The Decline of the Music Industry

I pray daily for a frank zappa box set.
  The complete Zappa studio recordings”

  maybe some day, any longer, and all his fans will be dead. 

i will join my prayers to yours.... Zappa was really a creative genius....

I’d agree with Zapp.

The entire world is now facing a creative death by algorithm.

Only numbers count, and mavericks are no longer welcome.

Freedom is undesirable and free speech intolerable.

The consumers are divided, discombobulated and programmed to willingly get injected with processed garbage. This is the age of the earbud.

The music industry did not help things by the way it huriedly sought to discard one of digital audio’s few advantages over analogue.

Just whilst driving today I was listening to The Jam’s 1997 compilation Direction Reaction Creation. This 5 disc box is highly regarded by some over on SHF but after a couple of hours I began to feel a little sick listening to the sound.

I don’t know exactly what terrible thing they had done to the sound. It seemed ok on a casual listen but then I noticed that on the harder tracks such as Modern World, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, Start, Going Underground etc there was a horrible sensation of flattened dynamics.

It was as if the edges had been toned down in favour of a little more smoothness.

Smoothness (via compression?) that the originals never had! 

So now I’m going to have to find some earlier CD pressings that sound halfway decent. That don't sound as if the music is being sat on by a large record company executive.

Anyway we shall never give up, we’re still human beings, not numbers.

"creative death by algorithm" 

Can i borrow you this marvellous expression? If not i will take it anyway....

I apologize.....

Maybe the death of music is because for the most part, life is too easy.  With the coming generation, things are really sucking for them.  If they can get away from synthesizers and learn some skills, perhaps they can turn that angst into something rebellious and interesting?


I think it is one of the reasons for the rise of black/ethnic "pop" music through the 90's into the 2000's. Everyone else had it too good, so there was not enough "emotion" to drive the song writing.


Please don't take what I am writing as racist, I am looking at influences and how that differed by race. I find it interesting.

"White" pop had a peak in the 80's. It was a reflection/culmination of life. Hey, look at us, we have prosperity, no one is trying to nuke us today, walls are coming down. Let's celebrate life. Prior to that, there was lots of angst about any number of things, so songs either reflected it or escaped it.  You of course still had good stuff after, but "happy" that is so meh/80's.  However, those that didn't get to partake in the enlightenment still had angst and perhaps even more anger. That gave rise to black pop music with edge, and we could say the "escape" of latin.

It's funny, because looking at China, they have a developing music scene, but it is like U.S. radio in the 50's --- all shiny and happy, because that is all that is allowed. I wonder if there is not some interesting underground as I am sure there is a lot of buried angst.