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Old music is outselling new music for the first time in history

Risky Thicket said:
I'm still good with George Strait, Willie, Alan Jackson, Gary Stewart, Jerry Jeff and Charlie Pride.
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I got to jam with Charlie Pride's steel player one time. He played Purple Haze on the steel guitar. It was damn good too.
 
I don't think this has anything to do what the the quality of music. It has more to do with how music is consumed.

When I was a kid we bought music in the form of albums and 8-tracks. Then we bought cassettes. Then we bought CDs. Then for a short time we downloaded pirated mp3s until it was easy to buy the songs through things like iTunes. We are now at a period in history where we consume music legally without paying for the individual songs or albums. I have a couple subscriptions to services like Apple Music and I can listen to just about any song I want whenever I want for a small monthly fee. A different metric for success is going to have to start being used.
 
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JC Callender said:
There are three major stations in Detroit playing Christmas music as early as November. That's a condemnation of today's music as well.
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Lol FM radio. That's adorable.
 
An unabashed rock and roll fan, I've been waiting since 1966 for somebody to record a better album than the Beatles' 'Revolver'. I'm still waiting. There have been fine albums made since then - including some fairly recent stuff - but nothing better. I don't care about soul, or hip-hop, or rap, or pure country. I'm talking about decent, guitar-based rock and roll. And something that shows some innovation.
 
danarhea said:
And it's not like the days when your parents might have said your music sucked. Today's music, in general, really DOES suck. I mean, yesterday's music had a message, sometimes serious, sometimes silly, but still a message or a story to tell. Flash forward to today when the lyrics consist of calling a woman a bitch, or singing to a woman that you love her because she has a nice body. Yea, songs today contain shallow lyrics for a generation of shallow people.

Back in my father's time, it was Frank Sinatra, Perry Como. Yea, I grew up on the Beatles, Stones, and Doors, but I liked to listen to the songs of my father too. And, while my father always complained that the music I listened to wasn't good, there were still a few of them that he ended up listening to because he liked them. Once more, flash forward today where Country music is orders of magnitude more annoying than disco was in the 70's, where rap has become word salad, and what people dare to say passes for rock is insipid bullcrap.

Yea, the music of yesterday is outselling the music of today because, frankly, the music of today isn't music. It's crap.

Thank you, and **** you. LOL.

Old music is outselling new music for the first time in history | Chart Attack
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A lot of today's music is just old-music remakes . . . tons of it. Which probably encourages people to listen to the old stuff all over again. I know it does for me.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
What I often enjoy are remakes (covers) of those older songs. Some are quite close while others differ significantly.

Music video links to a few versions of the instrumental Apache follow:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgbcyfJgfQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f6tnj7IEI0E

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zou2V-e0zo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PA948o42TR8

A couple more links for Runaway

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMufLXrFIg8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HPzcZNgVfpA
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Here's Apache with a touch of Beefheart.

 
I like this, but really it's Talking Heads.

 
zyzygy said:
I like this, but really it's Talking Heads.

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Ever listen to what passes for heavy metal these days? The noisy days are definitely not over. The lead singer of a song I heard a couple of days ago sounded like Satan on a menstrual period.
 
danarhea said:
And it's not like the days when your parents might have said your music sucked. Today's music, in general, really DOES suck. I mean, yesterday's music had a message, sometimes serious, sometimes silly, but still a message or a story to tell. Flash forward to today when the lyrics consist of calling a woman a bitch, or singing to a woman that you love her because she has a nice body. Yea, songs today contain shallow lyrics for a generation of shallow people.

Back in my father's time, it was Frank Sinatra, Perry Como. Yea, I grew up on the Beatles, Stones, and Doors, but I liked to listen to the songs of my father too. And, while my father always complained that the music I listened to wasn't good, there were still a few of them that he ended up listening to because he liked them. Once more, flash forward today where Country music is orders of magnitude more annoying than disco was in the 70's, where rap has become word salad, and what people dare to say passes for rock is insipid bullcrap.

Yea, the music of yesterday is outselling the music of today because, frankly, the music of today isn't music. It's crap.

Thank you, and **** you. LOL.

Old music is outselling new music for the first time in history | Chart Attack
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Oh, please, this is all nostalgic crap. The only reason old music is outselling new music, is because older people are the only people that freaking buy music anymore. :lol:

Music today is just as deep and as innovative as it has always been.
 
As far as quality goes, yeah, Top 40 of today is throwaway garbage. BUT, go back and look at the Billboard Top 100 lists every year going back to Whenever. Look at pop charts, country charts, whatever. You'll see how much throwaway garbage music existed back then too. I used to play bass in cover bands, and we'd always scour past charts to try and come up with a surprise song that people loved but had forgotten about. And I'm telling you, the amount of horrible music on those charts is legion. I've looked at every single year of the charts since 1960, and most of it is utterly forgotten because it was so bad.

What's different today is the celebration of artificiality. Many of these people have never laid down an original track in their lives. Or, if they did, it wasn't what got their current, written-by-someone-else song on the radio. And if left to come up with a song on their own, they'd disappear. What is Justin Bieber without an army of writers, producers, and choreographers? Without all that, he's nothing more than a fun guy on karaoke night.

But really, the vast majority of Billboard music has always been crap. It still is, just in a different form.
 
Your Star said:
Oh, please, this is all nostalgic crap. The only reason old music is outselling new music, is because older people are the only people that freaking buy music anymore. :lol:

Music today is just as deep and as innovative as it has always been.
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Yes, all Justin Bieber fans believe that. LOL. :mrgreen:

Seriously, though, I won't disagree with you that there is good music out there. But the music industry is pretty much promoting music that dumbs people down. It's been that way throughout history. When Elvis Presley came out, the industry countered with Pat Boone. When the Beatles came out, the industry countered with The Monkees. Etc, Etc. Today, the industry owns pretty much all the mainstream media, and good songwriters have a mile of crap to swim through today in order to rise to the top.
 
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Opopanax said:
As far as quality goes, yeah, Top 40 of today is throwaway garbage. BUT, go back and look at the Billboard Top 100 lists every year going back to Whenever. Look at pop charts, country charts, whatever. You'll see how much throwaway garbage music existed back then too. I used to play bass in cover bands, and we'd always scour past charts to try and come up with a surprise song that people loved but had forgotten about. And I'm telling you, the amount of horrible music on those charts is legion. I've looked at every single year of the charts since 1960, and most of it is utterly forgotten because it was so bad.

What's different today is the celebration of artificiality. Many of these people have never laid down an original track in their lives. Or, if they did, it wasn't what got their current, written-by-someone-else song on the radio. And if left to come up with a song on their own, they'd disappear. What is Justin Bieber without an army of writers, producers, and choreographers? Without all that, he's nothing more than a fun guy on karaoke night.

But really, the vast majority of Billboard music has always been crap. It still is, just in a different form.
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I agree with that. I think the difference between yesterday and today is that, yesterday, there was rebellion in a lot of music that ended up going mainstream. Today, most mainstream music is acquiescence to the status quo. Ever see the movie Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stalone? I truly believe that music is headed in a direction that could very well end up with the Armour Hot Dogs jingle as the number one song on the charts.

 
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danarhea said:
I agree with that. I think the difference between yesterday and today is that, yesterday, there was rebellion in a lot of music that ended up going mainstream. Today, most mainstream music is acquiescence to the status quo. Ever see the movie Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stalone? I truly believe that music is headed in a direction that could very well end up with the Armour Hot Dogs jingle as the number one song on the charts.

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Haha! I don't know if it'll ever get that bad... Then again, the Armor Hot Dogs jingle is preferable to some of the stuff that comes out today. Maybe we really are living in a pre-Demolition Man society.

As far as rebellion goes, that was always the stuff they never played on the radio and still don't. It was a mark of pride for a band that never got any top 40 airplay to hit it big anyway. All of the great rock bands from the 70s and 80s were selling millions of records, but if you only listened to the radio, you'd never know they actually existed. And then when they would get played, it kind of ruined the song. Suddenly the same people who were groovin' to Hey Mickey were all, "Have you heard that Crazy Train* song by that new guy Ozzy Osbourne?" It made you want to barf.

*A song that has truly been ruined by overplay
 
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