Music making/listening the coming decade? (speculation welcome!)

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Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

29 Jan 2020

I would love to hear fellow music makers share both backwards looking nostalgia about past decades and their gems, as well as guessings about what we would see when we conclude past decade at end of year 2029. Where will we see music making? What will stay and what will fade away?

The streaming services as Spotify lately have been in news for how easy it is to "buy" followers or listeners with a few clicks on a site, to boost the numbers, get attention and get different privileges. The bigger the names, the easier to get away with it, while a new independent producer/artist might get banned right away if too obvious. So what will happen to streaming revenue next?

As we all know, it is in theory easier than ever to make music, but we all only have x amount of hours and we have more content than we ever could chew, and still many spend hours on pods, streaming series, movies, youtubing, social media and many other things. So the result is that all who want to spread something try to overdo it and once again the biggest record companies are the winners (as financials concern).

The positive side of the coin is that it is easier to find people with tastes like you have or who understand or appreciate what you are making. So I know there are great possibilities for hardworking ever developing unknown artists and producers. All is possible out there. You may have to live on water and bread for many years if persisting to make it as a full time profession. And even if you are good, what you above all need is proper networking skills or loyal friends.

There is always this battle of mainstream big companies and the independent movements.

It feels like a turning point in music, because today it is as when scientists in past have claimed "now we know it all".

What will happen to the way we make and listen to music in the 20´s? Give your best guess!

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reddust
Posts: 677
Joined: 07 May 2018

29 Jan 2020

I think music is going to be the same as it has always been. We think we know it all because we don't know what's coming next, no one can predict the future to 100% so we tend to think there is not going to be anything new because we cannot even imagine what this new thing will really look like.

But in my opinion we have been doing always the same, nothing was really as innovative in the past as we might see it now where old things became myths. From what I've seen musicians and any other artists and creators only take things that already exist but try to mix them together in a different way and this supported by technological advances.

To put some examples, rock n roll didn't came out of nothing but became special because of how electric guitars transformed the sound of traditional music. The same happens in a different scale these days with music styles like synthwave that take the 80's sound and transform it by applying soft synths that are often used for styles like dubstep or EDM. I think the future is going to be like that in terms of creativity as well. What today is considered innovative will be retro tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. will be readapted in a new form to make something new out of something old.

About how the music industry works. I think most of it hasn't really changed either apart from the more direct and easier communication that the internet offers. Alternative and independent music stays alternative and independent until some artist(s) gets a little bit more popular than usual and a big company starts marketing it and convert it into mainstream and the next alternative and independent artists restart the loop. Of course not every style of music ends up becoming mainstream but any kind of music that is in some way easy to understand for listeners has the potential to become mainstream.

So in my opinion what is going to happen in the next 10 years or I'd even say in the next 100 is going to be more of this. And honestly, I find it great, because in my opinion this process only means that there is no limit, no end for artistic creativity as long as there are human beings on this planet :)

Yonatan
Posts: 1556
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

29 Jan 2020

Many truths in what you point out! And the steady train towards the future, all go around in circles after all, and new generations feel a freshness as things and technology changes, but the essence seems quite similar. And, yes, some artists tend to be in line or in sync with the present pop culture that they live in and so may reap instant gratifications, while some art making gets unnoticed for years or decades, until picked up by some later one.

My personal wondering is where AI will take us this decade. And how creators will be able to make a living if streaming gets halted as revenue (not that it makes any difference for less known artists). I guess it boils down to same as now for independents, "making live shows" and maybe more crowd founding alternatives. AI wonderings will probably just be as when drum machines and virtual instruments came into play. Where AI would get interesting is when virtual instruments can fully listen and learn to adapt. A live show with 3 members and 9 AI players! :)
I guess it will make the musical visions even easier to realize.

reddust wrote:
29 Jan 2020
I think music is going to be the same as it has always been. We think we know it all because we don't know what's coming next, no one can predict the future to 100% so we tend to think there is not going to be anything new because we cannot even imagine what this new thing will really look like.

But in my opinion we have been doing always the same, nothing was really as innovative in the past as we might see it now where old things became myths. From what I've seen musicians and any other artists and creators only take things that already exist but try to mix them together in a different way and this supported by technological advances.

To put some examples, rock n roll didn't came out of nothing but became special because of how electric guitars transformed the sound of traditional music. The same happens in a different scale these days with music styles like synthwave that take the 80's sound and transform it by applying soft synths that are often used for styles like dubstep or EDM. I think the future is going to be like that in terms of creativity as well. What today is considered innovative will be retro tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. will be readapted in a new form to make something new out of something old.

About how the music industry works. I think most of it hasn't really changed either apart from the more direct and easier communication that the internet offers. Alternative and independent music stays alternative and independent until some artist(s) gets a little bit more popular than usual and a big company starts marketing it and convert it into mainstream and the next alternative and independent artists restart the loop. Of course not every style of music ends up becoming mainstream but any kind of music that is in some way easy to understand for listeners has the potential to become mainstream.

So in my opinion what is going to happen in the next 10 years or I'd even say in the next 100 is going to be more of this. And honestly, I find it great, because in my opinion this process only means that there is no limit, no end for artistic creativity as long as there are human beings on this planet :)

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reddust
Posts: 677
Joined: 07 May 2018

30 Jan 2020

Yonatan wrote:
29 Jan 2020
Many truths in what you point out! And the steady train towards the future, all go around in circles after all, and new generations feel a freshness as things and technology changes, but the essence seems quite similar. And, yes, some artists tend to be in line or in sync with the present pop culture that they live in and so may reap instant gratifications, while some art making gets unnoticed for years or decades, until picked up by some later one.

My personal wondering is where AI will take us this decade. And how creators will be able to make a living if streaming gets halted as revenue (not that it makes any difference for less known artists). I guess it boils down to same as now for independents, "making live shows" and maybe more crowd founding alternatives. AI wonderings will probably just be as when drum machines and virtual instruments came into play. Where AI would get interesting is when virtual instruments can fully listen and learn to adapt. A live show with 3 members and 9 AI players! :)
I guess it will make the musical visions even easier to realize.
I can totally imagine that scenario, I mean, many plugins these days aim to make musicians and hobby musicians life easier, even to the point that almost anyone with a minimal sense for music can create tracks these days. AI being one of the next big steps for technical development could indeed make that possible.

Imagine this stuff with a future developed AI? And then put them some voice control like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Echo so you can tell them which song is next or which key to play some improvised song :)




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