text | Music Herald, author | Li Qinyu, editor | Fan Zhihui
Recently, the well-known American producer Rick Beato shared a 12-minute video on YouTube titled "The real reason why music is getting worse" . He mentioned that the current popular music technology is simplified, the content is boring, and many over-commercial works are making the entire music industry worse and worse. The video of
has been played more than 2.87 million times on YouTube. Some netizens ridiculed that Rick Beato is just an old man in his sixties complaining that emerging musicians no longer make music like they used to. They even think that Rick Beato is old-fashioned. Anti-tech people.
In response to this, Rick Beato immediately released a video, personally performing the famous scene "old man yells at cloud" from "The Simpsons" to respond to the age discrimination in the comment area and once again insisted on his own point of view. —— Human beings really don’t care about music as much as they used to.
"old man yells at cloud" refers to the criticism and anger of the elderly who are out of touch with the times towards emerging things, often with hints of old age and weirdness. In 2021, Trump criticized Musk's company Tesla for relying on government subsidies in a speech, and Musk also used this joke to allude to Trump.
When Rick Beato personally performed the "Old Man Roaring Clouds" meme, it was ironic and made people think, has pop music really become more and more boring?
Music compressed by technology
In the 1940s and 1950s, limited by the limitations of single microphone technology and real-time recording, singers often had to stand in front of the band when recording musical works. The recording process at that time was usually completed in one take, requiring perfect coordination between band members, and any mistakes could lead to re-recording.
In the 1970s, the advent of multi-track recorders brought revolutionary changes to music production. This allowed musicians to record their parts at different times and locations, driving a significant increase in musical complexity. For example, Pink Floyd's producer Alan Parsons used multi-track recording technology to create the complex sound effects in the classic work "Time".
In October 1998, with the release of the American pop singer Cher's album "Believe", autotune was introduced into the field of music production, completely changing the way music production was done. At first, the main function of autotune was to correct the human voice and add coloring effects to the human voice. However, with the popularity of this technology, some non-professional singers saw the great success of musicians who used autotune, and hoped to use this technical method. Achieved similar achievements and became a "style speculator".
This may be familiar to domestic audiences. Bu Fan's performance of "Andy Lau" in "New Rap Showdown" is a typical case. In 2023, Eight Miles Underground also launched a new competition rule, "no autotune only rap." At this point, autotune has become a catalyst for genius and a fig leaf for mediocrity.
Today, the threshold for music creation has been greatly lowered. Anyone only needs a computer and some software to complete the production processes of lyrics, music, arrangement, recording, and mixing. Bedroom musicians are very popular. This convenience has led to many musicians tending to use the same sound effects and production techniques, resulting in a homogenization of music styles, especially in pop music. Many hit songs on the music charts show striking similarities in structure, rhythm and melody.
ed sheeran has demonstrated on the Dutch TV show "rtl late night" playing almost all popular songs using four chords (em, c, g and d). In the show, he used this method to perform many hit songs by musicians including Passenger, Craig David, Spice Girls and Beyoncé.
rick beato also said in the video: "Music production has become more and more dependent on technology rather than the talent and efforts of artists. Music has become more homogeneous and lacks the innovation and dynamics it should have."
In May of this year, YouTube channel David Bennett Piano counted 940 songs in the top 40 of the U.S. Billboard charts since 2001. Only 32 are not in 4/4 time, which means 96.57% of hit songs follow the same beat structure.The popularity of this structure reflects the preference for specific beat structures in popular music production and distribution to meet listener expectations and market demand.
The rise of short video platforms has further exacerbated the fragmentation of music consumption. Listeners are exposed to music through short videos of 15 seconds to 1 minute. This consumption model significantly reduces people's patience and interest in complete works. A midia research report pointed out that modern streaming media users frequently skip songs when listening to songs. About 24% of songs are skipped within the first 5 seconds of playback, and 35% of songs are skipped within the first 30 seconds.
Global popular music has always faced a trend of being compressed by technology. At the same time, changes in consumption habits have also brought unprecedented challenges to the music industry.
music has lost its original dynamics, listeners' patience has diminished, and creators are forced to follow repetitive formulaic creation patterns. Every link in the entire music industry chain seems slightly tired, and the interest of pop music is gradually decreasing.
A music genre that has been extended by the times
The quality of music may depend on personal taste, but modern factors such as technological iteration, cultural exchanges, scene segmentation, and audience feedback have undoubtedly reshaped the development direction of popular music.
These controversial factors inevitably give positive significance to the structural changes in business and culture in today's music industry, such as technology and nationalization trends. Among many factors, the "over-extension" of music genres seems to be the key factor causing the change in the trajectory of popular music. The "over-extension" of
music genres is mainly reflected in two aspects: first, the mixture of genres has become the main way for creators to innovate; second, the fragmented definition of genres has caused them to lose the original distinction between musical styles.
In the past, music genre served as a compass for listeners to find musical preferences. For example, pop music in the 1960s, rock in the 1970s, dance music and hip-hop in the 1980s, and electronic dance music in the 1990s, each genre came into being in a specific cultural context.
However, today's music genres are mostly variations of these traditional genres. Mark Mulligan, founder of midia research, once pointed out in an article that popular music genres in the 21st century can be summarized into four major categories:
The first category is localized genres based on amapiano and Brazilian funk, they incorporate local rhythms and international musical elements, quickly becoming popular around the world. For example, "Emcimbini" by kabza de small and DJ maphorisa uses South African rhythms, fuses deep house, jazz, and is a party music characterized by bass and piano melody. Between 2019 and 2023, the amapiano genre grew by more than 500% on Spotify.
The second category is the scene-driven sub-genre represented by drill and trap. They reflect the local characteristics and cultural life of a specific community through direct lyric content and visual presentation. For example, in 2012, 17-year-old Chief Keef released "I Don't Like", with straightforward lyrics describing gang life and street fighting on the South Side of Chicago, USA. Visually, this type of music video is often shot in the artist's community, showing the local streets, architecture and residents' lives.
These two music styles will be familiar to domestic audiences. After all, domestic rappers have already discussed a lot about whether there is drill in China, and drill and trap have become the most popular topics in the domestic rap circle. style.
The third category is the reinvention genre represented by mumblerap. is a reinterpretation of existing music styles. For example, mumble rap is a type of rap music in which artists use "mumbles" or unclear sounds when singing. genre, spread primarily through the online audio distribution platform soundcloud in the 2010s. Although the style was previously considered derogatory, it has now attracted a younger audience and spawned iconic works such as lil uzi vert's "xo tour llif3".
The fourth category is the revival genre represented by post-punk and shoegaze. Both originated from the styles of the 1970s and 1980s, and received renewed attention in the early 21st century.Especially the revival of post-punk, originally mainly refers to the independent bands and musicians in the early 2000s who were influenced by post-punk music and incorporated its elements into their music works. For example, in 2001, the Strokes released their masterpiece "Last Nite". The music style and production method of this song were significantly influenced by the veteran band the Velvet Underground in the 1970s. It peaked at No. 1 on the British Independent Singles Chart. It stayed in the top 20 for 9 weeks and stayed in the top 100 for a total of 17 weeks.
In recent years, under the influence of the three seasons of "Le Xia", Chinese bands with strong post-punk elements such as Hedgehog and The Right to Reshape Statues have gradually become well-known to the audience.
shoegaze is characterized by its thick guitar sound wall, bizarre music atmosphere and vague vocals. In the past two years, it has set off this "shoe-gazing craze" in the independent music industry at home and abroad. For example, "Your Face" by Wisp, a 19-year-old girl from San Francisco, was inspired by the classic shoegazing band My Bloody Valentine. The song quickly became popular on TikTok as soon as it was released, and has accumulated more than 48 million plays on Spotify, making the song She became a rising star in the modern shoegazing renaissance scene.
It can be seen that every current major genre is pushing pop music to continuously iterate in new directions, and the essence of the current emerging music genres is still the product of permutations and combinations of classic genres.
Is it still meaningful to talk about music style?
As it becomes easier to "create" a new subgenre, reviews, puzzles, and attendant discussions of the new genre begin to emerge.
In today’s age of social media, music critics seem to be drifting away from their traditional career trajectories. As the barriers to music communication are broken down, professional critics no longer act as "intermediaries" between content and listeners, and their status and authority are challenged by "national music critics."
Both professional critics and ordinary listeners have shown excessive enthusiasm for identifying and naming new music genres. For example, overseas music critics often argue on the Internet over the loose naming and loose naming of afrobeats and afrobeat; some even coined terms such as spotify-core, tiktok-core, and roblox-core based on the characteristics of the music platform. to describe the style of music.
mark mulligan believes that perhaps in the 2020s, we no longer need complex genre terms to understand music, but should examine it from more perspectives.
In the technical dimension, the rapid development of artificial intelligence and various ai music production tools have profoundly affected the way musicians create. For example, the hyper pop style breaks the boundaries of traditional pop music and incorporates various "hyper pop" styles such as electronics and rock. Its sounds are usually automatically tuned, showing a machine-like precision and unnaturalness.
In the user dimension, the birth of the short video platform has allowed more listeners and song-washing teams to adjust the speed and rhythm of songs and quickly produce so-called DJ versions. This trend is becoming more and more common, resulting in the style of popular music works. tend to be homogeneous.
Based on the short video content mechanism, more unpopular and grassroots works that were previously rejected by mainstream record companies have been heard by the public. For example, "Baby Face" released by Houxian in 2009, in 2015 Later, it returned to No. 11 on Douyin’s hot song list; Hailai Amu, Liu Shuang, Guo Youcai and others are also examples of equal rights given by short video technology.
At the same time, modern music is more adaptable and dependent on the scene and environment in which it is located. For example, the nightcore style has now become synonymous with speeding up and raising the pitch, while serving as background music in online gaming and anime communities, serving the atmospheric and emotional needs of these scenes.
The music content that originated on short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and TikTok, due to traffic-first logic and duration restrictions, is more inclined to attract attention in a short period of time, such as click music, dazzling performance, Good-looking singing, etc., the style is also mainly popular. This style has recently been named tiktok-core by overseas music critics, referring to the music styles popular on tiktok.Spotify-core refers to the music style produced in order to get more plays and attention on Spotify. It usually includes a grand intro and an easy-to-remember chorus to adapt to the playing habits and user needs of the streaming platform.
There are too many hot songs that cannot be defined, and over-defining music works by genre would seem a bit "old man yelling at the clouds".
Genres are no longer important. Iterations of media technology, simplification of music content, changes in user models and field environments are pushing popular music to undergo a complex and irreversible change. Although this change has brought some uncomfortable illusions, while the role of genre is continuously weakened, the music has become more diverse, replaced by a richer and more detailed musical landscape.
However, in the process of the collision of the old and the new, some people take shortcuts and abuse new technologies in pursuit of short-term interests, causing creation to become formulaic and content to become superficial and vulgar, making the reputation of pop music worse than before.
Flaws and loopholes are often temporary. We need to be wary of opportunistic works and reverse domestication of users' aesthetics. However, we should still try new combinations, styles, and techniques with a more open mind, and explore the path of new musicians.
Conclusion
It has become a cliché that popular music is criticized for being boring.
There are still up to 120,000 new tracks released on streaming platforms every day. Listeners’ ears have long been tired of it, and music genres are no longer guideposts, but may become obstacles that limit creation. The rise of streaming media, the development of new technologies and the emergence of speculators seem to limit the development of popular music to a single path.
In such an environment, music creators need to have the ability and courage to master technology and adapt to new environments, rather than being at the mercy of technology and the environment.
In March 2023, Chen Shanni launched a new single "Teach Me How to Be Your Lover" sung by her own AI model. Even the single cover was generated by AI. She posted: "In the current hot discussion about the development of AI, creators are excited and worried at the same time. I hope that through this song, I can promote the thinking of all those who care about artistic creation - If the era of AI is bound to come, as a creative What investors should care about may not be "whether we will be replaced", but "what else can we do."
When the motivation for creating music works is simply to pursue commercial success, instead of pursuing deep meaning and emotional expression, the boundaries between it and music works generated by artificial intelligence have also become blurred. This commercially oriented creative paradigm not only weakens the artistic value of musical works, but may also lead to the gradual degradation of listeners' ability to perceive and appreciate music.
If things continue like this, pop music may face a more "homogenized" market, with originality and diversity being overwhelmed by a large number of copies and routine melodies. Only with the two-way efforts of creation and appreciation can music truly return to its essence. The rapid advancement of
technology and the inclusiveness and diversity of the audience can help creators create the greatest works, but what kind of spirituality, flesh and blood and character are behind the works, and what kind of person the creator becomes in the process, may have a certain influence on The music itself is more meaningful.
