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FortWayne says

Young people today listen to very whiny music today. I don't understand how any self respecting man can drive around blasting "Same Love".

Generation of whiners.

That's a bit of a gross generalization...dublin hillz says

Music has changed from the standpoint that it is much harder to find music that questions society in the mainstream.

Give me about 30 seconds and I could probably find you any number of new and upcoming bands or musical groups whom do exactly that. IMHO, there's way, way more options and different sorts of music, including many songs that totally questiom the status-quo

Nah -- you're getting younger and music is getting better and better.

Whaddya think??

All the really good stuff has been written -- books, films, music.

Then again, anything after the 16th century humanist composers like Janequin is overly flourid dogshit to my ears.

JodyChunder says

Then again, anything after the 16th century humanist composers like Janequin is overly flourid dogshit to my ears.

I like me some Harp-si-cord music.

edvard2 says

I like me some Harp-si-cord music.

You'd be surprised how feel people know what the hell a harpsichord is! Me, I prefer the virginal.

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says

It's been downhill since 1974.

I'd say more like 1971.

CiT said: Polkas must be on your favorites list....
Welcome to the 21st century. Any hipster band worth its salt will have either:
1. An accordion
or
2. A Banjo

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says

the Blue Oyster Cult

Seems a smidge tepid for your tastes, Shostakovich...try some vintage from '71.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/odSl-7BNmTA

Them squareheads got some stuff right, complete with a jacket fit for the hood of your '69 Chevelle SS.

Makes me wanna break shit.

Music is more like wallpaper these days. People don't listen to music so much as put something on to mitigate silence, which they find awkward, as it's a midwife to things like quietude and introspection.* And it has to match their lifestyles. That is to say, people don't stumble on music and have their lives shaped by it so much as they buy music like they would buy a utensil for the kitchen. I think fewer and fewer listeners really connect with and fixate on a composer or group, let alone a genre.

*If you're going to engage in those things, you need to call it something trendy like meditation.

Don't listen to music, he'll say anything to cover his ass.

edvard2 says

At least that was what it was like when I was in high school in the early 90's.

Poor child, you have no idea what it was like...

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says

Maybe because the Blue Oyster Cult was just fucking right about it all and no one wanted to fuck with them!

great live band.. worthy of being called a Band.

The amount of choices have led to fragmentation and listen and throwaway. Before napsters and such, the amount of music accessible was extremely limited. Most people just listened to whatever the radio or TV were playing. A few did go on excursions to the record store to find more obscure stuff. The music playing medium also made it difficult to constantly change between songs and albums. So many people played records the from beginning to end many times. I remember before the popularity of mp3, I used to have periods of times when I sat and actively listened to music the way a person would read a book or watch a film. Nowadays as others have mentioned, I can't just listen to music, I have to be doing other stuff with music being background music.

The narrow flow of musical output allowed people to really digest certain songs and become united around the few songs the way people unite for Football teams. Nowadays with the fragmenation and incredible output of music, it's hard to really delve deep into songs and to develop collective musical moments in memory.

This fragmentation and overabudance of choices applies to books, films, and other entertainment media. Remember watching certain VHSs dozens of times? I rarely ever watch the same thing twice.

Most of what passes for music is about rapidly changing channels on the radio over and over again, something to match the hyperactive, fast food information age.

Vinyl records are nice because they sound great and make you stop long enough to actually participate and listen to the music again, no remote control or touch pad to whirr through the experience and leave it rapidly in the rear view mirror.

I was in my car yesterday, after reading this thread and the 70s Aerosmith
hit "Dream on" was played. I'm not a huge Aerosmith fan, but that was a great song.

I thought, "would it be a hit if it came out now ?"

I would say yes, but would a band today get the practice in playing rock music that it takes before writiing such a song ? Would they be able to get the high production value added ? Other factors involved then and now in getting radio play?

Rock as a music form will never die, and yet there is an anachronistic aspect to it. There's so much awesome historical rock for today's youth to choose from. How do new bands compete with that?

Also, as someone else said, sadly that type of club that plays live music isn't as big anymore. The rise of the DJ for clubs and high school dances etc, seems to be another thing that's here to stay.

In any case, for one who's willing to do their homework, in whatever genre you're interested in (some more than others), I think there is a lot of good (new) music out there still.

About feeling old. Hip hop makes me feel old in that I haven't been able to embrace it very much, except for the more derivative stuff (e.g. Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Just to add. Yeah, pop music does suck. It usually has. But there was a time, when there was so much going on in the rock music world that there were a lot of bands that could rise up to commercial success. Back then, the prefab commercially built band such as "the monkeys" was an exception rather than the rule.

These days I feel like virtually all of the "artists" that get air play are commercially backed and produced from the beginning. This includes almost all hip hop, it's obviously all prefab. The real bands that came up on their own, are actually the exception now, that is for commercial radio play.

So it is kind of inverted from how it was in the golden era of radio music. In my youth especially '67 - '79, FM radio, was all good (yes somewhat commercially successful) stuff. Just so many great artists.

There was a distiction then betyween FM radio, where relatively small radio stations selected their playlists, from an awesome menu just looking at billboards current top 100 albums, versus AM which we considered teeny bopper and too commercial. Sometimes we got it wrong. Thinking for example of Don McClean's "Ameican Pie" as an AM hit, because it got so much (too much) AM air play.

It was, but it was good none the less.

I am getting old though, and our early taste (before age 30) does shape us and stays with us.

Speaking of which. Check this out if you haven't seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsZFiMo8TIc

Nothing is as good as it was when we were young. Back then, crime, vandalism, pornography, corruption, laziness, and airbags were unknown. Small print was easier to read. You could walk faster, eat without getting fat, and your joints didn't ache.

Everyone had a job, and everyone was content. It was one big paradise built by non-union labor, where your tires lasted for 280,000 miles because the streets were paved with gold. Government left Job Creators alone, and so they gave all the extra money to their employees. The only bad thing was all the singing and dancing all the time - brass bands played through the night most nights - but we didn't need the sleep because our backs and knees didn't ache back then.

FortWayne says

Young people today listen to very whiny music today. I don't understand how any self respecting man can drive around blasting "Same Love".

Generation of whiners.

I refer you to two early 80s hits: "Tainted Love" & "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?". These heights of whiny self-pity were equalled only in the "Complaint Rock" wave of the early 1990s.

If guess about 98-99% of all new music is poorly crafted or has stupid lyrics. This makes casual listening difficult for people who pay attention to both aspects of a piece. Honestly, I think we'd have better music out there if you divided music comp from lyric writing, putting talent with education in music theory for the first, and good poets for the second.
Relying on some fast-food-employed, dope smoker, garage band rejects to write the music of the age is so fucking 1980s.

No offense to original poster, the answer to both queries is probably yes.