I've been wanting to cover this topic for a while, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Now seems as good of a time as any. Something I hear ALL the time from people from all walks of life is that there is no good music being made any more. All of the good artists are now a thing of the past and there is no one to step up to the plate to carry on the torch. Everything sucks and nothing makes sense any more. The future of music is doomed.
This is something I most frequently hear from fans of classic rock and metal, but not exclusively. Many people my own age who are into pop, rap, or whatever else feel that there has been nothing good since the 90's or early 2000's. This has brought up some points in my mind that I would like to go over.
Before I go on, I'd like to pose the following question:
Is there really no good new music any more or do you just not like anything that came out after you graduated high school because what is in the mainstream now isn't being marketed toward you any more?
Let's face it. The youth are the most loyal, avid, and profitable consumers of new media, be it music, film, TV, video games, the internet, or anything else. Why would the big fat cat record labels focus their time, effort, and money on an older demographic when the teens and people in their early 20's are the more profitable one? The whole point of the music industry is to make money. What demographic brings in the most cash? The younger folks.
What also helps the record labels is that young people will also do a lot of the advertising of an artist for free. They will plaster the music, imagery, websites, social media, etc. of an artist all over their own social media accounts. They will talk about them online, spread the word, and create further awareness of the brand. That is something not a whole lot of people in older demographics do.
It kind of sucks when you get to a point in your life when you realize you're not the target audience for the popular new stuff any more. That said, if you're one of the people feeling there is no good music any more you're not the first generation to feel like this. The generation before felt the same way about the music you liked as a kid and currently like. It made no sense to them and they felt that there wasn't any good new music any more. They felt like the world of music was going to Hell in a hand basket and that their generation of music was the last of the good stuff. They too went through the same thing where they stopped being the demographic being marketed to.
However, just because you are no longer part of the key demographic any more that doesn't mean your musical journey has to come to an end. Although what constitutes as good music is entirely subjective, if you don't like what is being pushed by the mainstream media there are other options for you. We live in an age where we have access to countless hours of music of all kinds with just the click of a mouse or more commonly these days the tap of a phone screen. If you're willing to dive down the rabbit hole and explore, you might just find something you absolutely love and never would have known about before had you not taken the journey.
There are SO many artists that don't get attention from the mainstream media that are still making rock n' roll, metal, other pre-existing genres, or even doing things that are entirely new and experimental. Just because you don't see them at first on the surface, it doesn't mean they aren't there.
In order to find them, you have a myriad options. You could go on Pandora where right away you can have a FREE online radio station catered to your tastes. You can put in a genre or artist you like and within 10 or 20 minutes there is a good chance you will have heard something amazing by someone you had never heard of before.
What I used to do as a teenager to find new music (and still some times do to this day) is deep dive through YouTube. I would look up a song by an artist I like. Then maybe I would see a link to another video with that band collaborating with another artist. I would then look into the collaborating artist and see what they have and then go from there. There are all kinds of ways I to go about this, but this method brought my attention to so many of the bands I know and love to today.
Spotify is also a good way to discover new stuff as well. This is also free unless you decide to go premium. You can put on some of their pre-made playlists for different genres and a song will come up by an artist you haven't heard yet. I can guarantee there will be songs you haven't heard before and that you might just find a new artist to look into.
These are just some of the ways in which you can discover music that is being made in this modern era right now. It's ok to have specific tastes in music. You are entitled to like what you like. However, don't be so quick to say that there is no good music being made any more when you haven't really taken the time to go out and look for it. Don't be the type of person who stops listening to anything new once they get out of high school. There are so many up and coming artists who are BEGGING for you to check them out and give them a chance. By doing so you might just find something that will change your life for the better.
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