• Graphy@lemmy.world
    911·
    1 month ago

    Ugly people make music all the time.

    You really gonna tell me Ed Sheeran is good looking? Post Malone?

  • Siethron@lemmy.world
    31·
    1 month ago

    Ed Sheeran seems to be doing alright

    Ugly might be a strong word. Definitely not conventionally attractive though.

  • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
    243·
    1 month ago

    I don’t think music has gotten any worse. However, it is much easier and cheaper to produce music today: you don’t have to be able to play an instrument and professional production is possible with comparatively inexpensive software on any standard computer. This and also the changes in distribution (no more need for sound carriers, …) have probably led to a lot more music being produced today than in the past. Of course, this does not mean that music has become better as a result, but it also does not mean that it has become worse. You just have to find the gems among the admittedly gigantic amount of junk.

    • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
      171·
      1 month ago

      I somewhat disagree.

      Music seems like it’s followed a similar trajectory of most things where it’s become more centralized and mass marketed. Music has to appeal to the masses for studios to pick it up. So there is an incentive to find music that appeals to the most people and turns off the fewest.

      Similarly, you have a handful of studios telling you what is “good” and pushing it. Even if it isn’t great, it’s good enough that people listen and then they can create the hype behind it where it might not organically exist.

      Some music bubbles up organically from independent artists but quite a bit is mass marketed and produced by big studios. And they have the money so they can choke out smaller artists.

      • obre@lemmy.world
        10·
        1 month ago

        I think there’s a categorical difference between pop and indie music and you’re right about the increased centralization of pop music, however the increased ease of music production and distribution has also lead to a greater proliferation of indie music at the same time

      • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        Well, in that regard not too much changed, I think. Record labels always mostly pushed music and artists with mass appeal. They still do but have lost a lot of their power to companies like Spotify, Apple and Google (YouTube). But these players do pretty much the same with their algorithms. So I don’t think that popular music has changed too much. There are still influential companies that can pretty much dictate what people listen to. I still don’t think it has become much worse, since back in the day you weren’t even able to produce an album without a record deal because studio time, distribution and all that was so expensive. Today you can produce everything yourself in your bedroom. Sure, it’s unlikely that you will be very successful marketing your record - but at least it’s somewhat possible.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    378·
    1 month ago

    Yeah no, that’s just a cranky old guy thought. Just today I was watching fairly average looking people promoting music on late shows. You’re probably getting a very thin slice of pop music and ignoring everything else (and hell, even pop breaks that rule sometimes).

    Plus, physical beauty and music are both subjective. I try to not get all “old man yells at cloud” about how music “used to be better”.

    • mister_flibble@lemm.ee
      17·
      1 month ago

      Tbf, I think radio absolutely used to be better before iheart and their ilk bought fucking everything and turned every goddamn station into a hypersanitized prepackaged mix of the same 10 bloody songs over and over. Therefore, by extension, I could 100% see how someone basing their opinion on what actually gets radio play could easily arrive at the conclusion that music is worse now.

      • OneCardboardBox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        5·
        1 month ago

        I’m very lucky to have an independent radio station in my area. It’s run by a nearby college, but they let anyone take training to become a host.

        They don’t always play music I like (hell, they don’t always even play music) but I’ll deal with 30 minutes of buddhist chanting because the variety can’t be beaten. Also, they have no ad breaks.

        • taiyang@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 month ago

          Oh man, my independent station is wild sometimes. It swaps between a lot of genres, from punk to classical. They played an Earthbound video game cover once, even. My npr station is relatively fine too.

          Corpos 100% ruin radio, though, and that’s been true for a long time. Stations often get incentives to pay the same songs and that’s only gotten worse with time. True across all popular genres, too.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    22·
    1 month ago

    Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but this is Richard Goodall. He’s a school janitor in my town of Terre Haute, Indiana and he just won America’s Got Talent. He will probably have at least a somewhat successful musical career after this. He really blew people away.