Do you think music is getting better or worse?

[Fingerprint]

In my opinion "pop" music is getting much worse. For example the likes of The Beatles, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, the list goes on... were of their day all "pop" music and were all greats that are still listened to today. On the other hand we have bands like... hell, I don't even know their names - rap, hip-hop, RnB, whatever, that are played on the (U.K.) radio stations - I can't bear them.

As a side note, I am seriously contemplating throwing the work radio out of the second story window.

Anyway, the question isn't a great one as its all a matter of opinion - I've said mine but I know there's plenty of people who'd hate my music.

 

[elitecrewer]

It's getting much, much worse. I haven't heard a lot worth listening to since Kobain's death. Zeppelin, Stones and the Beatles forever.

 

[Fingerprint]

I think it's a sad state of affairs when the most popular thing to come out of sweden since abba is Basshunter...

How about No Fun At All or Millencolin? They're both pretty good. And honestly I haven't heard of Basshunter.

 

[Biek]

I cant really say if music in general is getting better or worse. Though I can say that I think pop music is generally getting worse nowadays. For example, with the summer closing in you can expect a tidal wave of crappy summer hits getting puked out by your radio every day.

Music getting worse strikes me as a largely psychological thing. When looking at 'old music' the classics are always easy to access as the good songs are better remember. The dross that was about at the time is forgotten about as no one cares about it. As such there's a kind of passive filtering so the good stuff shines out.
When looking at new music, a lot of the time thanks to the radio, you are bombarded with everything that is recent, generally regardless of quality. The abysmal songs that will disapear quickly, alongside the stuff that will be worth listening to again.

Theres definetly good music among the rubbish I listen to. If your post is correct then those should stand out at a later later date, wich is good.

 

[Brotherofwill]

Niether, music is down to opinion.

My opinion? Its getting better, I can't stand old music.

Very true i also think that music is getting better

Ditto

Man I wish I had the kind of enthusiastic world view as you lot.
"It's gettting better all the time (couldn't get no worse)"

 

[FinalGamer]

I would say mainstream music is getting worse. Music overall is subjective.

 

[Arrers]

In my opinion, music in general is getting better, but you have to dig around for the good stuff. Most well known bands that are talked about in my college are not good. I do like a lot of 60's stuff tho.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Pop Music is dying a slow agonising death in a festering cesspit of regurgitated sample laden tripe, with lame excuses for songs.

What little in the way of melodies they have are being raped by autotune to the point where every singer being released has the same Robbie the Robot Akon voice.

Timbaland and Max Martin are now a parodies of themselves and pop is eating itself into its own shit filled asshole.

I pray the recession will give us back some Pop with heart, soul and passion.

 

[Trivun]

Niether, music is down to opinion.

My opinion? Its getting better, I can't stand old music.

I agree on the first point, but I disagree with the second. Since music is down to opinion, then we can't really say anything other than our own opinions, which are all well and good, but to me music doesn't get better or worse over time. Bands and artists themselves may get better or worse, but music in general usually stays pretty constant. There have always been good artists and bad artists, and that's something that will never change, no matter how people's tastes change over time.

 

[BlackJack47]

I dont think it matters, music is eternal so we will never forget it.

 

[Southy]

The music that is being produced at the moment can't be as groundbreaking or revolutionary as the music of the past, due to the music being produced now, being poor imitations of great bands e.g Oasis and The Beatles. However, the quality of the music taken out of historical context is getting better with guitarists getting more skilled with their instrument. It's still totally subjective though, so it doesn't really matter much.

 

[riskroWe]

The truth is up there somewhere ^
The technological quality of music is definitely getting better.
Mainstream music is being dumbed down to appeal to a wider audience.
Good music hasn't disappeared, it's just fled underground in search of greater creative freedom.
The music industry has really become massive since the early 90s, but hopefully music piracy will solve that problem for us.

Better. More indie and alternative have been coming out. Like kings of Leon and the new green day album. I still remember American Idiot...........*Runs off to listen to it now*.

lol green day.

 

[BBQ Platypus]

Musicians in all genres are running out of ideas. Compare the music of 1968 and 1978 - they're completely different. The same applies to the music of 1988 and 1998. But the rate of change is slowing and becoming less substantial. If you played me a piece of music from this decade that I had never heard before, odds are that I wouldn't be able to pinpoint the year.

Rock and roll is dead, spent. Its ethos is simply not relevant anymore. Metal, like progressive rock before it, is now wallowing in its own retarded excesses, forgetting to actually, you know, be GOOD. I mean, at least I'm able to LAUGH at hair metal. This shit is just...depressing. And as for punk rock - it doesn't exist anymore.

To find anything worth listening to, you pretty much have to avoid major record labels. For some fucking reason, utter shit is what's selling right now. It didn't have to be this way - but that's the way things are happening.

The new form of popular music will probably come in about twenty years. It'll be something very simple and modular - something that has a lot of room to be expanded upon. It'll likely have more in common with hip-hop than it does with rock and roll. I probably won't like it, but then again, rock and roll started to suck the moment it became a "respectable" genre that people in their 40s and 50s could listen to. Old people aren't SUPPOSED to approve of new things.

Now, there's always been good music and there's always been shit. A lot of shitty bands become popular - this is nothing new. Unfortunately, what I'm NOT seeing is a large number of new bands bringing something fundamentally new to the table. There are a few bands that present a new take on old concepts, but nothing that comes right the fuck out of nowhere like, say, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, or Devo.

As it stands, originality in music is dead, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but I've got a strong feeling that history is going to prove me right.

 

[The Key of J]

It's not that music is getting worse, it's just getting dubbed down for the masses. The tendency for music is to come in waves between an outcry for structure and improvised melodies. Speaking as a musician, I'm starting to see more and more people move away from hip hop and electronically driven music to favor bands more like Led Zeppelin.

However, what I will say is that it is unfair to judge current music by old standards. The music that is still around from the 60s and 70s is around because it stood the test of time. This is how any fine art field is and always will be. What people don't realize most of the time is that the songs that are still around are around for good reason. Johannes Brahms published his work almost a hundred years after Ludvig Van Beethoven. Sebastian Bach was writing music before Beethoven was even a twinkle in his father's eye. Igor Stravinsky came a hundred years after Peter Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky only died about 38 years ago.

The point I'm trying to make is that there will always been something that survives every era and manage to float to the top of the sea of crap. More than likely, the people that do survive won't even be that popular during the time that they were writing. Mozart is a perfect example of this tendency. One of the most popular composers during Mozart's time was Antonio Salieri. They both worked together and respected each other as composers, but during their time Salieri was much more popular. Despite Salieri's popularity, Mozart's music continues to live on while Salieri is little more than a name in the history books in comparison.

The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Hendrix will more than likely be played a hundred years from now. Slash will probably die with time. Some of Aerosmith's songs will more than likely still be around, but many of them will probably also disappear over time as well.

 

[Julianking93]

Depends.

Popular music today sucks like the jonas brothers and all that shitty rap music and all the crappy emo bands that call them selves punk or rock like Fall out boy. Pretty much all mainstream music today sucks but there are plenty of indie bands that hardly anyone knows about that deserve to be on the top 40 lists much more than the bands already on there

 

[VitalSigns]

Im into more underground music, so I have to say better just do too Better production values and with the creation of Myspace many more bands getting heard and signed.

 

[Luvless]

most music released today end up not being as good as we hoped which i tend to see quite a lot in this day and age

 

[NeutralDrow]

Music is the same as it ever was.

The only difference is that we forget about the terrible musicians of ages past.

 

[IrrelevantTangent]

I think that Within Temptation's a good band. [/shameless promotion]

That said, the quality of music is like the tides of the ocean; it ebbs and it flows, and just because we're getting bad examples of music now doesn't mean we won't get good examples of them in the future.

 

[Luvless]

wished thrash would make a major come back