There is something very wrong with today’s music. It just can’t be good enough. – National | Globalnews.ca

On hot summer nights, the park across the street from my house is filled with people dribbling, playing soccer, playing volleyball, or engaging in aggressive games of spikeball.

Almost all of them will have music playing through a Bluetooth speaker, usually from the Spotify Top 100. And if I’m honest, none of this music is good. Most of what I’ve heard is sung without a tune (well, except overuse of auto-tune) and beats at such volume that they can be substituted for an atomic clock.

I just re-read that last sentence. Harsh words from someone who doesn’t understand the music of today’s yoff? Or am I just scratching the surface of a problem facing the recorded music industry?

consider the following:

• Kate Bush’s 1985 Song running up That Hill The single reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and the top five in other countries around the world. hounds of loveThe album that spawned the hit peaked at #8 on the Canadian charts earlier this summer.
• Metallica’s 1986 track master of Puppets has been so promoted by your presence in strange things That it is currently in the US top 40. This eight-minute metal song is competing for attention with the latest from Lizzo, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, and Cardi B.
• Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumors Is One of the best selling albums of the year, It is number nine in the US Rumors It is one of the best selling vinyl albums of the year so far.
• sex pistol’ God Save the Queen is from 1977 Best selling vinyl single of 2022. Further down the list, you will find that rock the Casbah (1982) is the eighth best-selling vinyl record.)
• this past week, Queen’s Greatest Hits (1981) became the best-selling record of all time in the UK, selling seven million copies after more than 1,000 weeks on the British charts. Last week, it was ranked 24th in Canada, up a few places. yer favoriteTragically Hip’s greatest hits collection.

Old music is definitely having a moment this summer and much of this interest is being driven not by nostalgic old men but by the same kids playing spikeball in the street.

Luminate, the company that tracks music consumption for the record industry, Mentioned in its mid-year report That “current” music (identified by the industry as content less than 18 months old) isn’t the only thing losing market share. It is becoming statistically less popular among all demographic groups. Looking at the United States, the metric known as “total album consumption of current music” fell 1.4 percent in the first half of 2022 compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile, “catalog” music — content older than 18 months — has grown by 14 percent.

We can go even deeper. The market share of “catalog” music in the US is 72 percent so far this year, with “current” music at 27.6 percent. This is a three percent drop in market share.

To put it another way, “current” music becoming increasingly less popular When measured by the number of streams and sales. Whatever is being released today is not with the public as it used to be. People are showing interest in listening to old music instead.

This clearly requires some unpacking. Why isn’t the “current” music resonating? What’s with the increase in interest for older content?

Some would point to a lack of so-called “high-impact” new releases in 2022. For example, if Taylor Swift or Adele had new records, these numbers could be different. But as it stands, only 102 albums debuted in the Billboard Top 100 (the definition of “high-impact”) this year, compared to 126 last year. it may be related Counted by Music Business Worldwide Which shows the 10 most popular tracks on streaming services that have been listened to over and over again a billion times less than they were in a similar period in 2019. Both point to disillusionment with what is being introduced today.

But perhaps, perhaps, the answer lies in artistry and creativity. In recent weeks, several posts have appeared lamenting the quality of today’s music. Here’s an example.

Others have complained that many of today’s ordinary stars are ordinary. Celebrities making music with laptops, Old music recorded with original instruments in an old fashioned studio sounds richer and more interesting, A lot of songs are fast fashion: Take them out, squeeze whatever you can out of tune, and then forget them. (A critic, alluding to The Beatles) tomorrow has been covered over 3,000 times, asks Cardi B’s. How many will be covered? wap in future. He has a point.)

More theories: Lack of real storytellers in the vein of Carole King or Jackson Browne. Musicians who buy readymade beats online and then sing/rap and then release the results. Desire to become famous rather than pay your dues to learn your craft. (Blame all TV talent shows for this.) Record labels that don’t nurture and develop artists, resulting in ultra-short careers involving one or two songs. Lack of people wanting to gain true mastery of a musical instrument with years of practice. Too much perfection in the recording process, a passion that rips apart all humanity and soul from a song. (Compare anything from today’s top 10 to Motown hits and the difference becomes clear.) Formula songwriting (I’m looking at you, Max Martin.) Algorithms that push just that over and over.

I’m not done. Thanks to technology, many of today’s artists are delivering hit songs without even playing a single live gig. This means that he never had to sweat in front of strangers on long trips. Boot camp experience is essential to becoming a better all-around musician. You need that experience if you’re not only going to compete with the music of your heroes on the world stage, but with your own Heroes of Heroes Heroes of Heroes,

And there is still much more to consider. Bring your mind back to 1992. music that was thirty years old at the time was appearing old. Not only was modern pop music still evolving, but we barely started using things like electric guitars and proper amps. Effects pedals had not yet been invented and neither were synthesizers. Recording studios were primitive things compared to today, capable of producing material only in mono. But then sometime around 1969, the sound quality of recordings reached new levels. A song recorded in 1972 sounds as good as a song recorded this year. (In fact, you could argue that due to overproduction, digital technology, and too much compression, older records sound Better Much more than what we have today.)

Now let me turn things around. This is because today’s youth – and remember that youth is always the driver of what is happening in music – recognize bad music when they listen to it. They are smarter than falling to pass off as hit music today.

Thanks to streaming and smartphones, we have access to somewhere north of 80 million songs. Within seconds, we can call almost any song recorded in the history of mankind. Why wouldn’t you source the best of the best?

Unlike previous generations, today’s music fans are far more cosmopolitan in their musical tastes. If you have a teen, ask them to show you the last 25 songs streamed on their phone. I bet you’ll find everything from Drake to AC/DC to Matthew Wilder (especially a 1980s song that became a strange tiktok incident) To their credit, they only care about good songs, no matter what genre or era. it’s healthy.

In other words, the kids are fine. It is the people running the star making machinery behind the popular song who are not.

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allen cross Is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 Edge and a commentator for Global News.

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