Music is getting worse
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Beat This!The next Beat This! Competition is from November 27-28th!
Kane the MOD
Grey haired Boom Bap Rap Dad
Battle Points: 6
Why would you care what "people" say is good? I don't get that part.
Kane the MOD
Grey haired Boom Bap Rap Dad
Battle Points: 6
There are gatekeepers for success in the music business but that is a slightly different topic imho.
The gatekeepers for publishing music are almost not there anymore. Everyone can publish their shit worldwide and it shows.
There are two routes in the music business, independent or under a label.
As an independent you have to have a large amount of money upfront, you need to be able to fund yourself.
Under label, you will get an advance, and this advance is used to pay for everything, touring, studio sessions, entourages, promotion, distribution. You are basically given a loan to do all the things you would have to do as an independent, you will have help because of people already knowing people. But you sacrifice a large chunk of your earning potential to the label, to first repay the "loan" from royalties, before you ever see any profit.
If you go independent the stakes are a lot higher, as its your own money at stake. Its a hard graft, with promotion too, but the rewards are all yours for the taking.
Its possible, technology has opened things up for anybody with the talent and business mind to make a success of it.
Like all things, you get out what you put in to it. Believe in yourself, work hard to get to a level that you can honestly believe in yourself, then fucking go for it. Thats my advice to anybody who wishes to be successful in anything. Success doesn't fall from the sky and land in your lap, you have to work fucking hard for it, and that's why not everybody is successful, success comes after many failures that make most people give up trying.
However, publishers will still exist as they're essentially the "record labels" of your musical copyright - whilst record labels push sales, publishers push plays and synchronisation; getting your songs placed in movies etc.
Personally I would still very much love a record/publishing/sync deal.
I'm with you to be honest, firstly because I'll never have the money needed to be independent, as long as you are meticulous with the contract, weed out all the cons, cover your arse, then the pros that come from having the help from the people that get shit heard and placed can be invaluable. You just have to go in with your eyes wide open to how shady the music biz is and has always been, cover your bases, do your due diligence and reap the rewards that way. Much less personal work, just not enough hours in the day at my old age.
Exactly this, my brother.
Unfortunately many don't know the ins and outs, either way - that goes for the one who are all "you don't need them" and the blinded by the lights ones.
Which, isn't their fault either, probably a tonne of nonsense on YouTube and likely only just recent times starting to get any valuable shit - and even then they probably won't be able to discern what is legit, and opt for their favorite shocked youtuber clickbait.
But yeah otherwise, the general musician won't know any of this until they either get stung the first time or are lucky enough to be in contact or circles with those in the know. Same was for me.
And I guess now illiens get access to the knowledge through us and a few others.
I think I've found the answer. the answer is Ronaldinho. critical thinking ensures you don't lose; it gets you what you need. but creative thinking gets you what you want.
it's a commonly known fact that football has infamously been getting more boring in the last 15 years (except the 2021 - 2023 run). every new player is good at doing a perfect job, everyone's doing what they need to get done, and every average team is INCREDIBLY Strong. god knows how the elite teams manage to beat them. then again -even if you're not into football- take a look at this:
he didn't need to do that AT ALL. no one needs that. if anything, it makes his game worse. why tf would you look one way and pass the other way? if anything it ruins ur accuracy. but that's what he wants to do. that's what he enjoys. that's what makes him think "Hey! Look! Look what I discovered u can do with a ball! isn't this awesome??". no one asked him to do it. it doesn't win his team the game. he's not doing it for anyone or anything, he does it for himself. to enjoy it. joga fucking bonito. isn't that what art was supposed to be all along?
imagine if they told you you and everyone yk will die in 3 hours and there's no hope. imagining you wouldn't panic, what'd you do? imagine you are in a football field when u receive the news and there's no way u can access ur family. ur just on there playing, and you decide to play for a while before u go. how'd you spend that time? doing ur absolute fucking tryharding best to win? or would you try to enjoy it? try to find ways to show ur friends in there that "hey, look, I just realized I can look that way and pass this way. isn't that fun?". ofc if u were to do that in a competitive game, you'd have to be really confident in ur skills, which takes a lot of hard work. not sure if many people still do that. ig that hard work provides for the "needs" which end up being the foundation u stand upon, and go after what you want.
so maybe the lack of access did play a part because you had to go through a lot to even begin to make music, so when you got the ability to do it, it'd only make sense if you made what you wanted to + you'd have that skill & confidence because well, you worked hard to get there. or maybe it's that misery, that poverty, the harshness, things these older masters were exposed to... these made them realize how fucking meaningless it all is and they'll be gone before a blink. my guess is that even in "important" games, they enjoy every game like it's the last game because it might really be. even the most important matches of all: what good can it be to YOU, if you're too busy trying to win to enjoy it?
for me it's the same with freddie mercury. when he sings, he's not singing anything "right". he's not there to prove shit. he's not trying to do anything. sure, he has practiced enough to have the skills he needs, but to me, his music really sounds like "Hey! You wouldn't believe what I just felt. happened right when I was alone man, you wouldn't believe it. I can't explain it in just words; can you try to see if u can feel it, if I sing it to you? I'll do my absolute fucking best tryna convey it. can't wait to see your face when you feel it too!". he Wants to express it. same with michael, same with any other "Great" artist. not good artist, Great artist. they're all... as consciously alone as we really are as humans. we just keep forgetting how alone we are, how at the end of the day nothing really means anything and it'll all poof the fuck out. it really doesn't fucking matter. all you can do, is all you want to do. nothing's a mean to no end. there's no end, ultimately. you were born empty handed and you'll fuck right off the same way. Of course u use that critical thinking, that "what do I NEED to do" to survive. but what good is survival, if you never let yourself do what you WANT to do?
that's the issue imo. we get a LOT more good music in 2024 than say in 1984, but not even remotely as much great music. listen to dua lipa, sheeran, grande, carpenter, whoever & whatnot, it's hard to find a single bad song on any given album of theirs. I mean listen to Dua's Future Nostalgia. I'm not a dua fan but fuck, there's not a SINGLE Miss on that album. it's all really really good music. but great music? fuck no. none at all. it's only doing what it needs to do. it makes you dance, mix is perfect (iron would jizz), all the right notes are being hit (if they don't, tuning will "fix" it), hell even the art part is "perfect". but idk... maybe it's just me but I really feel like they want the results more than just to create. they enjoy the numbers more than the process. this will always be one of my favorite songs, I said it 100 times and I'll never shut up about it:
she's not "singing a song about needing a hero". she needs a hero. you can hear her burn, you can hear her running out of time, the unending desperation. I can be on the brink of crying tears of joy in the middle of the most mundane day listening to this. and listen to the production too. it makes no sense whatsoever. everything is SUPER loud and there's so many decisions that would ruin just about any other song but on this one in particular, they are magic. check out 3:03. those tom percs... they should NOT be making sense. they just do. the song is crying for help with every cell of it's existence. it's not doing what it "needs" to do. it's expressing what it wants to express. it means something, instead of acting as some ephemera that sounds right and keeps everyone content.
imo that's not just what music & football lacks; it's what EVERYTHING lacks. no one knows what it's like to purely want anymore. maybe even to remember what u want if no one else existed. u just do what you need n stfu. that's why gurus like tate & ye west are so cherished & ballsucked. these people only do n say what they want to & the masses who aren't even aware what it's like to "want", look at them and sense that they're capable of a level of thinking that they aren't. almost like they access the 4th dimension, or like everyone's blind and they have that magical 5th sense. they're gods to us. when tate explains the thought process of wanting what he wants, they're so excited that they pick those same values as their own artificial wants. ig a borrowed meaning is better than none at all.
we're all so consumed in mental health advices & self-help (which again, tells you what you NEED in order to stay alive, not what you want in order to live), that when we see someone like that, we follow them as sheepishly as a twitch mod follows a 14 yo goth girl. we're mesmerized.
I've had maybe 7 or 8 different answers to "why music is getting worse", and I'd still stand behind all of them if I remember what they were, but this seems to be the critical issue.
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this tho? still sounds stupid to me. the tools themselves have nothing to do with music getting worse. the effect those tools have? maybe. but listening to songs and trying to find out why they sound bad, and blaming it on technical production stuff, is identical to saying "Man why aren't books as good as before?" and zooming in on the letters & font to realize what's wrong. it's not the letters, it's not the words, READ THE FUCKING SENTENCES.
I wish. fuck battle points, I'd have been producing hov's next album for the humble price of beyonce rn. would've been at least that goodSo what you're saying is fasting = beat this Ws?
ngl tho, last night at my hungriest I was alone outside with my best friend and we laughed at our miseries so hard that I was almost glad we were miserable. wouldn't give that time away for anything. well anything excluding a sandwich with just tomatoes in it. or a taste of scott storch's middle toe. who knows maybe the "fasting" added some sorta high or euphoria too idk.
OGBama
Big Clit Energy
Music is getting worse because algorithms have flattened and are flattening culture. I hate the “follow for follow,” “like for like” BS and sad thing is people are paying for plays and praying to algorithm Gods (only a capital G because the tech bros are Gods to the screen slaves in today’s “let’s all bury our heads in our phones” anti social culture). Fuck this shit. I want out of this wretched Hellscape as I’m from the generation that knew how to talk to people away from screens.