Is Old Music Killing New Music?

I listen to jazz and classical mostly but otherwise have been part of the music biz for over five decades as a musician (not jazz, I'm not that smart) and (more recent decades) a live sound mixer. The music biz has never been a good idea for a career (I was lucky for many years), and neither have any of the other arts. Period. Touring always sucked for all but the very few, record companies pretty much consistently ripped everyone off in any way possible, and for 99.9% of musicians...well...get a gig in the local bar scene? What's that? Be a solo artist and practice your ass off and get VERY good, and do the "coffee house" thing. Play French Horn in Les Miz. Otherwise it's DJ or zip. Get good but don't expect financial success and you might not go insane.

There's lots of great new stuff from all over the world for the tiny minority of jazz freaks like me, and streaming has turned me on to some amazing music I likely never would have stumbled on otherwise. Modern Pop music...mostly just don't care about it with a couple of exceptions...but really...meh...

@dabel That is a great experience. The talent is absolutely out there. I love that they did a tribute to Prince. Phenomenal musician.  

@wolf_garcia life as a musician is a tough gig.  My brother used to tour the country as an Opera singer. He loved it, but it was a rough life being on the road almost all year.  

@tgilb 

Top 40 music may be controlled and commercialized but I wouldn’t say that about the music out of the mainstream.

Agree. With the ease of recording nowadays, the selection is gargantuan. The problem is sifting through all the crap. It requires work to find them. As always, the Top whatever lists drive the marketing. Those don't require sifting and are therefore favored by people less obsessed with music. Just go to the Spotify Top Ten and hit Play.

Speaking to your "out of the mainstream", metal has seen a similar negative shift in quality. If you go to Spotify's top lists the metal is either unoriginal, unimaginative, monotonous or not metal. There's even a song called Call Me Little Sunshine. Can you imagine a metal song being called that? Even worse, it has never-ending repetitive lyrics just like pop.

You will never walk alone
You can always reach me
You will never ever walk alone
You will never walk alone
You can always reach me
You will never ever walk alone
You will never walk alone
You can always reach me
You will never ever walk alone

And the even more out of the mainstream extreme metal has gone from having groove and melody to favoring dissonance. It's like they're doing the opposite of pop and trying to be so different that they've left the realm of listenable. So the quality issue may be generational and not limited to pop.

@femoore12

Well ... one could always become the next Vanilla Ice without the cream with a one hitter ;-)

+1 @jssmith  An insightful post.