduced better in a studio , and the spontaneity of performance is ineffective without those other elements and can be approximated at the session anyway. Hence, I will consciously refrain from judging live albums in the CG. The ones I love--Live/Dead and Cheap Thrills--are as much mementoes as great records, with dull or uneven stretches blotted out by a few brilliant moments.

Tom Petty said the old way of doing things in the business was bull and he's glad it's dead. In his day, you'd have to hope a talent scout from Warner or Atlantic would walk into the club you were playing in and go "Hey, you guys have 'it'. Wanna sign?" Or you could submit demo tapes over and over to a record label and get ignored or rejected.

Now you can just upload the stuff online and never have to hope a Warner scout will happen to discover you.

>Now you can just upload the stuff online and never have to hope a Warner scout will happen to discover you
Yeh but you have to take the good with the bad. For example, Justin B*eber was discovered on the Internet.

Good music, or rather music that I specifically enjoy, is still rare, so no.

But there were always thousands of shitty artists. You think everything in 1968 was the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

If there's one thing the Internet has rendered extinct, it's live albums. Since you can just look at footage of a band on Youtube, there's no point.

I mean, he is not wrong

Of course. Try and comb through 1968 releases (to use your example) and observe just how much shit there actually was. So much mediocre paint by numbers blues rock. And outside of rock, normies back then were listening to derivative shitty pop ditties written by David and Bacharach. Go to a thrift store and you'll find piles of this shit.

>The majority of successful musicians are actually savvy intelligent people who understand propaganda/marketing
Or someone like Lars Ulrich, a very mediocre musician who however happened to be a genius at marketing.

>This thread
I came from the frontpage and I never come to Sup Forums beause of its pretentious and casual rep it has but holy shit, the amount of autism is unreal. Idiots applying retarded economics to music like it's a commodity like water and others bitching about how there's too much music is just laughable. All I got is "Music is popular therefore I hate it REEE NORMIES"

Doesn't help that there's literally 1 guy shitting up most of the thread and it's the OP. You can tell because of his faggot ass reddit spacing. I bet that he has posted about 9 times in this shit thread. Bet he's a cunt who only listens to a small number of bands as well.

Music has never been in such a great spot. You can listen to concerts in whatever genre you want, you have a large on-demand selection that you can stream and even larger that you can download and take with you. Artists are collaborating at an ever increasing rate in the entirety of history and the cost to produce music and get an audience is something that even your average person can do.

What you cunts are talking about is artificially increasing the "value" of music by limiting it for no fucking reason other than "MUH EXPERIENCE MUH VALUE MUH SCARCITY." Yeah, that 1 dollar twinkie will inevitably go up in value if you slashed production in half.

The only fucking difference there is now than, say, 200 years ago or even 50 years ago is the entry point being easier and artists, no matter how shitty, being able to shove their work to the masses.

If anything, in those days you had to actually buy an album to know if it was any good or not. Imagine spending $7 on an LP only to get 35 minutes of bland, shitty blues rock. Or you could read guys like Christgau but then their opinions were exactly that and might not necessarily line up with yours.

Regarding scarcity, yes it was true that in the 70s, in the pre-Internet age, rock stars had a mystique to them that is lost now. KISS never showing their real faces? Impossible to pull off that kind of stunt today. But that doesn't have any bearing on the actual music itself.

exactlly this.
>19 years old
>5k ratings on his rym profile

>The internet probably plays a role in why Hollywood uses computer algorithms to predict what films will turn a profit as opposed to filming something challenging and risky

It was already like that in the 80s when you had Star Trek V, Friday the 13th XXII, Halloween XIX, etc, all before there was an Internet.

This reminds me a lot of the automobile industry in the 50s-60s. The Big Three gradually allowed bean counters to dictate product direction and engineering and styling were deprecated. Not long before he retired in 1958, Harley Earl told some guys in the styling department at GM "General Motors exists for one purpose--to make money. In order to do that, we sell cars. But if we could make money from selling trash cans, then we would sell trash cans."

In short, it was cynical complacency. They believed they'd own the market forever and could put out bland, shitty cars and people would continue to buy them anyway. Well, in time Japanese cars arrived and showed up GM and Ford good.

>still obsessed with hating bieber in 2017
holy shit kill urself underage 9gagger

The internet killed the concept of things being "sacred and mystical" in general. Either become a postmodernist like every other person who cares for art, stop caring about art in general, or commit suicide because those are your only options.

>more scarce something is, the more valuable it will be
>actually believing this

>You would NEVER see Hollywood put money behind something like "Fight Club" today. For it's time, that was a somewhat risky film to release. But it doesn't matter, they filmed it anyways because what else was the consumer going to do? They had to give it a chance.
The 70s was a very experimental time for Hollywood, yes, directors were given near-total creative control. Especially when you compare it to the super-formulaic 80s which provided an unfortunate preview of 2010s Hollywood where everything was endless sequels with campy action/superhero flicks.

I agree that the 80s was a pretty weak decade for movies that's been way overinflated by nostalgia. I don't care how great you thought Beverly Hills Cop was when you were 12 years old, 80s movies were a horrible cheesefest for the most part.

"Originality in music doesn't exist. After all, there are only twelve notes."

>IP is becoming less valuable and robots and AI can produce the rest

Put down the marijuana, dude. It's fucking with your brain.

The 80s was also the first time that computer algorithm pop music existed, primarily in the second half of the decade when everything had to be engineered for MTV and based on cliches. One of the best examples is how the Bangles were forced to abandon their original retro 60s pop rock sound for generic bullshit like "Walk Like An Egyptian" because Columbia told them it wasn't marketable or what late 1980s audiences wanted to hear.

In that context, we ought to be very glad for the Internet age.

People didn't hate Bieber or Nickelback personally, more for what they represented which was the worst form of corporate computer algorithm-generated music.

I think that it might hurt the evolution of novel music by eliminating the possibility of truly isolated subcultures and artistic movements lasting for any length of time

>using economics to try and place value on art
You're a fucking retard dude. Just because there's a ton of bandcamp and SoundCloud trash out there doesn't mean you have to listen to it. Most music ever made is trash, but garbage music doesn't get remembered for hundreds of years so people seem to think that before the internet and records there was only Mozarts.

We live in the best possible time to be fans of music, you guys have some terrible opinions.

>muh purity/sacredness

shut the fuck up, that isn't what music is about, if you don't want to listen to trash then don't listen to trash, it's not hard.

>Box office sales are way down

LOOOOOOOOL imagine actually believing this

IT just became a top 3 best-selling horror movie of all time, how can you say shit like that? Suicide Squad broke records last year, among others.

>You would NEVER see Hollywood put money behind something like "Fight Club" today. For it's time, that was a somewhat risky film to release.

not really, Fight Club is fedoracore

>Sort of like free internet porn ruining the experience of buying a playboy magazine (or some may even go as far to say it devalues sex but I disagree with that)
Playboy is fine for what it is, but they had a certain aesthetic to them and Hugh Hefner (RIP you dirty old motherfucker) had a certain body type he liked (namely torpedo tits). If you shared Hef's tastes in women, fine, if not, oh well, it was his magazine and reflected his idea of sex. Today everyone can pretty much find whatever smut suits their tastes online.

it just added millions of untalented shitheads, in a way it did bring down the overall quality of music, yes

But there were millions of untalented shitheads in 1998 and 1988 and 1978 and 1968 and...

So same as it always was, no?

IT got popular just because of not being capeshit. There's only so much Batman or Hulk you can take before your head explodes.

okay but regardless it is literally selling so many tickets that it is breaking industry records, and you're telling me movies are selling less these days?

Yeah there is an over saturation of completely talentless people who only make music because they're attracted to the idea of being a musician. There is a benefit to this i think, when something truly great is realised it sticks out because it doesn't have much competition. Look for the positives my man

For as many people as there are who cream themselves to the 90s, they forget just how all the great music from that decade was not what you heard on the radio while driving to work in the morning. No, it was just a whole lot of one hit wonder pop stars and formulaic R&B.

This is also true. Every generation has absolute terrible music its just our generation has access to all of it at once

The Internet doesn't change it either. If you're good and have talent, you'll get attention and if you suck, you suck, end of story. And you'll no more hear Death Grips on the sound system at the mall than you would have Marilyn Manson in 1995 (but you'd hear a whole lot of R. Kelly and Celine Dion).

I was on a 1994 binge recently and man, the rock that year was pretty brutally heavy stuff. You weren't gonna be playing Manson, Korn, or Pantera on any Macy's sound system. Wouldn't want to scare the customers off.

^This.

All that does change is that it's easier now to get your stuff out and harder for labels to bully you into submission like they did with the Bangles.

And thank God you don't have to spend money on shitty albums to find out that they're shit nowadays, or to have to rely on Christgau and his kind to tell you what music is good and what isn't.

The record industry you have to understand emerged as an offshoot of the movie industry, the major studios like Warner and Columbia started record labels. So music was never their primary focus so much as entertainment.

And RCA, who of course sold audio equipment and also started a record label.

>every album imaginable has been uploaded to the internet for free.

Or at least everything of value. There might be some one hit wonder/novelty song from the 50s that you can't find online, but...

Stop listening to shitty music.

"The industry is dead because people won't pay for music anymore. It's not the industry, it's the fans. People go out and riot, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes bad ones, but when they break into a store and steal stuff, the store goes out business. The business is dead. Not for KISS, we can continue to tour and the Rolling Stones continue to tour and play the songs everyone loves, but for a new band it's dead. You have to give away your music for free because generations of fans have been trained, shamefully, not to pay for music. Download, file share, view, I don't care what you call it, the truth is new bands don't have a chance."

Unlimited access to all music and accessibility that ends the corporate stranglehold over music distribution is a massive positive.
People trying to fit in by listening to the agreed 'cool music' will always be a problem and at some point will be the only problem.