Is there any room for music in our world ?

[drillkicker]

Now that music is free to listen to and free to make, the old industry has been made obsolete, and everybody is a musician, what could the future of the medium look like ? I've been coming to the shocking realization that the recordings we've made decades ago are still in existence, and new ones are being made at an exponential rate by practically everyone under the sun. We now have such a daunting mass of recordings that there exist more genres than any one person can be aware of, let alone individual artists, albums, Bandcamp pages, etc. There now exists such an amount of diverse recordings that trying to discover new music is like scooping up a bucket of sand and trying to pick out the few grains that look the most interesting.

Trying to put this phenomenon into the context of human culture throughout history has been confusing and even slightly unsettling. Music was once an incidental, ephemeral activity that could be done in a participatory, communal way. When my grandparents were my age, they would get together with their friends and sing songs with one another all night long, and they claim that there was never a moment when the singing ceased. There was no stage, nor were there any dedicated performers, but everybody contributed to the energy of the music that surrounded them; this was uniquely defined by the people who were present, never again to be repeated in any plane but that of memory. And what's especially notable is that everybody was perfectly fine with that. Nobody cared about plucking the songs out of the air and storing them forever because each instance of music was understood as something inseparable from the moment, uniquely tied to the air into which it was born.

I suppose the great tragedy is the shift in our social structure from community to individual. No longer is there any sense of binding camaraderie or sobornost that involves the total giving of oneself into an indissoluble whole, and so music in our age is developing in increasing contradiction to what has long been its traditional conception. As our society has become massively hyper-atomized, thus paradoxically contrasting with the definition of "society," so has our music undergone a similar subversion. We no longer make music in common, we no longer listen to music in common. Everybody has a "sound" and everybody has a "taste." The zebras have isolated themselves to display their unique stripes, and in the process negating the actual purpose of the camouflage.

Taking this into consideration, it can be posited that magnetic tape (or even before that, the invention of scoring) has, in a sense, killed the old form of music. No longer is it a living, continual, perennial part of a cultural organism, but rather an individual form of personal expression that can only be shared with a community after it has already completed its cycle of life. An album is, in this sense, akin to a stuffed animal rather than a breathing companion, a musician's role now as something of a cultural taxidermist.

Nonetheless, our desire for community hasn't dissipated in the same way that its actual presence has. We still make music with the intent of contributing to a human collective. But, as music is no longer made as a collective, we do this in the form of sharing our finished works in any way we can. In former eras this was done mainly in concert halls and conservatories, later in record stores, and now in Bandcamp pages. In a metaphorical sense, we are singing into a void and waiting for someone else to sing along, only we are all singing different songs. The result is a much more antisocial reality than we had in the past, and music has become a race to gain exposure, and thus more voices singing along.

The reason I post this is because I'm wondering what to make of all this, and whether there's still any room for music to exist. How much longer can this continue before the possibilities have simply been exhausted ? Will anybody even bother to keep listening to stuff that was recorded just five years in the past ? Is the growth of Bandcamp and similar platforms actually a portent of the collapse of our cultural artifice, bringing the return of ephemeral, communal music into the coming generations ? What does Twoism think ?

[mechanismj]

There's always room for music just like there's always room for jello.

From my perspective, the communal experience you mentioned hasn't completely vanished. It changed with the advent of recording technology. It continues to evolve as that technology gets cheaper and more people connect globally via the internet. Consider the following video.

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Artists now have the resources to contribute to the music creation process from anywhere in the world. It's kind of like that original communal experience, only augmented with modern technology. That is pretty cool.

I have to say though, as an aging music creator who grew up in the internet age and witnessed the dramatic shifts in the music world over the last 20 years, I feel less and less interested in putting my stuff out there. The social media aspect, for me, killed a lot of the mystery in music and the creative process. Everyone has to keep their fans engaged using the same social media tools and tactics that everyone else is using. There's little room for originality and uniqueness in that regard and, as these platforms get more and more saturated with artists, it gets harder and harder to have your musical voice heard. The internet is a very loud place.

If I intend to keep contributing music to the world, I want to find a new, or at least different, way to do it.

[clocolan]

I think many modern artists have contemplated this at some point; 7 billion people and counting...if that's not enough to scare an artist...

I remember discovering music based on magic/number square logic in the Baroque era, by composers I had never heard of—whose work preempted so-called "new" 20th century music methodology by a few centuries. Only dogged scholarship unearthed those composers' names, but maybe that's because, in musical terms, it just didn't hold up to Purcell, and Bach, and Vivaldi. How many 19th century Romanticist composers have we never heard of? I'm sure some of it is exceptional music, but it's likely not as exceptional as the names we've come to know. (Talent is never enough, but even when great marketing is made to substitute for it, it won't enjoy true longevity.)

Before I found myself producing music in the "popular" sphere I was muddling along in the "classical" sphere; if you thought it was difficult being heard in the din of bedroom artists, DJs, and A-listers online, consider how few contemporary composers ever get a legitimate hearing when 500 years of Old Masterworks, so venerated and revered, so often hog the mic. And theirs is a much smaller audience (and much less accessible, in some ways). At least when Radiohead and Bjork and BOC are between albums, other artists have a shot at being heard; some might even gather a healthy following.

When I did finally make a mental switch and put out an album (mostly by accident) I was surprised at the positive reaction because I thought very much along these same lines at the time. Why would listeners waste any time or money wading through endless playlists and bandcamp rabbit-holes of Nobodys? Why even give anyone else's music a listen? And I think the answer is rather human: serotonin. Listeners ADORE what artist A's music does to them, and they find artist B's just as intoxicating. Artist C's music hits their intellectual/emotional buttons in just the right way; they love how it makes them think and feel. Now you've found an auditory source that makes you feel good; what else is out there? Someone mentions artist X, then you find artist Y, and pretty soon you're trying to get your friends to listen to them too. There's something cool about "discovering" an unknown artist and sharing their music with the world—I've done this too and I think social media just happens to serve that rather well.

Truth is, there's a niche audience out there for every artist, as long as your work is quality and/or different enough to stand out. Everyone has to start somewhere—in my case from the aesthetic of Christ./BOC/Radiohead/Schulze/etc—and hopefully understanding that they must develop their voice and carve out their own sound. Even now as I head into some new creative territory I have to remind myself that even if some of my fans don't stay for the ride, there'll be new ones who like what I'm doing and will want more.

I think it's that idea of "difference" that keeps artists constantly looking for new and interesting ways of doing things, and keeps listeners forever using music as a source of their identity. Very symbiotic. I've said this before: what we say with art never changes, only how we say it. 500 years later and we're still writing love songs. And people love love songs.

[Negamuse]

The more atomised the music industry gets and the more people discover music on their own the more likely it is that any two people will have different listening habits and music tastes. Everyone you meet will have an interesting answer to "what have you been listening to lately", everyone becomes a conduit to making new discoveries. That's a great thing

[Vulpix]

yes

[theconiferoust]

Music is art--not industry. There is and always will be an audience for creating something beautiful, whether done alone or with band mates. Just because the internet is saturated with more and more music doesn't mean it's innovative or even good. mechanismj mentioned that the mystery surrounding music has been killed off through social media, but I think it's more accurate to say that social media has made "music" more about celebrity and virality than actually listening to sounds or expressing one's creative genius (hence industry). It reminds me of: "Immortal Technique, stuck in your thoughts, darkening dreams. No one's as good as good as me, they just got better marketing schemes." Taking a minute to listen to the radio will be all you need to realize that you're not hearing those "artists" because of the substance or quality of their preferred medium of expression.

From a business perspective, you may be right about the end days for aspiring musicians. From an artistic standpoint, the fact that you're on this forum shows that beautiful music will always have a place to exist and be appreciated, no gimmick required. The music speaks for itself, and this is where I think your whole philosophy on the subject breaks down. For example, when Boards of Canada create music, do you suppose they sit and worry about who is going to appreciate it or sing along with it or worry about how existing fans will react to a new direction in their sound? It's art--Some people are going to hate it, some will have no idea what its purpose is, and some will connect with it on a level that is very personal despite not knowing the creator(s).

Will music still exist? Certainly. As you put it, there is more of it being produced now than ever, and it's more accessible than ever. How much longer? As mechanismj said, as long as people find new or different ways to make it. Will people listen to music made five years ago? If it is meaningful and substantial, yes. How does the advent of platforms like Bandcamp affect the musical sphere? To me, it's just yet another way to spread music and listen to it and gain exposure if you're a musician. Just like the garage bands of yesteryear, the truly stand-out works will eventually find an audience and get recognition, and the average ones will fade into obscurity. There will always be great artists who don't get the recognition they deserve (subjective), but, then, they likely weren't in it for the fame in the first place.

BoC aside, some of the music that has had a really profound effect on me has been heard by maybe a few thousand people, tops. The age of discovering music on Myspace saw a lot of really interesting and talented production that never went anywhere other than into the memories or iPods of a lucky few. Another point I find interesting/extremely disheartening is to think about all of the amazing talent from countries all over the world that don't get as much main stream exposure. I think Societas X does a really good job of illustrating just how overlooked some of these artists are.

[rodox_head]

The more atomised the music industry gets and the more people discover music on their own the more likely it is that any two people will have different listening habits and music tastes. Everyone you meet will have an interesting answer to "what have you been listening to lately", everyone becomes a conduit to making new discoveries. That's a great thing

A great thing, indeed, but can be very isolating at the same time.