quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: What really scared me then, and scares me still, is that the potential is in this technology to analize and start to actually create music based on what sells.
It sounds like you are scared of being forced to write music that you don't want to because nobody will publish the music you want to write? That is a valid fear. USSR forced its composers to write patriotic music and I don't think the composers were too happy...
Marketing goes on all the time. If you are studying music at a university, give up. They already don't care what everyone else thinks. How far are you? At the start of my senior year I was threatened that I had to start writing atonal music or I wouldn't get my degree. Atonal music has got to be the most un-marketable music invented (which was why I didn't want to write it).
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I don't know how well this works. I typed in my all-time favorite Elton John song, "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That," and two of the Elton John songs matched with it were "Island Girl" and "Rocket Man," neither of which would be on a favorites list of mine, even one restricted to well-known Elton John songs.
I also got Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon," probably one of my least favorite popular Billy Joel songs and one that's far too slow and sad for me to categorize with "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That"; and I give the program little credit for associating Billy Joel with Elton John.
On the plus side, I got Tori Amos's "Caught A Lite Sneeze," which I do like and which, now that I think about it, does have a similar, though slower, rhythm to that of "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That" (but again, linking Tori Amos and Elton John is pretty obvious). The songs I hadn't heard before sounded interesting, but I couldn't listen to them very well because they kept stopping every few seconds due to my slow modem.
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quote: What really scared me then, and scares me still, is that the potential is in this technology to analize and start to actually create music based on what sells.
I think it's incredibly naive to assume that this isn't already happening.
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Why is it wrong to create music based on the type of music that sells? If you don't like it, don't buy it. You have no right to tell others how they should be creating their own music.
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quote:Originally posted by Avatar300: Why is it wrong to create music based on the type of music that sells? If you don't like it, don't buy it. You have no right to tell others how they should be creating their own music.
UMMMM This in no way makes a lick of sense to me. Please think about what I said, what you said, and maybe get back to me. I am not telling anyone else what to buy or write. It is not wrong to write commercial music, I never said it was wrong, and I NEVER implied that I was telling other people what to do. On the other hand the trend makes me sick, and I wish people wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't dream of making people do anything.
Please be careful what you accuse people of, and make sure your accusations fit the facts. I would hate for someone to read that, and have your out of the blue reaction confuse the person as to what I actually said
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Actually I am going to address a cogent point Avatar did not intend to make.
We often confuse selling music with "selling out." Nearly all musicians sell their work in some way. By sell I simply mean they give it or exchange it with other musicians as a gift, out of respect, in order to earn respect; in order to learn or promote an area of music. Bach sold his life's work to the service of the lutheran church, he had to do a good deal of self promotion in his lifetime to keep his various positions and he had to "sell" his work to the parisioners every sunday to keep them coming back. Mozart's father sold his son's childhood for the boy's advancement in music (this is neither good nor bad but it is what happened). As a student I sell my work to classmates for our mutual benefit, and to my teachers for grades, selling is such a fluid concept.
Music I don't like... I don't buy. But I think alot of people do buy music they don't like. Here is the crux of the matter. I am afraid that the music industry is becoming in some ways like a big, heavy government over our entertainment lives, and the beaurocracy is beginning to weigh rather heavy on the common folk.
It is my own view and not an established school of thought, however to my mind, the music industy based in southern california, new york, chicago and other places in the US and in great brittain, France, Argentina, Mexico, Spain and Peru, is beginning to lose touch with the NEEDS of its target audience. I often wonder if the albums people buy are really the albums people WANT.
I must be cautius in my terminology: want can be used to describe something closer to need. Are we wanting of this kind of music, or a kind we are not offered? IMO, the music industry bases its distribution solely on the potential for profit, as it cannot help but do, as this is the nature of the bussiness. My issue with this very laissez-fare attitude toward music is that it is not proven to create lasting music. In a culture which more and more relies on the promotion of instant gratification in order to sell more, faster, we just may be losing a toehold in quality over quantity.
For instance, in the time of Bach, a village person could go his or her whole life only hearing the music of one or two composers on a regular basis. If that person lived in JS Bach's little village, he heard the same composer's work evolve over a period of many many years, and grew a deep unspoken understanding of the intricacies of that one composer. This is both bad, because he could not get a wide and interesting sampling of other works, and good, because he understood the music in a way few people ever can.
I see our culture shifting faster and faster toward quantity of crap over quality, and this is the basis of a huge (although little understood) subculture of people like myself who live for "the classics," and delve less frequently into current mainstream music.
We are not some opressed minority, no further than we can portray ourselves as opressed by whatever scary new development. But frankly the thing that really does opress and retard the development of really valuable music is the attitude you have, that if music is great, it WILL absolutely sell. I don't believe thats correct at all, I beleive the opposite is very often the case.
Although this phenomenon lies allover the spectrum of music, I know my area of interest, and this has been going on for centuries. Take the case of WA Mozart: he was not a beloved timeless classic in his adult years. He had spent his childhood as a pop child prodigy and a sideshow to impress courtiers and make his father and family comfortable by this trade. In his adult years, he was used up, the public lost interest in the work he was doing and the lack of a childhood left him an eccentric outcast after the death of his mother. Because the public moved on and ignored the mountain of work they had so fervently compelled him to create early in life, Mozart died a broken man, and was not fully apreciated in his "later" (later twenties) successes as a composer.
What the world have been, with ha mozart who had lived to 90? Or a lennon who was alive today? We use and discard these great people like chewing gum, if thats not sick I don't what to say.
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"the music industry is becoming in some ways like a big, heavy government"
Hahaha... the RIAA is suing people! Sony installed root kits for both Windows AND kernel extensions for Mac... The music industry is full of some of the greediest people on the planet who think they only deserve more of our money! Apple is having a hard time with recording company contracts because they think they deserve more money, especially from iPod sales!
Anyway, about your worries. I don't think you are worried about crap being sold. I seriously doubt anything that sales is "crap". Rather, the public is being spoon fed easy music.
First, CD's, mp3's, it is all effortless music. There was a day when you had to go to a concert to hear music or you had to learn how to play an instrument. It is like WalMart vs the corner store. It is a bit too late to fight this battle though! If it were going to be fought, it would have had to been fought long time ago, when LP's were popular. Not sure it even needs to be fought.
Second, pop is "easy". It is easy to listen to. It is easy to understand. The listener doesn't have to think or work to listen to it. It makes listeners feel goooood. I'm contrasting this with classical or church music. Again, a bit too late to fight this battle. 20's-40's jazz was probably what started this ball rolling. And Elvis and the Beetles nailed the coffin shut. And to suggest it should be fought will probably get me burned at the stake.
So Orincoro, I can see your concern, but I seriously doubt anyone cares. This is why (in the other thread) I said I don't think atonal music will ever catch on. Atonal music is the hardest music to listen to, IMO. To catch on, someone would have to make it easy to listen to, and by definition of the style, it never will be. Elements of the style have already worked their way into popular music, but not pure "atonal" (if there even is such a thing).
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Oh, and I just thought. Perhaps you are uneasy about Pandora because it makes finding new music too easy. So nobody will search for stuff new and thus they lose the chance of running into something in a different style that they will like?
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Orincoro, I have some sympathy with your point, I think. To me so far this seems to be finding people with similar superficial aspects to their music. I put in Radiohead for my band, and they are choosing things based on use of rhythm guitar, vocals being important, etc. Those are totally superficial characteristics. I love Radiohead because they make good MUSIC. And that has more to do with the bones of the music, the deep down structure and beauty, than any superficial qualities.
My other favorite bands are Tool and Nine Inch Nails. In the past I've been crazy about They Might Be Giants, The Cure, The Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Some people I'm beginning to like are Queens of the Stone Age and System of a Down. A very diverse set, if looked at superficially, yet they all are musically really good.
I guess I'm not offended at the existence of this, and I'm listening more to see how it does over time, but so far I'm very underwhelmed by the things it's picked out for me. I don't care how it sounds, so long as it's GOOD. You know? These bands all vaguely sound like Radiohead, except for the part that matters, the way Radiohead makes such brilliant music. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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"I don't care how it sounds, so long as it's GOOD. You know?"
Oh I know, but even you I think are an exception. I fear even music that doesn't sound GOOD anymore is getting played because of advertising, cultural appeal or whatever else.
No-one I was arguing with earlier is interested in this anymore, but Human once again makes a really good point about classical/atonal and new music, which I missed having left this thread for a week. That is that yes, our areas of music, (classical, neo-classical, or other 20th century evolutions) is harder to listen to on some levels, and definetly requires more of the common listener than merely to turn up the bass, turn down the treble and shatter their car windows. But for me, listening to "popular" music now is like torture, I am also an English major, so I liken it to going to the cafe poetry readings and listening to undergrad (or even graduate) poets spout sophomoric pointless crap in an attempt to say something that sounds "good."
Well, human I can't change the past, or stop people from getting access to all this crap, nor would I, but I would like to see a bit more equal time going to "our" kind of music as well. Haven't you ever taken a look at a music directory of some kind, on the internet, in a plane, at a record store, and the categories are:
1. Hip-Hop 2.R&B 3. Rap 4. Gangster Rap 5. Wankster Rap 6. Smooth R&B 7. Punk 8. Punk Rock 9. Classic Rock 10. Rock Rap 11. Dance 12. Alternative 13. country 14. Latin dance 15. Latin Pop (me encanta la gasolina!!) 16. Raggae 17. japanese pop 18. British Rock 19. Ska 20. Motown
9,402- CLASSICAL
and the only thing under classical is mozart
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I don't think goodness in music is defineable. Good musicians are constantly colonizing new territory for goodness. I like lots of classical, Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Holst, and Aaron Copeland are my favorites. I think Bach totally rules. I happen to loathe Mozart. His music is so smug and obvious.
But I think there is good music in every genre. Pop is and has always been the most watered down music for the masses, surface appealing without much real content. I don't think it's worse now than it's ever been. Good music has always been rare and has to be searched out.
I think different people look for different things from music. Many people just want to hear the same 50 songs they liked in high school and college. Classic rock is for them, or oldies, or whatever. My dad played a bazillion gigs playing Glenn Miller for octogenarians. So, cool, that's what those people like. Musicians earn money playing it for them, but then they can go after hours, and jam with some cerebral be-bop or something, you know?
Other people just want a pleasing background noise, something soft and sweet that requires none of your attention. Fine, easy listening is for them.
Musicians tend to get something deeper out of music. They have different tastes, usually eclectic, and focused on the internal structure of the music. I can't define what makes music good any more than anyone else can, but, for instance, the things that are so amazing about Radiohead are their interesting use of time, the fact that harmonically they do utterly new things that nevertheless sound great, and that the feelings conveyed are nuanced and real. Thom indeed has a dreamy voice, but that doesn't mean I'm going to like bands with a strong vocal focus. Radiohead uses a fair amount of rhythm guitars but that doesn't mean that matters at all. Rhythm guitars have nothing to do with what's so good about their music, to me.
So I listened until it asked me to sign up, and I was very unimpressed with the things it picked. I will continue to find new music the way I have been doing up to now, by talking to people who like the same music I like, and trying the bands they also like that I haven't yet listened to in depth.
It doesn't upset me that this exists, I just don't find it very helpful.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I think I prefer the one that was going around earlier, I forget what it was called, that keeps up with everything you listen to, and makes suggestions based on what other people who listen to the same stuff you like, like. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Ironically I kept misspelling it and went to other hijacker sites...
Anyway, my reason for bringing up rhapsody is that they will let you play 25 songs full length for free.
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You kind of have that "who cares" attitude that is fairly prevalent in this kind of discussion today. I tell some people I am a music major, they ask what I'm into, their eyes glaze over, and I ask them about their musical preferences. Then they say, "I just listen to whatever's good man, its chill yaknow?"
While part of me says thats fine and great and your so open to whatever is good... And another part of me wonders why it feels like nobody really cares about music. The statement "I just listen to whatever is good," is fine I suppose, but it suggests to me that we cultivate an attitude of ignorance about musical movements, new music, old music, whatever, and we only reward knowledge of things like, what was Madonna's real name? How big was Elvis' Colon when he died? (42 pounds btw)
While I realized almost no-one is really interested in knowing nearly as much about music as I want to learn, but we waste SO much of our time on the aspects of music that have to do with, well, nothing really. We can download music videos onto our ipods now, invest in sweatshop clothing from J-lo's fasion line (cheap shot I know), or buy 50-cent Condoms, (not the actual price I believe).
None of this has to do with the music, nor does will smith's "stellar" acting career; we are getting into a whole other debate here, where somebody points out that I am just an elitist jerk, and Will Smith has made a gazillion bucks in movies and music (why???). But if you can just play along with me for the sake of argument and acknowledge that just maybe the financial sucess and public interest in these superstars has a little less to do with the music... maybe even ALOT less to do with the music that would have been necessary 25 or 50 years ago, or 100 years ago. Then I think you will see my point, we seem a little less interested in the music.
In a way this diminishes my original point, which was that this service sucks and is evil. I still think it is, because it doesn't spring from a desire on anyone's part to actually spread great new music, it is simply another tool for the music industry (which I have already suffiently flamed in this thread) to extract cash from your pocket and cram cheese into your ears.
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Orincoro, I think you misunderstand me entirely. I'm not at all a person who thinks all music is good. I am very selective about the music I like.
I do believe that there can be good music in every genre, and if a person thinks they dislike an entire genre, it's likely because they haven't been exposed to the good stuff from that genre yet.
I also believe that different people go to music for different things, and that not everyone has to appreciate music the way a musician does. Different people's brains respond differently to music, based mostly on inborn characteristics, and partly on knowledge and experience.
I'm all in favor of people trying to school their tastes to appreciate better stuff, because that increases the total joy in the world. I'm not in favor of people trying to squash someone else's pleasure in something they enjoy, simply because the first person looks down on it. I may think Madonna sucks but if someone likes Madonna then why should I try to spoil that for them? I definitely agree that some music is objectively better than other music, and exposing people to better music is a good thing, if it's done in the spirit of "hey you might like this too" instead of "please listen to this quality music instead of that garbage you currently like". You know?
I don't see that there's been any change in the quality of music over the years, unless it's maybe that there's more good music being written now than ever before. There has always been lots of bad music, but what gets passed down through the generations is always the very best of the best. In this way we see the past through a filter that makes us think music was better then.
The music industry tries to peddle garbage by the shovelful, but then again they always have. It's always necessary to seek out the good stuff from every era, and in every genre. 95% of everything is bad, and music is no exception to that rule. :-P
This pandora thing might be a cool tool for some people to use to find music they like. I think those will be people who like music for its superficial qualities only, or who enjoy music as background instead of giving it all their attention. For me who like music for reasons that involve something not easily coded into superficial rules like "emphasis on vocals" or "use of rhythm guitar" I think it will be very unhelpful.
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Tatiana,I think you have to go back in the thread to hear my argument against pandora...
I have also said that the "music industry" is an artificial creation designed to suck money out of your wallet and cram cheese in your ears.
The music professionally produces in the 18, or 17th centuries was done mostly by professionals who endured long educations in their field starting at childhood, and were only able to produce their music through the support of a patron or church. These guys HAD to be good, there is no question that their music was of better quality in regard to attention to detail, musicality, and the needs of their audience.
The "music industry" IMO is driving music into the ground at full speed, by picking up anyone and everyone with the barest thread of saleability, and burning them up like a gasoline soaked rag, because they know that the number of people out there with the ability to sell records at all is VASTLY more than the number of people who the public could EVER support. Its a sellers market, and has been for a hundred years.
Hard to argue against Pandora when your attitude is that people should always just do whatever they want. Of course your right, I can't stop anyone, nor would I stop them, as I have said earlier. However, that does not make anyone's crappy music choices valid in any regard IMO. Its very elitist of me, and I probably suffer from a lack of perspective on this, but the stuff people listen to... just sucks, and its worse than ever.
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