Music these days

So when is the next big musical scene supposed to happen? Or is that antiquated? Are the musical eras now gone, and did technology play a part in that?

Since the death of grunge, really, I’ve been wondering when the next “big thing” would emerge, and what it would sound like. To date, I have not really seen anything storm the public consciousness the same way as that era did in the 90s. Since that time, popular music has been dominated by commercialized rock and hip hop. Even some “real” music, where the emphasis is on song-craft, still feels…I dunno, safe.

There isn’t that raw, exciting wonder in the musical scene that shakes what you took for granted, and causes you to appreciate things differently. And thinking about it, I wonder if technology didn’t have a role in creating this new normal. Maybe there is a musical wave out there, but it depends on where you’ve set your sights.

Internet downloads have cut down the profitability of most noticeably the US music industry, and the big gains have come from Internet companies selling individual singles, or shadow sites that exchange illegal downloads. With this trend, I guess the reluctance of major record producers to promote new creative investments is understandable, as they can instead promote a business model that can mold the consumer base from youth to apathy, in that period of time where they are most vulnerable to marketing efforts. 

You’ve got your Justin Timberlakes or Britney Spears starting in the Mickey Mouse club, graduating towards boy bands or pop careers, and then graduating towards either mega-stardom or state festival openings. In between that time is an audience that is susceptible to the marketing message, and they can be guided towards the next step as the “musicians” career moves to the next step, spending and spending along the way. And in all that time is commercialized music, which just feels fake. Even if “Rock Yo Body” has a nice melody, it artistically doesn’t have much difference from that newly-branded version of Tide. It’s what you expect to hear, I guess. But this trend is reproduced with new candidates ready to fill in the roles, and be cartoned off to a pre-pubescent audience spending their parent’s money. The parents who are now probably apathetic towards the same formula. It’s a pretty funny cycle.

On the other side are the retros, which try to emphasize music from bygone-eras, whether they are neo-soul acts, blues-based musicians, etc. It’s an improvement in some minute aspects, but it’s still not daring: It’s still safe, tried and true.

So, technology caused this, but technology has also delivered an alternative, and you see it in the streaming media sites which provide the user with a greater scope of variety for the user to choose from: sites like Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, etc. This can help you find the music that you are looking for (maybe more so than Pandora), but it still doesn’t answer the question of whether there will be a musical “movement” that can topple the old order en masse. Maybe the musical eras were the result of breakthrough in communications and cultures, and now the flatter world is trending towards a dominant culture.

Following that strain of thought, then there are the following possibilities, as I see it:

  • There will be no more “big wave”, but rather smaller waves, depending on where you are. The spread of technology will not really allow some mass acceptance of a shiny, new sound, because the impact will be diluted by the time it’s heard
  • There will be one or two final “big waves”, but coming from outside of the United States, from a different cultural mindset, from a different perspective in this globalizing environment.
  • There will be a final big wave from the United States, as a culture comes to grips with its less authoritative role in the world, and becomes just another player struggling for interim dominance.