Has new music gone down the tubes?

The Well is dry! Among the world-wide 15 - 25 year olds the most popular music is rap/hip hop - and has been so for several decades. All that’s needed is a beat box and a mike. No knowledge of music theory or instrumental skill required! The dominance of rap/hip hop coincides with the popularity of computer gaming.

Sam Kinison used to say that they invented rock for people that can't sing but could play instruments and rap was for people that can't sing or play an instrument.

Remember there was a period of stagnation in pop music between the initial burst of rock n roll and the Beatles, so all is not lost. When the Beatles and the 60s in general hit, the people running the record labels had no idea what to think, so they signed everyone they could and allowed them 2 or 3 albums to develop.

That doesn’t happen anymore. The labels have been honing their "expertise" in what makes a hit record since the sixties and they are really not willing to take a chance on someone. So, creativity is stifled and most music becomes more formulaic, the music that is released by record labels anyway.

There is still a lot of good music being made by younger people, though. It’s just not getting the promotion it deserves from the labels or the rest of the industry. They prefer to go with their trusty formula. There is a lot of good music being made, you just have to look a little harder, although streaming can do a lot of the work for you.

The 60s and 70s were a period of exceptional creativity, though, and a lot of good music was made then. It will happen again, who knows when.

There’s still a lot of new music being produced. From Ringo Star to Taylor Swift to My new favorite, Stone Rebel. I don’t know what genre of music you listen to, but even in Jazz there are current artists making new albums. Another favorite is Gregory Tardy. The guys 56 and has at least a dozen albums out. Blues has a bunch as well.

Why is that whenever I am in a store, I hear a lot of music from the 1960's and 1970's. Sometimes the 1980's. That music is 40, 50, 60 years old.

In the 1970's, when I was growing up, the music in the air was not from the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's. The boomer generation has been taking up a huge amount of air space for decades, and younger generations are way more crowded out than I was.

It's cultural capture and it's not fair to people after the Boomers.