I stopped caring about online music charts once I found out how people bot their favorite artists to trending cuz they’re insecure in their own music tastes
That and main stream music has become homogenous and formulaic. It was before, but it’s more blatant now.
people bot their favorite artists
That’s less “people” and more “marketing departments”. So much mid-tier music gets blown up and then dropped overnight, as the promotion models change.
nah there’s 100% people who go out of their way to shuffle through a single artists’ discography and every song they’ve been featured in 24/7. Hell, I found one right after reading this
Check out King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Something different.
Open the door 🐍
Hoping to see them at red rocks
Every generation: “I know all the generations before me have whined about the new music the kids are listening to, and I always correctly identified their whining as pathetic old-person behavior. But MY generation is actually right. The new music objectively sucks.”
It’ll happen to the current batch of kids, too.
Nobody will ever rise above it. It’s just a basic part of human nature. You might as well ask people to stop breathing.
That’s kinda missing the point. I am aware my taste in music is not the same as the new generation, still I hear and discover new music that’s actually interesting.
On the other hand, Spotify misses the opportunity to actually offer you discovering new genres, artists, songs that you may like. That’s OPs point, and I agree.
The last time a streaming service actually made me discover new music was 2015 Deezer.
Idk, I think Spotify’s Discover Weekly is pretty good at finding music from less popular bands but YMMV.
My experience is completely shitty. I’m in a Spanish speaking country, and all it recommends me is music from Spanish speakers, and oldies…
I mean, the OP was looking just at the top 50 global, not their discovery.
I think people will still remember a few dozen songs, while most of the rest will simply fall into obscurity.
Also real, longlasting appeal is found in the alternative and more original parts of the music industry more often than in the popular corporate top-10 drivel.
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Well you can go ahead and take a 3 day timeout while you read rule 1.
Meh, I always hated my generations music. But that is just me cause the others of course love it.
Ahh, so you became a hipster snob EARLY. Lots of people do. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not curable, but neither is most of life.
Having taste isn’t being a snob
Disliking slop is no vice
If you go through the music of the era you like, there was slop there are well. Slop isn’t new. You just like some of the music that survived that time period.
Its like with literature. We have “the classics.” The range from a lot of different eras. And many of them are great, even if not for everyone. But then you go through sights like Project Gutenberg, where they are trying to make a digital copy of every book in the public domain, and you start to realize just how many books there were that no one talks about. And those are just ones that have survived.
If you want a great example of this with music: disco. Disco was essentially the pop of it’s time. It’s really where pop was born. Super popular for a short period of time. Lots of famous groups because of it.
How many can you name off the top of your head? How many do you think most people can name? Probably not many. Because a lot of it might have been good, but it was really that good.
I listen to metal. But I didn’t get into it until my junior year of high school. So about 2006-2007. Before that I knew Metallica. I knew Black Sabbath. Things like that, but I never got into the genre until that point. I also realize that I only habe listened to a very small fraction of the bands from that era, because more of it is just buried and forgotten about.
We can take this a step further. I probably wouldn’t be able to list 1/5th of the bands I listened to in the 2010s. A lot of those bands I might think about from time to time, but many of them that I actually enjoyed I’ll probably remember. They were good, but didn’t have much staying power. They weren’t exceptional. They didn’t influence anything. But I still enjoyed listening to them.
This is a shortened version to say that while I’m sure it’s great to cum to your superior taste, music has had slop for a long time, and you’re not better for not enjoying it. You’re just boring.
This is really defensive for no reason. I am fully aware that schlocky mainstream lowest common denominator slop is not new. At all. And I didn’t claim that it was new.
A garbage top 40 song from the 60s can be just as bad, or worse, than a garbage top 40 song today. The point isn’t that bad music is new, the point is that bad music is bad. And that there’s a lot of it. Which is also true of film, books, and really all forms of art. Admitting that is no vice.
Having taste = guides what you consume.
Talking about having taste = snobbery.
Fact.
Also life is curable
Nah, music of my generation also sucks too.
I AM THE ONLY ONE WITH GOOD TASTE!! Muuuu hahahahaha!
Academically, they proved music peaked in the 60s.
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I think it’s moreso the effect of big music labels figuring out how to make music with the broadest possible appeal. Clearly it worked, because these songs do really well statistically, but the result is songs with the blandest possible personality
Man, I can’t remember the title, but whatever that Ed Sheeran song that exploded in like, 2018 or something? That was so bland and boring. I was baffled at how popular it was.
Also, how the hell did the Chainsmokers hit it big? Every single song is the same, monotonous “melody”. I don’t get how anyone listens to them without going mad.
Hard agree lol
People fall in love in mysteEeEeEeeErious waaays
Yeah, it’s not that music has gotten worse, it’s that radio has gone squarely down the shitter since basically every station is owned by like 2 companies now.
Not radio in general, but Clearchannel.
I realized a long time ago that music “sucked” because I would never open myself up to it and genuinely allow myself to find value in it.
It’s like my dad who has just decided that all rap sucks even though he has basically zero experience with it. I said the same thing until I was around 21 and almost missed all the really, really good stuff. Tai Verdes’ album “TV” is incredibly musical, for example.
What do you listen to right now?
I try my hardest to find new songs, because I don’t want to be some boomer bastard.
I don’t know what exactly counts as ‘new’, but I’m enjoying these songs a lot lately
AronChupa & Little Sis Nora - Tangaman
Little Sis Nora - MDMA
These two remind me of late 90s eurobeat shit like Aqua.Shotgun Willy - Bombs Away
bbno$ & Yung Gravy (BABY GRAVY) - Goodness Gracious
I actually just like anything by this bbno$ guy, but I’m loving the beats and flow on these styles of rap.Pickle - Stompin’
Makes me feel like I’m on drugs in a club back in the day.I feel like a lot of new music is probably hidden away on shit like TikTok where I’m never going to be exposed to it because I don’t use it. I have noticed Drum ‘n’ Bass seems to be back, but I was never a fan of that but I’m sure it’s someones jam.
Just want to take a moment to point out that two of the three you seem to like because they remind you of the past.
I fully support your take on trying to find new stuff, I personally have found that many good songs that I love take a few listens for me to actually like them, some do not catch on tho.
Given that, may I suggest you add new songs you want to try in your rotation? When they come up just take some effort to listen through and take them in, think of what you like and what you don’t, see if it changes.
Don’t torture yourself tho
It’s more that they’re a genre that I haven’t seen in 20 years, than that they remind me of the past. I love happy, upbeat, energetic bobby shit. Because it felt like a few years ago everything was that slooooow boring rap style by people fucked up on some sort of downers.
But y’know what I’m going to force myself to listen to everything on this page.
Okay so first 10 are done and I’ve enjoyed ‘Miley Cyrus - Flowers’, ‘Troye Sivan - Rush’, and ‘Olivia Rodrigo - Get Him Back!’. The other 7 were pretty slow and boring for my tastes.
I try my hardest to find new songs, because I don’t want to be some boomer bastard.
I got news for you, pal. The harder you try to be young and hip for the sake of being young and hip, the worse the outcome will be. You’re not getting any younger, and the sooner you accept that, the better.
Instead of forcing yourself to listen to music that has the single attribute of “released less than 6 months ago” in some sad, vain attempt to relive your glory days, try exploring music based on what you actually enjoy. What artists inspire you? Who influenced them, and what genres influenced their sound? Where did the roots of that sound originate? If a song you love is a cover, who wrote or performed the original? What style of singing is it, or what kind of beat?
Listen to what you want to listen to. The most interesting conversations I have with people about music always involve the history and roots of sound, not that last hip shit my aging hipster Lyft driver subjected me to.
Nah.
Always grow, find and discover new things, and challenge yourself.
The world is full of so much, to retreat back into yourself and only live in nostalgia is not healthy.
Getting old is inevitable, being a boomer is a choice.
Bombs Away kinda slaps (that’s how the kids say it right?).
I can definitely stand to step out of my Trance 24x7x365 musical habits…
I lived the “Pop/rap/etc is bad” life for way too long, but fwiw most of it was during childhood, so mostly repeating my environment. Made the deliberate decision to get out of that mindset and have only increased my appreciation of music. That’s not to say I don’t still have opinions or preferences, but I’m not willingly shutting myself away from potential goodness.
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Gone down the Ren rabit hole yet?
There seemed to be two options. I’m guessing you mean the one with the song “Chalk Outlines”?
I hadn’t heard of them but I’m liking it a lot! Thanks!
I miss the old Pandora, just a single page website, limited skips (it was free so it was a small tradeoff), and it actually would recommend music that you’ve never heard before that actually sounded similar to stuff you told its algo you liked.
Pandora was great. Discovered loads of cool, obscure shit.
The only downside is that their algorithm never changed, the same station had the same songs on repeat for 7+ years, not a single new song added per-query for some reason. Keeping it fresh would have gone a much longer way.
I discovered so much music in those days. I’ve never found anything that’s close to equivalent. It’s one of the big reasons I’m still listening to the music I listened to through my teens and twenties.
Wait, what? Pandora isn’t free anymore?
TBF, I haven’t used it in years. These days I stick with YouTube Music ReVanced so I can skip all the music I want for free and without ads. Not a fan of the sound quality, though. I wonder if there is something similar for Spotify…
Tip -
I’ve found Spotify’s new music algorithm goes - “Oh, you used to listen to Motorhead and AC/DC? I think you’ll like Kiss and Def Leppard”
YT music algorithm goes " Well I think, combining that with all the other stuff you listen to, you’ll like Shaka Ponk, Deluxe, Pretty Reckless etc etc"
Google is a cunt these days but the quality of suggestions is vastly superior
I’ve found that Spotify goes “oh you listen exclusively to Scandinavian extreme metal? How about some American screamo OR the exact same stuff you’ve listened to already”, which is the polar opposite to what I want. YouTube music is just a huge mess for me.
Tidal however has reintroduced me to some great bands I had forgotten about and shown me some new ones which are Top Notch ™️
God I miss Tidal. Their suggestions were so far above and beyond everything else I’ve tried, I just wish it was managed and maintained competently. Their Android and desktop apps are (were? It’s been a while) so chock-full of playback bugs and annoying little quirks, and their customer support is probably not even legally considered customer support at all, considering the fact that it seems to consist entirely of a single email bot that receives support tickets, waits 3 weeks, then closes that ticket.
I was particularly irritated with the fact that albums would become “unavailable” so incredibly often, while a new, identical version of the album was made available, for no apparent reason. Since these replacement albums weren’t automatically migrated into my library, I would have to remove and and re-add the albums individually in order to play them from my library, then update all my playlist containing any songs from that “disabled” version of the album by removing and re-adding each individual song. That shit got old, FAST.
I eventually had to swap to Spotify because of an absolutely baffling bug that acted like a virus and slowly “ate” my library (more info below if anyone’s curious), and Spotify’s music suggestions are just nothing short of horrendous.
My “discover weekly” last week for example was made up of approximately 60% songs either already in my library, or songs that I’ve listened to before and not liked much from artists in my library, plus 7 (!!) 20-30+ minute soundscapes, something I have NEVER listened to before, as well as 2 new Ariana Grande singles (sponsored? I’ve had to block her, those singles were popping up everywhere), and a few songs from totally out-there genres, including a country rap song which just so happens to be the one and only song I’ve ever actually disliked back before Spotify removed and re-introduced that feature, some background music from a random indie game’s soundtrack which was mostly just cave noises, a jazz-fusion album’s interlude, and something that I can only describe as bubblegum cyberpunk black glitch-metal dancecore. A positively psychotic selection of music.
Granted, that was the worst discover weekly I think I’ve ever had, but I still just wish that tidal worked for me, because I’ve never discovered more great music from any other platform’s suggestion algorithm, and nothing since has even come close.
About the weird bug if anyone’s curious:
The bug was pretty fucked up in that it behaved basically like a virus. At random points while listening, Tidal would fail to play a song at master quality, automatically downgrade playback by one level, then apply that inability to play master-quality permanently to each subsequent song I played in that session. These songs were now “infected”. Replaying these songs at a later date would further degrade the playback quality by an additional level, and also add a delay of ~20 seconds per playback quality level it had been downgraded to, as well as infecting any other songs I played after. When a song reached 96kbps (or 160? Whatever the lowest is, I forget) and could not degrade any more, it would either play at minimum quality after a ~60 second delay (which was unskippable because Tidal was unresponsive to playing a new song during the delay), or just fail to play entirely while loading infinitely, absolutely chugging my battery-life, and overheating my phone. I could only stop it by force-closing the app, which would crash my phone, every single time. There was about a 20% chance for one of these songs to fail playback, but if it did play, that chance to fail playback was now applied to each subsequent song played, no matter the song’s “infection level”. Though that at least didn’t seem to be permanently applied like the quality degradation, but I don’t know for sure.
The weirdest part is that the bug would persist, spread, and behave exactly the same way on an old phone that had never had tidal installed before, and also with the desktop app (though without the overheating, and it would throw and error message after some time if a song failed to play). So the bug seemed somehow account-bound?
I researched unsuccessfully for weeks looking for a fix, and I tried everything I could to fix it aside from making a new tidal account, because it was a lot of trouble to migrat. And support… Well, Tidal support apparently just doesn’t exist. I had sent 3 separate support tickets, all of which went unanswered, then marked as “resolved” and closed 2-3 weeks later. Only the 2nd ticket got an automated “thanks for your ticket, staff will help soon” response before being marked resolved and closed.
Eventually, so much of my library became infected (as well as a ton of random songs that would commonly end up playing after albums) that my ability to both listen to the music I loved and discover new music in the styles/genres I loved was crippled. Which obviously rendered the entire platform effectively useless. So after being repeatedly ignored by support with no explanation, and after several software updates that didn’t fix the problem while I was trying to contact support, or even just report the bug… I had to give up and switch to Spotify.
Especially with the radio feature. Pick a song that’s totally out of your comfort zone, go to radio and Spotify still manages to squeeze in songs you’ve already listened to 5 times today.
At some point, though, Google starts recommending the same songs over and over and over. That’s the reason for the popularity of curator channels like MrSuicideSheep, xKito, CloudKid, RockMontage, NuclearBlastEurope, Rare and Obscure Metal Archives, and MonsterCat.
The dreaded Algorithm is just other people’s playlists being distributed as “curated” content.
Pandora is better than either.
Let me recommend some excellent Chinese/Taiwanese band I found this year (most of them are instrumental rock, so there are no language barriers)
- IZ band, a Kazakhs band specialize in industrial rock (https://oldheavenbooks.bandcamp.com/album/jangqerek and https://oldheavenbooks.bandcamp.com/album/kolengke )
- 8 Immortals Restaurant (https://8immortalsrestaurant.bandcamp.com/album/inauguration-of-the-pleasure-dome )
- Little Wizard (https://littlewizardchina.bandcamp.com/album/little-wizard-iii )
- Tation, a post rock band from Tibetan Plateau (https://tation.bandcamp.com/album/illusions-of-the-new-era )
- Cold Dew, a Taiwanese dream rock band (https://colddew1.bandcamp.com/album/yuyu and https://wvsorcerer.bandcamp.com/album/yuyu )
Deca Joins is another good Taiwanese band. I recommend the Audiotree live session.
Yeap, there are many good, famous, and long-standing Chinese/Taiwanese bands:
- deca joins
- snapline https://maybemars.bandcamp.com/album/shou-hua
- orange ocean
- elephant gym https://elephant-gym.bandcamp.com/album/world
- Backspace (in mandarin) https://maybemars.bandcamp.com/album/human-nature-architecture
- Hipperson (in mandarin) https://maybemars.bandcamp.com/album/bildungsroman
- re-tros https://re-tros.bandcamp.com/album/rrasfc
- mimik banka https://mimikbanka.bandcamp.com/album/black-island
- sunset rollercoaster https://sunset-rollercoaster.bandcamp.com/track/levia
- no party for cao dong (in mandarin) https://nopartyforcaodong.bandcamp.com/album/the-clod
I recommended the five above because I only found them this year, and several of them are from minority Chinese race.
Sunset Rollercoaster has been one of my favorites for years. I’m gonna check out some of these other bands. Thanks for the recommendations.
No problem at all! Glad people are into Chinese/Taiwanese bands!
Swans
Based Gira enjoyer
Tell them to get off your lawn
To name a few…
Jpegmafia
Idles
Metric
Tkay Maidza
Lustsick puppy
Love peggy, he’s an incredible performer too. One man show with him DJing, no backing track, incredibly high energy performances of every song
Yess, Metric!
If you’re into Rap/Hip Hop, Tobe Nwigwe is pretty new on the scene and killing it.
Heat rock goes hard
Radio K KUOM out of Minnesota
Space 101.1 KGMP in Seattle
KCRW 89.9 Santa Monica / Los Angeles when not NPR
Try out the Radio Garden app. It lets you pick almost any radio station worldwide and lets you pick through them on a globe. I found a ton of my current favorite artists through it. A few of my coworkers from Venezuela were thrilled to be able to hear stations from their hometowns.
Check out Electronic Gems channel on youtube, very good tracks.
Here is their main playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63ZO-jXFTatssIiQjDHSa6X-WPu-EyYV