
Is there too much music? - ALee
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/neilmccormick/5125923/Is-there-too-much-music.html
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ekpyrotic
Last October I awaited the arrival of my new university roommate. He arrived
toting shoe boxes, piled high. They swayed side-to-side as he walked, and he
shuffled cautiously to assure they didn't fall. He dumped them of his bed; I
guessed they contained books. After he'd brought in his clothes he opened the
small boxes: CDs, shiny plastic cases. I counted 560.

I wasn't a musical kid. I brought my first album at 16 - Dido - and had
recently, at 18, started listening to Boards of Canada. Why anyone would need
so many CDs puzzled me, but, I assure you, he did need them. Music played all
day: Kraftwerk, The Human League, Sebastien Tellier, Air Lemon Jelly The
Divine Comedy MorcheebaMassiveAttackdarfpunkkidloco...

I loved it. I found my musical niche - electronica - and started listening.
The change from music novice to music whore was gradual, as my last.fm
attests. But I'm now listening to music 10 hours a day, often falling asleep
with it playing. Like a rollercoaster, there's the gradual grind up one side
of a large drop, then the clicking stops, and everybody holds their breath,
and you fall. Headfirst. You can't escape gravity.

I wish it hadn't happened. It's hard to think with music gushing into your
ears, it's a constant nag on clear thought, so you turn it off. But that's
worse. There's something missing. It's like the feeling having forgotten
something, you pat yourself down, you look around, everything seems fine, but
something's amiss.

It's playing with my head. Seriously.

~~~
jacoblyles
Modern popular music is ear-candy, all calories and no nutrients. It requires
little effort for the listener to enjoy. In exchange it provides constant
small doses of pleasure, heavily optimized to be as addictive as possible. In
that respect, it is much like the internet, TV, or smoking.

It is one of the many shiny, bright, loud, or tasty super-stimuli that we
savanna apes must struggle with in the modern world.

~~~
bouncingsoul
Aren't you describing pop music in general? I don't see how what you said only
applies to "modern" pop.

~~~
jacoblyles
Sure. But I do think it is more heavily produced and optimized to be catchy
than ever before. There is a quantitative, though not qualitative, difference.

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dschobel
I'm reading a book on the history of Opera (the genre, not the browser) and
the author made an interesting observation.

Namely, it used to be the case not so many decades ago that you might only
hear your favorite piece of music a dozen times _in your lifetime_.

I can't even fathom the emotions involved should that be the case, trying to
take it all in and knowing it might be a very long time until you hear a
particular piece again.

~~~
philwelch
That has some interesting consequences on music quality. I find that pop music
usually sounds good enough at first but upon repeated listens gets very
tiresome. Whereas good music may sound rather uninteresting at first pass, but
upon repeated listenings, one discovers the depth of the song.

Were music enthusiasts in the past more sophisticated listeners? Even more
provocatively, has recording technology allowed us to create more
sophisticated music? Has that indeed happened?

~~~
jamesbritt
Brian Eno (among others) has often written and spoken about the effect of
recording technology on music.

Some of his observations: composers can play with tone, timbre, and perceived
physical space in previously unavailable ways; composition becomes much like
sculpture when you can "carve out" music from a multi-track master (think of
dub music); music no longer need be aimed at an active audience (hence the
rise of ambient music); music can be much more dense because you can replay it
as often as you need to get all the details.

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ALee
"Recent research has established some interesting facts about our relationship
to music. The average American hears more than five hours of music per day,
yet a new survey suggests that American teenagers actually consumed and shared
19 per cent less music in 2008 than they did a year ago. CD sales were down
(28 per cent) but download sales also fell (13 per cent) and even illegal
downloads declined (six per cent). More pertinently, borrowing and swapping
music between friends was down 28 per cent. Thirty two per cent of teens
expressed discontent with the music available for purchase, while 23 per cent
said they already have a large enough collection of music. Is it possible we
are reaching some kind of saturation point?"

~~~
jacoblyles
My guess is that these things ebb and flow. The arrival of a new genre or
subgenre can spark a lot of interest and passion, and sales (think grunge and
alternative). A long period of stagnation can cause sales to decline (think
mainstream rock in the late 90s - early 00s).

Of course, this is all anecdotal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

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pedalpete
I question the numbers regarding downloads as music available through online
services takes a big chunk out of the download space, legal or otherwise.

Why download and manage the storage of music when sources like Pandora,
last.fm, skreemr, seeqpod, etcetcetetc... will do it for you.

I haven't downloaded any music in years, as I can just get it online whenever
I want it.

~~~
aceofspades19
its hard to listen to streaming music on a mp3 player which has no internet
connection

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zcrar70
I actually think that this article is confusing two things, the fact that the
technology has evolved to make music more accessible (even omnipresent), and
the fact that there are a lot of people producing music at the moment. Whilst
one may have facilitated the other, the effects the author describes in the
article are due sometimes to one, sometimes to the other (e.g. the
overwhelming amount of bands at SXSW is due to the large amount of music being
produced at the moment, the fact that music is now everywhere -in shops, on
the radio, on screens in public places, on YouTube or MySpace- is due to the
technology facilitating music distribution.)

My problem is not so much with the fact that music is available everywhere as
with the fact that most of it isn't very good - the commercial impetus behind
most modern (pop) music means that there isn't a lot of variety (because
record companies apply their own fitness functions, going for 'proven'
formulas), and the emphasis on immediate commercial success puts more emphasis
on tangential factors (production values, marketing etc) than on the music
itself. So, I'm worried that although the availability of music has increased,
its value to society (i.e. its cultural and intellectual benefits) may
actually have diminished.

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lurkinggrue
I doubt it and as always Sturgeon's Law needs to be applied here.

~~~
ALee
But if the whole pie increases, then perhaps even the 10% is significantly
large, especially given costs to music creation have decreased so drastically.

