Is music evolution reaching an end?

RetroGamingUK

RetroGamingUK

Member
Listening to the radio at work today, mainly chart stuff, and after a few hours something struck me… none of this would have sounded out of place 25 years ago.

I started thinking as to why this was, after all hearing most music from the 20th century you could clearly guess the decade it was made based on singing style and the instruments being used.

I have a few theories as to why this might be…

- At no point in human history have so many people had resources and time to create and distribute music compared to the latter half of the 20th century, a sudden explosion of creativity

- In the 20th century we went from folk to jazz to rock to pop to disco to electronic, all as a result of rapid tech innovation, humanity may never encounter that again. For example you can't invent the electric guitar again, and sequencers have been around since the early 90s

- Social attitudes changed as the west went from a religious to secular society. Western culture hasn't changed much, and the rest of the world is rapidly westernising.

- Globalisation happened so that sounds and genres from all over the world have be adapted and combined (think Beatles in India), this can only happen once in history

- There are only so many possible melodies we can come up with, at some point they end up being repeated (there intentional or not) and lawyers can't wait to sue any artist who their music matching software catches out

I'm sure that things that are cool don't always stay cool and trends always change, but by the end of the 21st century, will there really be any music that wouldn't have sounded that out of place in the 1990s?
 
it's just shitty disposable radio music. Otherwise things are always moving forward and evolving.

The guitar scene alone is constantly turned upside down every decade.
 
My take is that kids don't have a commonly shared musical culture.

Youtube and music streaming services made music from every decade and culture available to everyone everywhere. Everyone is living in his/her own music bubble where not the artists but the playlists rule, a high percentage of which are automatically generated. Music has become something you listen to as background noise instead of it being a huge part of your identity like it was in the period between the 1960ies-2000s where you'd see major musical shifts every couple of years. Now pop music doesn't seem to evolve but only look backwards.
 
kruis said:
Now pop music doesn't seem to evolve but only look backwards.
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Thinking about looking backwards. With the advent of computers, sampling, synthesisers and sequencing I thought we'd end up with centuries of possibilities.

I'm now starting to think that even that technology has already become mostly exhausted with very few unexplored avenues remaining.

Take EDM for example, most of the big hits of the last few years have merely been remixes and samples of 90s "classics" with pretty much nothing in the way of new sounds.

I'm not taking digs at young artists here, even if they come up with something they've never heard before there's now a high chance it's already been done.

In 200 years people will be singing about their trips in space and visiting planets, but it likely won't sound much different from anything we've already heard

 
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RetroGamingUK said:
I'm sure that things that are cool don't always stay cool and trends always change, but by the end of the 21st century, will there really be any music that wouldn't have sounded that out of place in the 1990s?
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90s yes*, but mid to late 2000s? Not sure about that one. True industry wide innovation does seem to be slowing down. I've noticed that as well.

* While still enjoyable, 90s alternative, rap, and electronic music doesn't really sound like much modern music these days.

RagnarokIV said:
it's just shitty disposable radio music. Otherwise things are always moving forward and evolving.

The guitar scene alone is constantly turned upside down every decade.
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I think we're talking about more than just the radio, here. If you think otherwise, it would be nice to hear some examples. Can you name some 2020-2025 songs that would have sounded completely out of place in the mid to late 2000s? Compare those 15 to 20 years to songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and the difference seems very large to me.
 
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RetroGamingUK said:
Thinking about looking backwards. With the advent of computers, sampling, synthesisers and sequencing I thought we'd end up with centuries of possibilities.

I'm now starting to think that even that technology has already become mostly exhausted with very few unexplored avenues remaining.

Take EDM for example, most of the big hits of the last few years have merely been remixes and samples of 90s "classics" with pretty much nothing in the way of new sounds.

I'm not taking digs at young artists here, even if they come up with something they've never heard before there's now a high chance it's already been done.

In 200 years people will be singing about their trips in space and visiting planets, but it likely won't sound much different from anything we've already heard

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It's telling that you shared a Jamiroquai video to make your point. That video is almost 30 years old (1996) and the music is mixup of the disco, funk and R&B of the 1970ies.
 
There are studies on pop music today and it is objectively less complex in chord structure and lyrics than music of prior generations were. It's gotten more and more mind-numbing and disposable over the years. Yea, I think there is a hard limit to how much this can be devolved and we're probably pretty close to that limit.

I think we might end up with some new paradigm of music. I don't even know what it is but the basic structure of pop music which was established in the 1950s (think 12-bar blues, 3 and 4 chord song structure, drums/bass/guitar/vocal, etc.) seems to have run its course. Even good bands and good songs I hear on like indie stations on Sirius XM sound a lot like music in the 1980s and 1990s. We need something different from this and it's not horrible noise masturbation like prog/math/whatever rock and shitty jerkoff jazz music that the critics pretend to like.
 
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I try to listen to recent stuff, but I don't find anything appealing in the current pop scene. And I grew up in the 90s/2000s, the pop music back then sounded better, or more "fun" to listen.

I'm definitly getting old.
 
Creativity is endless. Music will continue. I actually think you can find more and more interesting music that you like by lesser known people than ever before. What may collapse or be tightening is the corporate media production and hit making. Labels have gotten a stranglehold over streaming profits, and that sucks for creators. That may break at some point, but who knows.
 
AI will be the one to mash up random stuff into a sonic assault of grinding white noise that the kids will claim as their own and us old fuddy duddies can shake our fists at.

Popular music has been in a corporate stranglehold of digitally synthed pop girls and grating mumbling rap men for decades now. When almost every mainstream accessible music outlet is owned by the same 1-2 companies, that's what you are gonna get. When everyone is listening on shitty phone speakers or in ear buds, this is what you are gonna get.

Podcasts are the new wave of pop culture evolution, the spoken word.
 
I think these days there are a few issues.

The communal ways for people all experiencing new music together at the same time such as all listening to a radio station or going to the same music venue are for old people. Music scenes are mostly a young person thing.

Thanks to modern data there is less commitment to listening to music and there are better ways to quickly find out what people really like rather than say they like to appear cool or fuckable or whatever. What people mostly like is super basic and stupid music that sounds exactly like the same song they have already heard 1000 times before.

Then there is the economics. It is not a profitable business any more to get together a band of people to work on new songs unless you are already a huge artist. Just one person banging tracks out quickly on a computer is fine and you can even make it sound like real instruments. This isn't really like something like Aphex Twin who would go to extreme lengths producing new music using methods nobody else did before.
 
I don't know... But I feel like there's pure crap, no Coal Chamber, no Marilyn Manson, no Limp Bizkit, no Red Hot Chili Peppers, no Rammstein. Aren't there any good metal rock bands? Or any good bands?

PS. Metallica is the most overrated and self-centered band.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme said:
I don't know... But I feel like there's pure crap, no Coal Chamber, no Marilyn Manson, no Limp Bizkit, no Red Hot Chili Peppers, no Rammstein. Aren't there any good metal rock bands? Or any good bands?

PS. Metallica is the most overrated and self-centered band.
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Try listening to some pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs.
 
Clearly you just haven't discovered PROD SHLONG yet

 
Another aspect I hadn't considered

In previous decades music had less competition in the entertainment space.

In the 80s for example there was no internet, TV channels were sparse, home video was low quality and videogames were a clunky niche.

Therefore music was a much more important aspect of culture and youth culture in particular.

www.theguardian.com

Video games have replaced music as the most important aspect of youth culture | Sean Monahan

The global video gaming industry took in an estimated $180bn in 2020 – more than sports and movies worldwide
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Technically when it comes to composition everything peaked with classical music so probably beginning of 20th century. After that it's all the same chords, and melodies.
 
Heimdall_Xtreme said:
I don't know... But I feel like there's pure crap, no Coal Chamber, no Marilyn Manson, no Limp Bizkit, no Red Hot Chili Peppers, no Rammstein. Aren't there any good metal rock bands? Or any good bands?

PS. Metallica is the most overrated and self-centered band.
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They are still out there. I listen to a lot of european power metal.

The "emo help me my mental health sucks" vibe has infected a lot of metal though, the typical american stuff on sirusxm (I'm talking Octane, not liquid metal) for example, is HEAVILY weighted towards that shit with monotone dull vocals or just screeching about self harm and pain. I can only tolerate so much.

While I don't care for all of their stuff, at least bands like Ice Nine Kills are having fun and mixing up their sound and vocals. Shoot me in the head if I gotta listen to Spiritbox one more damned time though.
 
You know, friends, I wish next year... Because in September I'm going to Japan, fingers crossed... But I want to go to a rock festival in Europe. What festivals are there... Or how can you buy tickets to go to them... I can say that I don't have an American Visa...
 
People will tell you "<insert genre> isn't dead you just have to look!"....

but that is kind of the point. You didn't have to look before. Music that sounded new was everywhere.


But I'm old now.. so what do I know.
 
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RetroGamingUK said:
Take EDM for example, most of the big hits of the last few years have merely been remixes and samples of 90s "classics" with pretty much nothing in the way of new sounds.
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So we've circled back then? A lot of disposable 2000s Dance music was just 80s music sampled, chopped, and an added kick beat. how many of these from that era do you consider a classic?








And that's just a small selection, that shit in the UK during the 2000s was unavoidable, at least the videos had hot women in most of the time.
 
Heimdall_Xtreme said:
I don't know... But I feel like there's pure crap, no Coal Chamber, no Marilyn Manson, no Limp Bizkit, no Red Hot Chili Peppers, no Rammstein. Aren't there any good metal rock bands? Or any good bands?

PS. Metallica is the most overrated and self-centered band.
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Basically my favorite band at this moment:

 
YCoCg said:
So we've circled back then? A lot of disposable 2000s Dance music was just 80s music sampled, chopped, and an added kick beat. how many of these from that era do you consider a classic?








And that's just a small selection, that shit in the UK during the 2000s was unavoidable, at least the videos had hot women in most of the time.
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Oh god yes, starting in 2003 there was a huge fad of remixing 80s tunes.

For me it was a sign that EDM genres like house and trance had ran out of ideas.

It was the point where me and my friends wound down the amount of nights we went clubbing.
 
I feel like we overdosed on dubstep, moved on to millenial whoop and stompclap (edit: also mumble/soundloud rap) and then just gave up out of embarassment.
 
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YCoCg said:
So we've circled back then? A lot of disposable 2000s Dance music was just 80s music sampled, chopped, and an added kick beat. how many of these from that era do you consider a classic?

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Not germane to this conversation directly, but this video is featured in the beginning of the movie WARFARE and its gonna become MAJOR meme fodder :P
 
technology has the biggest part in this I think.

because, yes, many genres appeared through the advancements in technology.
you couldn't make dubstep in the 70s for example because the genre is dependent on technology that didn't really exist yet.
but now we have the technology to basically create any sound you could ever imagine. any effect you can imagine can be layered on top of your voice, your guitar, your keyboard etc.

when in the 70s you had to sit in front of a super high end microphone in an expensive studio, with real instruments to get premium audio quality, these days you can get better quality in a home studio with equipment that costs a fraction of that.

this technology hasn't really evolved much since the year 2000 or so however. so we slowly come to a point where the technology we have has been used in every imaginable way, which means the distinct sound that previous decades had can't really happen anymore.


in a hilarious turn of events, the only music that sounds imo distinctly "modern" is stuff that tried to sound oldschool, but uses modern equipment to do so.
because that's a trend that's relatively recent.

like how Blinding Lights by The Weekend sounds like an 80s song conceptually, but sounds modern due to its production.
so new generes emerged like Synthwave and Vaporwave that emulate 80s aesthetics with modern technology.
and those types of music feel the most modern to me... because they exist specifically to emulate old stuff... which sounds weird as a concept of modern music 🤣



here's a thematically fitting song about this dilemma (that also tried to somewhat emulate 70s prog), that also kinda predicted AI music a decade ago lol:


[Dr. Voight-Kampff: Rutger Hauer]
"Why create more music - if it was all done before. Computer generated noise in millions of gigs. Of all kinds and in all formats. Imagine 7D plus! Flash your ID, pick your heart's desire. Click it, keep it. It's auto-drive pre-shock, momma!"

[...]

I just think of what I like
Any blend will do
They reproduced what's in my mind
But it feels like something new

[...]

Every tune's been hung before
Every album's been produced
Every rhyme's been applied before
And every music style has fused
 
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Trilobit said:
There's a lot of new stuff out there, but you can't find it on the radio.
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the point OP is making is that this new stuff is not recognisably "new" and could have just as well released in 2010 and you'd not be able to tell.

which I think is accurate.
what made new music sound distinct from old music was often advancements in both production and recording technology. but both of these basically hit their maximum potential sometime around the millennium.
 
kevboard said:
the point OP is making is that this new stuff is not recognisably "new" and could have just as well released in 2010 and you'd not be able to tell.

which I think is accurate.
what made new music sound distinct from old music was often advancements in both production and recording technology. but both of these basically hit their maximum potential sometime around the millennium.
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Another attributing reason might be the advent of internet as the niche underground cultures don't develop and create music in the same way online as they do irl. Everything has become samey samey now.
 
Best music was during the 80s and even because of Nostaglia since I was born after the 80s and grew up on Fuse and Rockzilla during the 2000s.

90s and 2000s got great music too but gonna say 80s is still the best not just in music but movies too.

Nowadays the best modern movies are sythwave theme.
 
I have come to this strange conclusion that pop music literally peaked in 1983 and I suppose 1984, and it has been in free fall since then. I was born in 1981, so I would have been two years old in 1983, so obviously that time period was a blur to me. But when I look back at what particular years produced some of the greatest albums, it always links back to 1983 as the peak.

Though using various search results... I have to correct myself.. because 1991 was a huge year for albums and so was 1999. But I feel like 1983-1984 had some of the most influential.
 
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dem said:
People will tell you "<insert genre> isn't dead you just have to look!"....

but that is kind of the point. You didn't have to look before. Music that sounded new was everywhere.


But I'm old now.. so what do I know.
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It was everywhere before because everyone was sharing the same platform (radio, video, CDs). Now the enthusiasts have their own platforms while the casual listeners/teenagers/oldies are exposed to the most derivative and mainstream music out there. So those that would expose mainstream listeners to new genres have kind of settled in their own places. It's the end result of Internet, where finding one's niche is exceptionally easy and you don't have to engage with the content that doesn't interest you. I think it's true that mainstream music was way better some decades ago but nowadays there is so much music that appeal to certain niches in volumes that didn't exist before.
 
Trilobit said:
Another attributing reason might be the advent of internet as the niche underground cultures don't develop and create music in the same way online as they do irl. Everything has become samey samey now.
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Globalisation and westernisation probably have a huge influence too.

There were quite a few Beatles songs, mostly written by George Harrison, that were heavily influenced by Indian music and was the first time many in the west had heard these sounds.

Do you think future Indian music will sound much different from western music? Most young people in India today are now desperate to copy the west and throw away their roots…

J0zVUuk.jpeg


OwovMu1.jpeg
 
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AI generated music is the future unfortunately. Custom music for your likings. Also there's some great EDM out there but nobody listen to it. I remember buying a vynil from Solarstone 20 years ago and he wrote a note on thanks it helps bring food on the table. Sad thing. I loved Tuneflux music but he had some songs with just a few hundreds listens.
 
I'm biased as i was a teen in the 80's, so i prefer the music from 50's Rock n Roll to 80's Heavy Metal with various pop songs i like while liking some bands afterwards. but in the last 15 years or so, i just haven't heard any good music other than a few Rock bands, i don't know what number 1 is and haven't for 15 years either, there must be good music out there being made, but i don't like the machine AI pop music made now and in recent times, it has no soul or real sound to my ears.
 
kruis said:
My take is that kids don't have a commonly shared musical culture.

Youtube and music streaming services made music from every decade and culture available to everyone everywhere. Everyone is living in his/her own music bubble where not the artists but the playlists rule, a high percentage of which are automatically generated. Music has become something you listen to as background noise instead of it being a huge part of your identity like it was in the period between the 1960ies-2000s where you'd see major musical shifts every couple of years. Now pop music doesn't seem to evolve but only look backwards.
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This is kinda true, while I can't get into a long winded history of pop music. I can say that 1950's and 1960's music tastes were mostly shaped by radio, with TV being a secondary thing. Like the Beetles on the Ed Sullivan show, for example.

1981 onwards, MTV and other music stations dominated the music culture and we saw the rise of the music video. Here in Canada, it was Much Music for me, which was the Canadian equivalent of MTV. Radio really had to survive of commuters and people trapped in cars. Also, airplay through various department stores, grocery stores, etc.

There was also the social aspect of mom and pops style music stores and big chain music outlets. But you could say that the Napster and P2P revolution, really destroyed owning physical media music. Also, Apple was disruptive with the iPod and the iTunes store. Same could be said with dedicated MP3 players. We really saw the death of record sales in the 2010's.

Like you said, Youtube without question has been one of the biggest paradigm changes for music. I suppose spottily too. Youtube really is the one stop place to find just about everything that has been recorded by man. If something isn't there, someone will find a way to upload it. I feel like music videos have been making a come back through youtube. But these days modern music has to compete with older music. Also, record studios really have to compete with independent musicians on a whole other level. I guess music trending in youtube also has some sway.

A lot of Spanish music has risen to the top of youtube view counts, so has weird things like the Shark dance.


p_xavier said:
AI generated music is the future unfortunately.
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I can't forget this. I have played around with AI generated music. To be honest, it is like shooting at targets blindfolded. It takes a lot of music generation, to get something that is remotely passable. It does also require a lot of tweaking. I'm not really sure if AI is capable of producing anything beyond a random one hit wonder, at this point.
 
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I am a big fan of jazz and I don't have much to complain. There is plenty of creativity and new and fresh talents. If the end of the evolution is reached I don't think so.
 
N0S said:
We peaked in 99

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But bettered by remixes 😁, such as this one especially

Or

These were regular mixes played when we used to go clubbing. Always loved the mixes.
Dance music was definitely better late 90s/ early 00s.,still get goosebumps when I listen to tracks we used to get smashed too. Part of me would love to put on the old tunes, turn up my sub and drop one for old times sake (wouldnt look forward to the next morning though).
Edit: Might have to watch human traffic now for a fix, the milky bars are on me.
 
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RetroGamingUK said:
Take EDM for example, most of the big hits of the last few years have merely been remixes and samples of 90s "classics" with pretty much nothing in the way of new sounds.
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And many of those 90s classics would have heavily featured samples from the 70s/60s. It's like we have been recycling music since that decade.
 
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