{"id":87804,"date":"2024-07-01T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=87804"},"modified":"2024-06-30T15:33:35","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T20:33:35","slug":"the-curmudgeons-for-the-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=87804","title":{"rendered":"The Curmudgeons For The Win"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Why does music today suck?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been a cultural punch line ever since music started splitting on generational lines (which is actually a fairly new thing).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But today, it&#8217;s actually true, in economic and sociological terms.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rick Beato explains a lot of things in the world of music very well, and he gets this one right:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1bZ0OSEViyo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not only easier to produce, it&#8217;s much easier &#8211; almost trivial &#8211; to consume.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure how to even explain to a Zoomer the  contortions we &#8211; or some of us &#8211; had to go through to hear the music in the first place. It was a particular experience growing up in rural North Dakota &#8211; where getting great music on the radio wasn&#8217;t easy in the late &#8217;70s and early &#8217;80s, frequently involving staying up late to tune in WLS in Chcago, until I got an FM boombox that could get Q98 in Fargo.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In even more economic terms?  I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4897\">talked about my experience discovering Tom Petty<\/a>; staying up late to watch SNL (my parents had given up trying to get me to go to bed on Saturday nights), then racing to White Drug to buy a copy of <em>Damn the Torpedoes<\/em> between sunday school and church.   That record cost $7.98 before tax &#8211; which, with taxes, came to two and a half hours working at KEYJ.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For eight songs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today a month of AppleMusic costs me a fraction of one hour&#8217;s pay &#8211; knock wood &#8211; and I use free Spotify (sorry, artists).  Which is one thing for people who cut their teeth with the experiences Beato, and I, list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for people who have access to a constant Amazon River of music (the metaphor cuts both ways), at a time when music is not only trivially easy to access, but to produce (even for curmudgeons like myself &#8211; I did most of the recording of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=supreme+soviet+of+love+see+red\">my album<\/a> at home on GarageBand, only doing the vocals and mixing in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.minnehaharecording.com\/\">actual studio<\/a>)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s worth a watch. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Why does music today suck?&#8221; It&#8217;s been a cultural punch line ever since music started splitting on generational lines (which is actually a fairly new thing). But today, it&#8217;s actually true, in economic and sociological terms. Rick Beato explains a lot of things in the world of music very well, and he gets this one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87805,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87804\/revisions\/87805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}