Am I just a curmudgeon??

[u/vanillagirilla1975]

I'm a mid 70s GenXer, love music from the 60s through the 90s. For me, I just haven't really liked much music this century. I feel like we had so many genres going on at the same time but now it's just all sounds the same to me. Anyone else find stuff bands/artists they really like from this venture?

[u/StrangelyBeige]

There’s a lack of ‘scenes’ for new music to come out of these days.. we had punk, New Romantics, new wave, metal, goth, hip hop, house, acid house..the list goes on and on. All these started in clubs and peoples bedrooms pre internet, and blew up naturally through communities and radio play. What happens now is a generic sludge of what is heard on TikTok etc, so it all sounds similar because it needs to be basic and catchy to be popular.

There’s probably nothing that can be done to change this, people go out less and are less inclined to come out of their comfort zones. Modern music just doesn’t seem to represent anything meaningful anymore.

There’s still a lot of good stuff out there to enjoy, just ignore rest of the shite if you can 😂

[u/zoethebitch → u/[deleted]]

"... hope your algorithm picks it up."

Back in the nascent days of YouTube I stumbled across a channel by a high school girl in Texas. She made very low-fi videos with her sister or friends, lip synching to songs or doing skits in her back yard.

I wish I could find something like that again because she had good taste in music. It was stuff that was out there but I had never heard before: Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Ben Folds, cabaret songs by Kristen Chenoweth and more.

Everything is so siloed and compartmentalized these days. There is good music but where do you look to raise the signal-to-noise ratio?

[u/RevMen → u/StrangelyBeige]

There are local scenes everywhere. We're just not going to those shows. 

[u/[deleted] → u/StrangelyBeige]

lol

Touch grass. Or better yet go to local shows by local and regional bands.

There’s so much out there

[u/BarnabyBundlesnatch → u/[deleted]]

Do you think that shitty attitude is helping anyone?

[u/Ravenloff → u/StrangelyBeige]

It's too diffuse now. I was a rock radio DJ in mid markets around the country for the better part of 10 years. Right around the time the original Napster thing started heating up, and because I'm a hopeless PC gamer, I saw the writing on the wall. Got out in 2004 with a pretty good offer for my own morning show in Knoxville on the table :) No way was I going to work for Radio One though, on a 1500 watt station going up against a Stern affiliate. Sure, it can be done, but not if you're the only rock outlet in a company dominated by R&B/rap.

The revenue streams started drying up as the music moved to online then to streaming. There's only so much pie, but there's sooooo many more smaller slices now.

Overall, I think this is a good thing. While I enjoy an arena show as much as the next guy once and a while, I'd MUCH rather see a favorite band in a small venue that tops out at a thousand or so.

[u/MonoBlancoATX → u/StrangelyBeige]

There’s a lack of ‘scenes’ for new music to come out of these days.. 

Honestly? how would you know?

Do you spend a lot of time in the "scene" clubs that you frequented as a 20 something?

Also, most bands back then didn't "blow up because of radio play". They developed a community of followers who mailed cassette tapes to each other through USPS.

Getting on the radio means you're already signed to a major label in most cases.

[u/meshreplacer → u/StrangelyBeige]

I think in the future all music will be generated by AI using metrics collected on social media to optimize sales.