the reason "mainstream" music is so universally awful at the moment is the same reason that people are having trouble making a living from playing music (it's not just a myth - it's true):
the record industry is dead.
that's not music or all of the music business, but it is a large component of the music business.
why is it dead? because people don't buy records any more. not like they used to. the digital age has rained so many blows (peer-to-peer, torrents, you tube, cd burners etc etc etc) upon the music business that it is just a shell of its former self.
who spends money buying cds any more? sure, there still seems to be a market for vinyl, but the whole way people consume and listen to music has changed hugely in the last 10 years. it's great, but it's had a range of effects on the reality of the music business.
the big record labels have taken a massive, massive hit in the last decade. bankruptcies, mergers, huge job losses. the same goes for record sales - they've dried up. an industry that made a killing for 50+ years ceased to be relevant or sustainable.
now, it still exists - that's where all this...shit i don't even know, because i ignore it - all the phoney, flat, slick auto-tuned shit - that's where it comes from.
we still have these commercial radio stations and charts playing the "latest hits" but the whole apparatus that fuels it - the behind the scenes stuff where record labels discover and help create careers for talented artists - has disappeared or been stripped back to a minimal amount of people. so there are no talent scouts or A&R staff like in the 'good old days' where the big companies had plenty of money to toss around looking for the label's next great act.
so we have these cheap, trashy reality TV shows to put lazy pre-fab pop bands together.
not only does it save the record biz from doing any real work to find artists (they just create artists) but it cashes in on the whole process in the meantime by televising it in all its banal glory and ruins any potential mystique that once existed.
but the main point to me is - the records that get released and promoted by big record companies these days are universally SAFE. no artistic risks are made with potentially dangerous artists or anything challenging or subversive - the only danger in pop music these days is contrived and unoriginal. the lyrics might be obscene or dirty, but never challenging - except in inviting censorship.
stars are made. we're not talking about great artists being nurtured to make great records - it's just a cheap mass-produced image machine these days, churning out barbie dolls and the like.
the steep decline of popular music is just a symptom of a greedy, exploitative industry that managed to prosper for half a century in spite of its excess and corruption. we're just seeing the spasmic death of an industry that fucking deserved it anyway - we should be celebrating, and staying the hell away from the radio or those fucking shopping malls where they blast that crap at you.
i don't take it personally, i just ignore it with a religious intensity.
it isn't all doom and gloom though - i find amazing music everywhere. sure, i have to go looking for it, but it is easier than ever to find music you are interested in, with countless ways to stream, download and source it. sure, sometimes it means musicians can't make money from selling their product in record/cd form - and this is frustrating because i have this old fashioned notion that good artists should ideally be able to make a living from their work. maybe you can't put a dollar value on music, maybe music means more than a plastic product shilled to the masses
on the other hand, it means people are touring more because they end up having to make a living from ticket and t-shirt sales. and it means that live music is valued more (which i think is always a good thing) and it mean that listening to music is a shared, communal thing.
all of the young musicians who have only played in this post-record industry era have a whole new ethic in music making. people don't talk about "getting signed" any more - their goals are more interesting and less career-driven. the move away from people trying to be "professional" and talking about music making as a "career" is a wonderfully refreshing, liberating idea. it's been too long since we've had music-for-music's-sake. artistic goals are starting put above those of popularity/career/money - thus, people are making great music....you just need to put more effort into finding it, but it is there.
for this reason, small and independent music scenes in lots of places are flourishing. if not in your local area, at least these days they can be easily found online.
music is democratised in the sense that recording is something practically anyone can do in their own home these days, whereas a "recording artist" used to be a profession.
the songs in the top 40 might all be the same now, but there are albums available from a virtually infinite number of performers and tastes. the mainstream has shrunk, but the lake it flows into is now a thousand times bigger.
the digitial revolution is leaving casualties in its midst as well as having a lot of great benefits - sometimes you just need to try and balance out the good with the bad, or something. great music is everywhere, you just have to adapt the way you're finding it.
apologies for the essay-rant:/