Is Old Music Killing New Music?

Neither of my 20 something kids are big fans of new music only. My daughter likes the 80s in particular and both mix it up quite a bit. I’ve always exposed them both to all kinds of music growing up both at home and about. Streaming services change the game. They emphasize the new but it is all out there at ones fingertips. A far cry from when I was a kid with only a handful of decent broadcast radio stations to choose from and everything to come in the future not even there yet.

THere is a composer/conductor named Steve Hackman who is taking new music like Rap, Radiohead, Coldplay, and others and mixing it with the classics to form new hybrid versions of the older classic standards that might appeal to a wider modern audience. So using newer music to freshen up the old. I saw his Radiohead versus Brahms show at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore the other weekend and it was very well done and most enjoyable, mixing in parts of OK Computer with Brahms 1st Symphony to create something new and similar but different. It featured three lead vocalists to-boot so the Radiohead lyrics were part of the new thing, no editing for parental approval either... The younger generations represented a good portion of the crowd (mostly full house) and a long standing O closed things out. The show opened with a rousing version of "Creep", followed by the new hybrid Symphony.

Steve Hackman's symphony shows  are a must hear for music lovers if the show comes your way.  Most highly recommended!

Interesting article - pretty long, I'll read the whole thing later. I used to work in retail and wholesale record business from '74 - '84, and the record business today is nothing like it was back then; the business is different, the model is different, the consumer is different. But I notice he brings up the Grammies - are they really significant anymore? I don't know, maybe they are, but I never cared one bit about them and never watched them. And to me, there is no 'good music' or 'bad music' - there's music I like and music I don't like, but I try to make no value judgements. 

If going against R&R hall of fame or general pop stuff, then yes. Otherwise things a-bit different outside of pop and R&R hall of pop.

@mike_in_nc :

"Going back to music, studies have shown that one’s musical tastes are fixed by age 30. I think that with effort, one can expand them, but it’s not always easy. Still, I feel sad when I see an educated person listening only to the pop music of their youth".

In my twenties I grew bored with Rock and began a still--ongoing exploration of Jazz. Now in my late 60's, I've been compelled to recognize that my capacity for appreciating unfamiliar music is inherently limited by deeply-ingrained subjective preferences. Now, I spend more time than ever  searching for music to buy and I buy less and less. Perhaps this is inevitable. It is also disappointing.