My take: There is a vast amount of well recorded and mixed modern music that exists and is fairly popular but just doesn’t get air play. From independant singers like angel Olsen and kamasi Washington to benjamin Booker and Nathaniel ratcliffe and the night sweats to all the underground artists like Swans, Mf Doom and the band camp musicians.
Dance and beat tracks may be considered a plague because of their prevalence but I guarantee you from what my dad told me, they used to say the same thing about disco in the 70s and surfer party rock and psychedelic music in the 60s or dance music in the 80s or rave music in the 90s to hip hop in 00s
And yes the quality of recording and mixing has gone down since the 80s but not because people got cheaper or lazier. Its simply because people got access to equipment they never would have otherwise been able to before because of economic and social barriers keeping them from getting their hands on it and didn’t want to waste the opportunity. And honestly I’m okay with a bit of a dip in quality so long as I get a lot of new and interesting music fo enjoy.
Brick walling a mix still sucks tho
Yeah, in the 80’s we had stations like KROQ (which is now First Wave on sat radio) to listen to. Thats how i got introduced to a LOT of the music i love. Also friends recommendations. Now its just the streaming services which never really recommends anything i like, or recommends music i already know about.
Wish there was a good site where you could get good recommendations. But if i go to a website and input all my 80’s artists and just radiohead, arcade fire and coldplay as new artists i just get recommendations of 80’s artists.
Disagree with this, throughout the ages music has been linked to image and cliques, in the 50’s you had Rock n Roll with it’s bad boy image then came Mod’s and Rockers fuelled buy media coverage (papers and tv) I agree but not videos etc.
I’m pretty sure Beethoven originally caused stir in the traditional classical world with his romantic approach to his classical music? which i’m sure was the gossip of the time.
I spoke to a relatively well known record producer once in the early 90’s about how they found bands. He told me that unlike a decade earlier pretty much every band they heard could play.
He could travel around LA clubs and hear 10 bands in an evening that were good enough, and it really came down to if they had something marketable that differentiated them from the crowd.
Not exactly surprising, I know publishers look for book authors who’ll do well on the book tours, not just those that can write.
This is an issue with film as well. People gravitate towards people who can pitch well or have a magnetic energetic performance in front of others more than their writing skills.
We’re talking different scales here. How many records did Beethoven sell or how many world wide tours did he do back in his day?
There’s a different between television and the 24/7 nature of the video cycles on MTV. Even the Beatles impact back in the day from a numbers perspective (eyeballs time on screen) would pale in comparison.
And we’re talking about the rule, not the exception. Elvis, The Beatles were exceptions. Not the rule, today the rule is eyeballs on screens.
I could also argue it from the other directions. How many huge success unattractive women singers can you name from our current era? Patsy Cline, Celia Cruz, Etta James… they were all huge and hugely talented. Think they’d be huge today?
Agreed the Millennial generation is the sallowest ever lol.
It 's just a different time. There has NEVER been more information available to more people, both bad and good. They have just become jaded by the constant flow of info.
OK Boomer…
It’s all about the jazz baby, it’s all about the jazz 
I like jazz I own a stack of flac 
Then you’d make a good Boomer 
lol
nah ill pass on that thanks tho
Stack of flac i like that
a cool little flick about 70s rock, but it also talks about MTV in the video and how it came to be.