Friday, August 08, 2014

Today's music is boring

The music industry is in a bit of trouble these days. I am certain there are lots of reasons why this is true. One reason is that music today is boring. Over the past couple of weeks, from a few different sources, I have been hearing the contemporary music is predictable and boring.

Here is a humorous take on country music (this same problem exists in many of the different genres).





Here are two different ways that people are responding.

Amp Radio (90.3 in Calgary) has decided to cut the songs they play in half. Amp Radio's Paul Kaye told CTV, "We've got so much more choice, we've got less time (and) our attention spans are shorter. We are observing people with their ipods, playing their favourite songs and skipping them before the end because they get bored."
Apparently listening to your favourite song in its entirety is boring.

On the other hand, the daily beast, calls for the music industry to improve the quality of music. It says that music should look to TV for guidance. As for the shorter attention spans the daily beast argues that TV is not dumbing down things for this. In fact the exact opposite is taking place, TV is increasing the complexity. They quote Malcolm Gladwell who says "Thirty years ago you could go and get a sandwich in the middle of a Kojak episode, come back and still follow it. Today, if you get a glass of water in the middle of Homeland you have to pause and go back."