The internet's impact on music megathread

[sus]

You can say pretty much anything about anything ever. You might as well never discuss anything at all if you're gonna be that reductive.

I don't think I'm being reductive I think you see this all the time

"People are more comfortable" --> "It's making them soft, very important to experience hardship"

"People can travel anywhere" --> "It's a glut, too many choices"

At a certain point I think we just need to say good things are good, more freedom of choice is good, more options are good

Yes, there is the "paradox of choice" which is just pointing out that, obviously, when there are more choices it's harder to choose

But I think we should probably develop a more laissez faire, less anxious attitude to choice. Or figure out how to make the things we choose special. Rather than reducing choice.

 

[sus]

The flipside of the quality of an engineered mainstream hit not being relevant is perhaps the idea that you appreciate something more when you pay for it and force yourself to sit with it because of the limitations of vinyl and the pre-internet age.

Yes this is more of that upside down thinking. "Things are free" --> "Actually that's bad, you appreciate it more when you pay for it"

 

[version]

I think it's good to approach from multiple angles. The flipping one's a bit obvious, but it's better than just having the one.

 

[version]

Another line of inquiry re: choice is how good are your options? A limitless choice of shit is still gonna land you with shit.

 

[Corpsey]

Yes this is more of that upside down thinking. "Things are free" --> "Actually that's bad, you appreciate it more when you pay for it"

I don't think it's as simple as that it's not simply "bad" but it might have some unfortunate side effects.

The point of pointing this out has to be (since we can't put the internet back in the bottle) to remind ourselves of things we've lost so that we can make a deliberate effort to regain them -- i.e. to recognise that the internet has reduced the value of music as something that you will engage with in any depth and to make a deliberate effort to engage deeply with music *in spite of* the internet.

 

[sus]

This is true. Like the Babbage input/output thing

 

[version]

I'm sure everyone's fallen into the trap of endlessly browsing Netflix trying to find something decent at least once.

 

[sus]

I don't think it's as simple as that it's not simply "bad" but it might have some unfortunate side effects.

The point of pointing this out has to be (since we can't put the internet back in the bottle) to remind ourselves of things we've lost so that we can make a deliberate effort to regain them -- i.e. to recognise that the internet has reduced the value of music as something that you will engage with in any depth and to make a deliberate effort to engage deeply with music *in spite of* the internet.

OK this is noble I agree. I'm signed on. Where are we going now? Where are we headed

 

[shakahislop]

very much not an authority on the matter, but visual art seems in rude health to me, all kinds of great and new stuff all over the shop, am regularly surprised by things i see, regularly have thoughts provoked if i'm in the right mood.

the structure of the industry side of it, and the very restricted class of people who get to make it, are indefensible. but i don't think there's another era you can point to where the stuff that's actually produced and that you see around was better.

maybe if you're more invested in one kind of narrative about art or another, spent formative years reading about it etc, it would look totally different and you could say that we're in a big decline.

there is more or less a mainstream i guess, but it's never that mainstream is it. no-one knows who jeff koons is really. all the really popular people, the household names, are long dead.

 

[WashYourHands]

I learned about Joanna Newsom from Gus

Terrible, terrible, dross crime against art, don’t listen to him about music Versh, he’s still projecting. Give him an hour to ground

 

[shakahislop]

trying to talk about music seems quite weighed down with terminology, words and valuation by comparison i think.

personally i don't see a decline in music at all compared to any other era. i have a soft spot for the early 90s. there's always something about that i can get my teeth into though.

the internet has changed so many forms of social organization, including how music is made, and i think you hear the repercussions of that quite a lot in the tunes.

but probably the most important thing is that human beings are different now to what they were. so of course music serves different purposes now as well. the danger with all this stuff is to think that the 70s-90s was the normal form of music and how it fits into the rest of the world i think, whereas really that is as much a technological product as the current order of things.

 

[version]

I've often wondered whether the k-punk stagnation thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You just tell people nothing's new enough that they're eventually convinced.

The same goes for 'postmodernism'. You situate whatever's going on as being a sort of footnote to something that's gone before and people are forever trapped in the past by virtue of the language used to describe the present.

 

[shakahislop]

i've said it before on here, i think comedy is in a proper rut. doesn't help that it doesn't translate across cultures very well at all, it's not like you can just get into some german comedy or something if the UK isn't providing for some reason.

 

[WashYourHands]

You can have a detached past in the present and look through/interact with it objectively too. Archaeology, archaeography, archive, archaic, arcs of careers (and covenants), architecture of production for music makers who might listen slightly differently for kit/tricks/method, add archipelagos and archiebattersbee to remain loyal to arcy shit

Provenance of material objects more visual arts, furniture and house market focus points, whereas music you pick through biographies, probe at collaborative works. Discogs has been a shrine but I miss record shopping so intently, attentive to three rules of aye, no and perhaps picks. Never want to discourage sharing in way that might default to playlists now. That’s not retro-stasis is it, more the weight of change

 

[sus]

So I clicked through a buncha random Best Picture nom list from different decades and it seems pretty clear to me that, while the 70s may have been unusually strong cinematically, there were still very very strong rosters in the 2010s, and also some very middling rosters in the 50s, 60s, 80s, and 90s

 

[sus]

2010:

2020:

 

[version]

So there's been a decline since the 70s?

 

[sus]

2000:



1990:



1980:

 

[version]

These lists are terrible.

 

[sus]

1970:


1960:



1950: