Is there a war against music?

Was talking to someone in an unrelated thread and a few things he said kind of struck me. Quoting his replies here.

>Normies generally hate art without even being aware of it. They deliberately consume the worst music, the worst literature, and the worst film and pretend as if they're not the worst, thus depreciating consumer value of more worthwhile things.

>youtu.be/Pi4nDKO-UFY

>The problem is that there's a secret war being fought against art and catharsis and transcendence and even the people with interest in such things often stand to disagree.

>The American government wants you stupid, broke, emotionally bankrupt, your children raped, and your health in decline and art stands in the way of all of that.

/Is there/ a deliberate coercive effort within the music industry to promote bad music and destroy good music?

Sounds like a bit of a stretch on a surface level, but pop radio hits /do/ strike me as becoming increasingly pervasive / hedonistic and mind controly.

What do you think? What do we do about it?

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>We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.
>There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

>short answer
Yes
>long answer
Yeah, but there's not a whole lot we can do about it besides supporting good music and turning off the TV / radio.

There's really no hope at all for independent labels looking to make it in the music business short of getting scooped up by a larger company.

Our political elites hate prosperity, they hate the intermediation of culture and information proliferated by the Internet, of course they hate the transcendental nature of art.

I think it's Alex Jones-tier fedoracore logic

this

But really, can you COMPLETELY deny that it would appear that the music industry as an economic establishment is engaged in a vendetta against the value of art? Like can you say you 100% think it's not happening at any level whatsoever?

yeah, basically

and yet it's exactly what the Frankfurt school and critical theory in general aims to elaborate on

It's taking place without question.

I'm not necessarily saying that the industry figures / musicians responsible are necessarily aware of the role they're playing, but it is happening, however discrete.

The psychosocial warfare of social abandon begins at the foundation of Western culture. I don't think any of you have any idea how important it is that you continue listening to music and reading.

>The "DUDE WEED LMAO" baby has his first philosophical thought

They aren't devaluing art on purpose, they are doing it because it saves time if you put the same 4 chords on every pop song, which ends up saving money, for much the same result.

There isn't some huge conspiracy against music, it's just human greed.

>muh American govt. is behind all oppreshunzz n shieet
Fucking libfag, I'm glad Hilary will rot away

>le cultural marxism meme
when will this meme die?

youtube.com/watch?v=up3_u-4HD_w

>The "DUDE WEED LMAO" baby has his first philosophical thought
This isn't a philosophical question.

I'm not asking whether or not there's a figurative or metaphorical war against music. I'm against whether or not there are there literally, actual, real life hostile actors wanting to debase the music we consume until it's reduced to hedonistic club drivel.

Or it's a conspiracy accelerated by human greed.

Obviously there has to be some incentive for the music industry to have taken the path that it did.

well the government basically wants the economy to be successful so that they themselves can be successful, so they don't really care, they just do what the corporations want and whatever will keep them in power. the corporations want to keeo us dumb but not for any reason other than pure greed. that's why major corporations always try to appeal to the lowest common denominator; they want to pull the biggest possible profit with the smallest possible effort. they don't "want" people being stupid and listening to shallow pop music, they just want money. therefore it feeds into a vicious cycle in which the average person rabidly consumes the most easily accessible media and never tries to seek anything deeper.

the quote here that interests me is

>Normies generally hate art without even being aware of it.

which actually is true. there is and has always been a very odd stigma against people who enjoy deeper forms of art. the same goes for intellectualism in general.normies and honestly people in general hate feeling dumb or inferior, and are therefore afraid to challenge themselves with any kind of deep art.

people are also afraid of being seen as outcasts themselves. it's basic human psychology really; do what everybody else is doing and nobody will shun you or think you're weird. people who like more intellectually stimulating art/music/films are either "weird" or "they just pretend to like it to be cool"

You might be interested in Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich. Good read

The moment post-ironic shitters like you get beheaded.

You're an idiot. But not because of your general hate for things you really know nothing about, but because you waste your time worsening that scenario for yourself and others.

Just acknowledge that it's taking place. Like, I get that any awareness of whether or not there is a compulsory agenda to eliminate catharsis within different forms of art pushed by worldly powers as an extension of cultural Marxist indoctrination, anything we have to say about it is just impotent rage.

I know this.

But you cannot deny that it's happening at some level.

This

HIGH FIVE

The entire history of American foreign policy is like 75% evil, 25% flexing our muscles making sure nobody does anything about it.

And what logic do you have sirs?

I don't know about deliberate, but there does seem to be a large dumbing down effect on society as of lately. Whether it's intentional or not is the main question.

In all seriousness, this and this.

There is no grand conspiracy to destroy 'art'. Just corporations pandering to the lowest common denominator.
In academia there's been a growing awareness since the mid 20th century that institutionalized hierarchies are reproduced via cultural products. But I highly doubt Max Martin and Dr. Luke spend their time reading Horkheimer and Marcuse.

This

Reminder that adult coloring books reached a mainstream consumer market this year.

Adult coloring books.

>ITT: teenagers try to comprehend why people who aren't into music consume music that isn't very complex
Is there a government conspiracy for people to consume burgers instead of fine dining as well?

>le the only masculine role models in pop culture are drug dealing, anti-social, talentless RAP hacks.
>Implying this is a good thing.

I dunno, probably.

I think like most people would agree that their respective government hates them. I wouldn't put it beyond them, anyhow.

>gender roles
>good

There's a conspiracy against you where everybody you've ever known is secretly fucking ur mum and cuming in her eyes

>this many people in denial
You realize that these people hate you, right?

>le women make great frontline combatants, obviously both physically and mentally strong enough to be a soldier, except for the fact that they get PTSD from being catcalled.

????

Lol look at this pigfuck shill

>MUH PRAGMATIC CAPITAL
Motherfucker, you think people would fall in line if this wasn't profitable?
This

this is like saying mcdoals is waging war on michelin star restaurants.

people like quick, easy, agreeable decisions ESPECIALLY when it comes to culture. remember the cronut craze? why wasn't it the sfogliatelle phase? because people understand mixing a fucking donut with a croissant. they don't understand fine italian traditionalist pastry.

mcdonald's*

fuck mobile

>what is PKK/CNT

`no` loc.gov/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/recording-registry/complete-national-recording-registry-listing/

Wouldn't they want to devalue more complicated music because it's harder to churn out and profit from?

>Muh take me back to the real days of musik!! When all they had was a guitar and drums!!!! SO ORIGINAL.

You're trolling, right?

>lwg straw man
Nobody is saying this, you fucking shill.

Good music is being produced right now, it's just not giving the commercial resources to succeed in industry.

someone doesn't know their history

someone doesn't know that it isn't the 19th century

>inb4 sekret illuminati that makes sure everyone follows a school of thought that isn't relevant anymore

>Good music is being produced right now, it's just not giving the commercial resources to succeed in industry.
Have you ever thought that maybe it's because people don't want to buy that music? Like this isn't some sort of conspiracy, it's just that not everyone has music as their hobby and if they do listen to music it's tangentially, and when they do buy it it's going to be simple stuff that they know they can appreciate? Do you just not interact with humans or something, or do you just assume people who don't share your tastes are stupid?

>becoming increasingly pervasive / hedonistic
That's been the trend forever, just read contemporary commentators.

you are exquisitely stupid

I love you

Whether or not there is is kind of irrelevant consider that anyone willing / able to opposed it is powerless to do so.

Music is dying impartial of whether it's deliberate or not.

the jewish stuff and big conspiracy aspect is but i honestly think the music industry has tried to set a standard quality for music in peoples heads so that pushing similar music will be guaranteed profitable. It is a business and art gets pretty undermined by money to businessmen

>The "I produce boring music, why isn't anyone buying it argument"
Here are some things which are NOT good music
>repetitive 4 bar loops of techno and other bleep shit(Even bigroom house has more entertaing melodic content than this utter shit)
>random FX loops("arca") and other experimental shit, aka Flume copycats
>Irrelevant indie bands("I FOLLOW INDIE BANDS I'M SO UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT")
>Rap, trap and r&b, boring, pointless, and only niggers listen to it.

I know my history you fucking cuck. Fuck off shill. There is a reason why women fail to perform at the same standards as men, maybe if you didn't fail biology you'd understand.

I hate you

>music is dying
moetown is dying, music has never been more alive.

Most of these things are popular

>things I hate are bad
>things i like are good
>anyone who disagrees with me is [INSULT HERE]
Why do you even bother talking to people? Or rather, why do people bother talking to you?

>the "production equipment is cheaper than it's ever been / everyone has access to music lessons" meme
>everyone making music and nobody making money means music is alive
No

>having a vagina

>money = being alive
Music is not like other mediums, it's purpose is not to make a profit, it's to create art. The idea that music must make a profit is really only since the late 1500s - early 1600s, and it's dying as of the last 30 or so years, thank god.

It doesn't matter you fucking retard, music is subjective, stop taking everything so seriously.

LOL no

spot on imo

Are you sure you're talking to the right guy? Because that's literally the point of my post.

>nobody can afford to be a fulltime musician anymore
>thank God
what the fuck?

kys yourself

baited nerd

You do realize that if there was no reward for creating art, people will stop making it. I'm sure their was even a reward for the chief bongo player in some tribe somewhere, like increased social ranking, women, etc.

...

No, more people can afford to be full time musicians now because it's easier to spread the word about music of any kind, there's just less people making millions of dollars. The only people who have been negatively affected by the large record labels are the biggest of the big artists, smaller labels are stronger than ever.
>I'm sure their was even a reward for the chief bongo player in some tribe somewhere, like increased social ranking, women, etc.
That is without a doubt the dumbest mother fucking thing I have ever read on Sup Forums in my entire almost 5 years on this board.

t. cultural anthropology masters student

>tfw America is a third world country and people don't recognize it

the biggest class cuck of them all

For me, there's no big conspiracy around the issue. you guys need to see as an economic view rather than than a social or political view.

Music Industry is working with the entertainment industry by using capitalist economic technique. That means selling your products to live.

Now think as a businessman : How are you gonna sell Music as a safely invested product? Here's some key ingredients :
- You'll need some kind of human voice so people can relate to the song easily
- You'll need some lyrics that evoke simple easy emotion that can relate to the basic of human desire (Having fun, love, sadness, etc...)
- You need a person or a face, easy to recognize to your music, so people will relate to your music at the same time as seeing the face of the person(mostly the singer).

If people in your country lives in a difficult financial situation where capitalism creates anxiety like money-related problems, difficulty of property rights, etc.... You'll need to make music that will help the listener to escape from his everyday problems. This is where shitty music happens : People are tired of their week, and they just wanna switch off their brain, they don't care what they're gonna listen, they just wanna have fun and not think of the quality here.

This is the where businessmen find their sweet spot : They are making music like they are making cheap beers, to simply escape from real-world problems, and also try to impress listeners by simple and easy tricks because they're already tired of their life and don't wanna think more of the situation.

So basically, a social class that has no time or money is gonna listen to cheaply-made music. Best Example : Funk Carioca in the Favelas of Brazil.

A social that has time or money is gonna listen to well-made music. Example : Rich people going to see classical pieces played by orchestras.

While most of what you say is retarded conspiracy theory bullshit, IT IS true that the general quality of pop music (and pop music exclusively) is declining, but not because of some government conspiracy. It's actually sort of a music industry conspiracy, and it's not really secret as there have been studies about this, it's just that no one really has a problem with it. A great deal of it is Max Martin's fault. He literally made a pattern of sounds in most of the hit pop song he's produced, making people listen to the same shit over and over again with a slight change. People used to skip songs after 10 seconds if it wasn't catchy, now they do it after 5. There's a video called Everything is a Remix that talks about that, and I think a Vsauce video called Juvenoia.

Interstingly, this is only happening with pop music. Studies on TV's complexity and diversity have shown it's improved and made more intelligent over the gears. This is because people start noticing obvious common tropes after a while, so writers are forced to be more creative

>People being able to pirate is better for muscians. THE POST.

it seems you view yourself as someone who is smart, but you really come out as a complete moron.

Oh that's what you meant

it seems you view yourself as someone who read everything that I said, but you really come out with only one sentence that doesn't even make a valid counter-argument of what I'm saying.

That sounds like the kind of idiotic anti-establishment rhetoric that Alex Jones or Ghost would spew on their shows between hawking their cruddy products. Publishers promote the kind of pop music that they do becuase it has broad appeal, it's marketable, and it makes money. It's just economics, there isn't some kind of grand conspiracy devoted to eliminating art. People have been concocting similarly asinine conspiracy theories for a long time.

I made that post because it's true if you are familiar with music scenes outside of the popular realm. Piracy is one of the reasons black metal is so huge (as in not a gigantic meme like in the 90s) right now.

>gears
years*

>le the only masculine role models in pop culture are drug dealing, anti-social, talentless RAP hacks.
[citation needed]

Yes, it's called massive corn subsidies to make sugar basically free. Why do you think the government would make a highly addictive product basically free to produce? Probably has nothing to do with the demonsteably corrupt food industry putting it into literally every food including fast food burger buns to hook people on shit food because you can sell it to people nonstop.

Probably no correlation with constant new cheap disposable music. What could they have in common?

Are you actually retarded?

Lately I tried talking about music to people outside Sup Forums and discovered most folks have so little understanding of music that they can be considered tone-deaf. I blame the education system more than anything, although rap music being the most popular doesn't help the situation.

You're right, people just like whatever they happen to like, which is why the advertising industry loses money year after year. That's probably why the industry is constantly rocked by payola scandals too. You know, because people are not at all succeptible to manipulation or coersion. There are no studies at all that show hat repeated exposure to a song will make you like the song more, which is exactly why they spend millions of dollars promoting acts and making sure you here their stuff a million times a day, because it has no effect.

I mean his board itself is clear proof that nobody ever subscribes to hivemind shit and just listens to whatever they are told to, right? All those pitchfork buzz bands all succeeded on their own merits.

You are just too smart my man.

Do regular people even like music in the first place? Like, most people don't care about paintings. Why is a more abstract art form more accessible? I've considered before that the widespread popularity of music is due to record companies finding a way to exploit conspicuous consumption.

No.

Go the fuck outside every once in a while.

is McDonald's part of the government

Too hard to buy or visit paintings my man

Just because you can make up a thesis that makes sense, doesn't mean it's true. I can make up a shit ton of things that seem true but aren't, but they are still un true. Observations and assumptions are 100% worthless without hard evidence, no matter how convenient they are.

Motherfucker, kill yourself. Idiot.

You know what subsidies are, right?

Case in point, third post into the thread. It doesn't even matter if it's a joke, the replies are real enough.

>Normies
Stopped reading there