LinuxMusicians

And of course, a classic on how money works is the 30-minute cartoon 'The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mII9NZ8MMVM

Some interesting points in his analyses although I'm also not entirely on board with everything he mentions.

My opinion:

- TS songwriting is .... well... forgettable. She has no songwriting talent whatsoever.
- The arrangements are formulaic, tailored to current fads in which the average listener has been indoctrinated into.
- The music / product is sold on the visuals & imagery. The media machine makes it all come together as it blasts it out on industry channels for the tone deaf to lap up.
- Singing underwear sells.

That said, some of the major players in this business, one excellent example being Max Martin (mentioned early on in the video), are actually very talented songwriters & producers. (Look up some of his earlier work, it's well made pop.)

However, people like Martin simply choose to dumb their product down because it's easier, they can mass produce it, it sells, they've hit on winning formulas which sell, they have all kinds of collaborators across the industry - ranging from singing underwear "stars" to media conglomerates - who partner with them and who all line up for their cuts.

The pop music industry is a business, a business which exists to make profits. Nowadays the mass market don't listen to music for the sake of listening to music. The mass market are sold on current fads, on an Instagram & Video overload experience & fantasy, backed up by beats. What it sounds like is largely irrelevant. It's all about buying in to the stylistics, fashion, hype and getting Borged into chasing mass popularity momentum.

There are a handful of people on the fringes of success (ie some of these "minor" stars) who still bring out reasonably OK music, but whereas before (up to about the 90's) the emphasis was more on getting an at least reasonable sounding tune together, nowadays this is of lesser importance in the mass market.

I'll show some examples:

Here's a typical TS offering, exactly what it is... who knows? But sure as heck it isn't music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tmd-ClpJxA


Here's an old Britney Spears tune from the early 2000's (don't laugh) written & produced by Max Martin and some others. Whatever one's musical tastes or opinions on Britney are, it should be clear that (unlike a typical Taylor Swift track) this has a melodic structure and that some effort has gone into making a musical sounding arrangement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlV7RhT6zHs


Such examples show how the "Industry" has simply evolved into something way beyond making music.

No kidding! And why would I laugh at Britney Spears? She's way better than Taylor Swift. My ears thanked me for listening to the song by Britney Spears.

asbak wrote:tailored

I saw what you did.

42low wrote:

asbak wrote:- The arrangements are formulaic, tailored to current fads in which the average listener has been indoctrinated into.

Is something wrong with that?
When i make music i often too use proven arrangement styles to eventually try to make something 'popular'. This fits my goal to one time create some small hit.
Need to explain to that i try to make those arrengements 'catchy'. Not to step in line next to 'thousends off others'.

Most "producers" and "musicians" nowadays know next to nothing about music. What they produce is not music, it is cacophony which transcends any levels of competence, ability or good taste. In earlier times there used to be (more) quality control and the talentless generally didn't have access to the required gear and infrastructure to crank out endless streams of noise pollution with which to assault society.

Nowadays things have come full circle which is why the public are bombarded with an avalanche of rubbish which should have been drowned at birth.

It's not just happening in music. The exact same thing is happening in the book world where thousands upon thousands upon thousands of awful "books" are being generated and flooded on to the market, making it so much more difficult to sift through the whole mess to find anything decent. The reader is literally overloaded with such a flood of bad choices that it becomes increasingly difficult not to be sucked under by it.

It's the same with films.

If one could make a time-lapse recording of the collective intelligence and education levels of the general public, it would show a marked decline since the 2000's.

It's quite ironic that the more access the general public have to evolving and ever more complex technology the more stupid they seem to be becoming.

42low wrote:And now i perhaps reach it quicker now i know i have to do it in my underware.

Only if your underwear is a full body penguin skinsuit.

42low wrote:And now i perhaps reach it quicker now i know i have to do it in my underware.

That trick only works if you are female and attractive.
In case you fail those requirements, the next best industry bet is to become a "studio gangsta". Like this guy.

42low wrote:And if reach my goal i kind off prove what you say. That each fool can create nice music that with some some luck becomes a hit.

There are many jokers who have had hit records. The records became hits because of marketing of course but also because the people making it tapped into some kind of funny, amusing or original undercurrent. That's great and why not, have a go and have a good time doing it.

But what you're describing is different to "entertainers" who claim to be "musicians" who base their entire careers on creating anti-music, and who are fed by a media industry which claims to be representing "music" yet are representing something very unmusical. They should all just rather re-brand themselves as "entertainers" instead of claiming to be something which they aren't.

42low wrote:...And if not, i enjoy trying a lot. That alone is enough for me to keep going on.

And IMHO at the end all music is entertainment. What would music be if it wouldn't entertain anyone?

With a little leg..., uh finger work, you should be able to find this little gem out there on the interwebs. Study it and go make some hits. Or just enjoy a fun read for the vacation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual

Cheers!

hint...
Click the external link @ the bottom of that page and "bob's your uncle."

pop music is about show business and making money when popular music talk to the heart. Which imply they have not much in commun. End of the story. As example today, a guy like David Rovics is really doing popular music. He is not rich, no one of his songs is innocent, they all have a political background even when he's singing about love. Popular music talk about every thing, love, death, politics, the morons in charge, revolution, birds, money, money laundering, anything, and his goal is not to sell but to talk to the heart. When pop music goal is just about to sell.

Also, most people have a political education which is as poor than their musical education, which imply they just considere they must vote for the guy or buy the music in the publicity, because if they are in the pubm, they are popular. They are just confusing the result, a lot of people are listening to that music or voting for that gui, with the goal, to sell some piece of music or the political chief of the military-industrial complex, and are thinking because they sold a lot of that commercial crap, this is popular music, or the dead soldiers and civilians that gui will kill at war was heroes and terrorists.

Also, with the Vietnam war, the politics and the medias get the lesson: music can contribute to change the system. The result is than no one single mainstream media will send something else than what they call "politically correct" crap.

On the other hand, we musicians have a great chance, almost unique in our society: when we are at work, we are saying we play. In one word we are not civilised. And that true because many of the remaining tribes still living in the jungle have only one work to say to play and to work. They are playing all the time and are laughing as fools very often. The same is true for other artists like actors (I do both theater and music myself, both are really fun to do.).

The issue is like most people know nothing else than Babylon, nothing else than making money for a living with some mandatory work into our trashy and suprematist society, many musicians just doesn't realise the chance they have: they can play at work, making people happy at the same time, and just be happy themselves. Instead and like in the publicity, they just want more and are trying to make as much money than possible, transforming art into crap. Because arts is not only about making people happy, it is about to make people to understand how they can be happy, it is about opening the cage. A caged bird doesn't sing about greater cages, he's singing about liberty.

I'd also like to point out that the introduction, being used to establish the tempo and tone, might be less necessary since there are fewer ideas that are being presented and that the arrangement + variations is largely the determinant of interest. This doesn't change the thrust of the article per se regarding attention economy, but it could point towards a practical consideration regarding the lack of unique ideas being developed in a piece. If you're going to hear the same thing repeated virtually unaltered with some instrument layering or vocal modulation later on, why risk having someone tune out to the idea?

It's not the same thing being repeated actually. There are quite a few little things generally happening here and there in order to keep the attention. One recipe calls for 'something' to happen each 3 to 5 seconds. A click, a pop, a rise, a hype in intensity, a noise, something. It might not be obvious, but the aim is to catch and keep the attention. The attention of a willing person to start with.

In a very general sense, if not universal, music has links with matter since atoms are vibrating themselves, eventually producing harmonies that cannot be perceived. What we make as music is a very low form of expression, one that we can feel and comprehend. When not making music strictly for money, maybe we somehow try to aim for a higher 'frequency', we aim to distill what some level of our beings subconsciously perceive.

I don't think that introductions should be mandatory in any genre. Arrangement isn't about following some strict guidelines, it's the part of creation process where one can really do whatever they want, as long as the result is catchy, exciting et cetera. Whilst music theory bonds oneself to certain rules for a multitude of reasons, the arrangement is a true territory of freedom, and it shouldn't be boring in the first place. If a song starts, say, with a powerful chorus (probably differently arranged than in the “body” of the piece, as in Queen's “Princes Of The Universe”, for instance), how come it's bad?