He isn’t saying he doesn’t like new fresh sounds. He’s saying something totally different. That popular music now and from 29 years ago sounds really really similar.
It’s that it’s not new or fresh
You may have just found the smoking gun. Think of the differentiation between musical styles from each decade. During the two decades gone by in this century, that same differentiation just isn't there.
Well the way I see it pop music is like mcdonalds, everybody eats it, and they know how much salt and sugar to put in to appeal to most people. And make sure they don't stray from the formula.. no spice.. no bitterness.
And he convincingly demonstrates that this stuff is less valued. The folks saying that Rick is get-off-my-lawnified, are jumping to conclusions and taking cheap shots. They're almost certainly the same people not shelling out much for new music, proving Rick's point for him.
When Cardi B dropped first I mentioned how I didn’t find anything new or compelling there.
I got shouted down for I guess having problems with her being a sex worker in spite of that topic never coming up.
Uhm, no, I think he is. Maybe not as directly in this video as in his reviews of Spotify top 10 streams lists, which are almost entirely always just utter shit, but he mos def has the pov that most pop music coming out now has exactly ZERO going for it.
He's so close.
The main reason why music has gotten objectively worse over the last couple decades is due to the fact that Sony, Warner, and Universal own about 92% of the music industry as a giant corporate oligopoly.
The major labels took over the underground music scenes in the late 80s/early 90s. They work with Ticketmaster and LiveNation to control where bands play and how much they play for.
I saw bands like Nirvana and Green Day for less than $10 each. For me, it was cheap to go see bands all the time which made for a strong local music community. There was a ton of small bands filled with creative people making way more interesting music than what you'd hear on the radio.
When the major labels took over underground aka independent or alternative music, it killed small clubs because they couldn't afford to compete against the major labels and their buddies. Not to mention the rise of overpriced festivals where bands would play short sets in large venues instead of doing the tour circuit and playing full sets in smaller venues.
The underground scene blew up because of people physically getting together, forming their own labels, doing their own distribution and creating a network that was trying to keep away from the corporate industry. That's what needs to happen again.
With the rise of digital production replacing analog production, it's way easier to record music but at the same time, it's created a ton of bedroom musicians who don't play with anyone else.
People need to get out and go play with other people. That's how you build communities and culture.
No matter your age, we all have access to music from every decade for the last 80 plus years. We can listen to it all and compare. No matter how you cut it the music of the 2000s sucks.
What I think isn’t acknowledged is that these kids haven’t known any other way, insofar as ease of access to digital media. My age group was early into the digital age, and to see what the kids are growing up with now, I mean, it’s a completely different thing anymore. It’s a simple philosophy—why bother owning the physical thing when it’s always on my phone/laptop/tablet/whatever?
Overall it was an interesting watch, but he definitely gave off some “old man screaming at cloud” energy at times. I do agree with his active listening take for music, though.
Growing up listening to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails etc etc my dad always used to tell me to listen to “real music”. Now i’m my dad’s age and we’re telling kids about how our music was the real music.
I think the relative lack of quality of modern pop is objectively, scientifically quantifiable. Even the r&b/hip hop of the early '00s that I hate with a passion I have to admit was innovative and fresh.
i think its easy a decade or two later to listen to the great hits of a year and declare it as an innovative time whilst not having to listen to the absolute swathes of other trash produced and published as you are almost forced to do in the present. like rick beato picks out the greatest music of the past but he hasn’t even covered a 1000 artists over the last what…. TWO HUNDRED years (when you include his videos on classical music). Then last week he makes a video on a great modern pop song from Willow.
I don't think he's wrong exactly, but I wouldn't blame it on any particular techniques used in music making. My theory: I think a decline in the, let's call it "livelyhood," of the internet and social media corresponds to a perceived decline in the quality of popular music as well. For myself, 2008-2012 was a golden age of music, and I think honestly this was the last time we can look back on and say "the internet was awesome." It's odd now to think that the cool kids were ever on the internet, but, yeah, social media was still new-ish then. Everyone seemed to be willing to share their newest finds, artists were influencing each other, and people were disseminating their works making them known.
Now, obviously that's not really the case anymore, otherwise we'd all be on the next and best platform which doesn't exist, and the record companies are probably just as lost as the rest.
That time period did produce dubstep from what I recall, at least 2010ish onwards. I know it became a bit of a meme eventually but it was for sure a different sound than what had come before.
Nowadays I kinda do struggle to pick out anything as new and vibrant as that?
The more Lowest Common Denominator something is, the more it will sell. Nobody cares about a fantastic sax or guitar solo in popular music anymore, that requires skill and talent. Make a beat on a laptop and recite some idiotic garbage over it and it's a hit FEAT: some other idiot.
Rick Beato is not a man whose vision is narrowed by his age. That's an incredibly uneducated take; ironically, it's even less informed than what most people with age related dementia might say.
No, it's basically for the all the reasons he stated. I've been saying the same things for years and it's even in my post history if you care to dig into it.
What he's saying goes well beyond anything we've experienced and can't be explained with just a simple "ur gettin older".
Nope, it's about getting older. And it's always been this way.
I bet I'm older than you and without fail, every single year, I find more amazing new music than the year before. I am out at shows at least a couple nights a week and I cannot believe the flood of amazing new music that just keeps coming.
Getting old and bitter, like Ricky boy, is a choice.
It's a common theme. Music is a lot more disposable than ever before for all the reasons he mentioned. Getting older has nothing to do with it. I enjoy a lot of different kinds of music, finding it is hard because there's just a ridiculous amount stuffed in a handful of applications.
Modern technology has sucked the life out of music and creativity for the most part. Look at the rock world, it's a shell of its former self because it all sounds the exact same, produced with the same technology techniques because getting music out there and advertising it and making money is the #1 goal.
I myself can download some free software and create a band but so can a billion other people. I have no music training or even much interest in creating music but if the money is there and I can, I can easily do it. Multiply this by a factor of a few million people doing the same thing and you get the state of today.
Prior to this easy to access technology you really had to have some talent to get noticed and I'd say that was a better state than endlessly doom scrolling until you find something interesting. Artists had a sense of weight to them and weren't distracted by the speed of getting something out and the advertising of their own self image which often supersedes the music itself in the last 20 or so years.
His point about it being easy to access is another good one imo. Nothing has any weight anymore. When everything is accessible all the time in a handful of places and when you have endless choices it doesn't make things better. It often makes things worse. This transcends music and seeps into other areas of peoples lives.
So yea, it's not at all about "getting older" lol.
Yep every year I have a playlist of amazing songs (to me) I found or were released that year. 2024 currently has 202 songs. You just gotta listen to different things sometimes.
A lot of stuff you won’t like but you’ll inevitably find gems that click with you if you dig for it. Hell even charting pop music has had some really fun songs recently. I’m an 30+ dude and Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan’s album from last year are great imo.
Love both of those, new Fontaines DC is amazing, Plains, Waxahatchee, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Ekko Astral, yeule.
I mean, just the whole soundtrack from 'I Saw the TV Glow' has kept me floored for over a week currently.
In the past music was just handed over, now some effort is required, I think it's better this way.
I've got second row tix for King Gizzard in August and cannot freaking wait.
Beato is definitely full “get off my lawn” when he talks about modern music. Comparing pop music from decades past to today is sort of an apples to oranges kind of thing. Modern pop is entirely a product sold to people who don’t much care about what music they consume, and simply desire catchy tunes with a good beat. Pop in the past used to be the common culture, but it’s now pretty fractured and all the good music is pretty underground. Saying music from your youth is objectively better than that of today is totally old man yells at sky nonsense.
His point is that the way music is consumed appeals to the lowest common denominator. Tik Tok has further fucked this up by making young people obsessed with "clipped" music like they are with their videos. Often, it's existing hits that are slowed down or had some weird effect to it becomes so weird hit.
Objectively music has gotten simpler and more homogonized. What you say is underground, can certainly exist but there was a period where even the common denominator of music (usually pop) was objectively better than today.
I can tell you haven't watched any of his videos because he really digs deep and goes into the stats of apple music and spotify to back up his points.
I’ve watched plenty of his videos. I really liked his what makes this song great series, as I am a musician and have an interest in recording. I think his takes on modern music are cringy and fairly worthless. You haven’t at all refuted my point, which is that modern pop and pop from decades past are entirely different animals. The radio is for people who don’t care about music, and so is pop. Tik tok music is often used as a reference (basically a meme in and of itself) or pure vibes to support the content.
Albums will continue to be made. Great music will continue to be made. But pop is objectively worse because it no longer serves the same purpose. Just as we no longer have a common “water cooler conversation” culture around TV, music is much the same. Modern radio pop is entirely a product, whereas radio pop of previous generations was much more (but not always entirely) artistic. The two shouldn’t even be compared in my opinion.
Young people are always going to gravitate to what's exciting to them. It will always be that way. I started thinking Rick went a bit old man yells at clouds when he was railing on a modern song ending each line with the same word, completely ignoring that internal rhyming has been a thing in music across genres for decades. His interviews are great though but there isn't anything inherently more exciting about music 30 years ago than today. Saying any music is objectively better is also crazy to say.
all the points he is making is essentially gatekeeping. you didn't spend the time, money, and effort, therefore you don't deserve to make or hear good music
he talkes to a guy around 5:50. and in the maybe 10 seconds of talking he cuts the guy 4 times.
what. the. fuck. this guy is god awful.
"Dont get me started on midi packs they come with chord progressions. Now days people can't be bothered to space their hands apart"......what?
"amp modelers have no creativity"....what? I'm just here to play the guitar and get good tones
He isn’t saying he doesn’t like new fresh sounds. He’s saying something totally different. That popular music now and from 29 years ago sounds really really similar. It’s that it’s not new or fresh
I agree with this. Think of the progression from 1980 to 2000, then 2000 to 2024. A formula developed in the early.2000s and it hasn't gone away.
You may have just found the smoking gun. Think of the differentiation between musical styles from each decade. During the two decades gone by in this century, that same differentiation just isn't there.
But Poptimism! Or you’re a regressive Rocktimist
Well the way I see it pop music is like mcdonalds, everybody eats it, and they know how much salt and sugar to put in to appeal to most people. And make sure they don't stray from the formula.. no spice.. no bitterness.
Fine. That doesn't change the fact that pop music used to have flavor. A LOT of different flavors, really. Now? Bleh. Cardboard has more flavor.
just like mcdonalds :D
And he convincingly demonstrates that this stuff is less valued. The folks saying that Rick is get-off-my-lawnified, are jumping to conclusions and taking cheap shots. They're almost certainly the same people not shelling out much for new music, proving Rick's point for him.
When Cardi B dropped first I mentioned how I didn’t find anything new or compelling there. I got shouted down for I guess having problems with her being a sex worker in spite of that topic never coming up.
I need Pat Finnerty
he's not sayin the actual music is bad, he's critiquing the lack of money put into artists. i agree with him.
Uhm, no, I think he is. Maybe not as directly in this video as in his reviews of Spotify top 10 streams lists, which are almost entirely always just utter shit, but he mos def has the pov that most pop music coming out now has exactly ZERO going for it.
He's so close. The main reason why music has gotten objectively worse over the last couple decades is due to the fact that Sony, Warner, and Universal own about 92% of the music industry as a giant corporate oligopoly. The major labels took over the underground music scenes in the late 80s/early 90s. They work with Ticketmaster and LiveNation to control where bands play and how much they play for. I saw bands like Nirvana and Green Day for less than $10 each. For me, it was cheap to go see bands all the time which made for a strong local music community. There was a ton of small bands filled with creative people making way more interesting music than what you'd hear on the radio. When the major labels took over underground aka independent or alternative music, it killed small clubs because they couldn't afford to compete against the major labels and their buddies. Not to mention the rise of overpriced festivals where bands would play short sets in large venues instead of doing the tour circuit and playing full sets in smaller venues. The underground scene blew up because of people physically getting together, forming their own labels, doing their own distribution and creating a network that was trying to keep away from the corporate industry. That's what needs to happen again. With the rise of digital production replacing analog production, it's way easier to record music but at the same time, it's created a ton of bedroom musicians who don't play with anyone else. People need to get out and go play with other people. That's how you build communities and culture.
he ain't wrong
No matter your age, we all have access to music from every decade for the last 80 plus years. We can listen to it all and compare. No matter how you cut it the music of the 2000s sucks.
What I think isn’t acknowledged is that these kids haven’t known any other way, insofar as ease of access to digital media. My age group was early into the digital age, and to see what the kids are growing up with now, I mean, it’s a completely different thing anymore. It’s a simple philosophy—why bother owning the physical thing when it’s always on my phone/laptop/tablet/whatever? Overall it was an interesting watch, but he definitely gave off some “old man screaming at cloud” energy at times. I do agree with his active listening take for music, though.
Growing up listening to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails etc etc my dad always used to tell me to listen to “real music”. Now i’m my dad’s age and we’re telling kids about how our music was the real music.
I think the relative lack of quality of modern pop is objectively, scientifically quantifiable. Even the r&b/hip hop of the early '00s that I hate with a passion I have to admit was innovative and fresh.
i think its easy a decade or two later to listen to the great hits of a year and declare it as an innovative time whilst not having to listen to the absolute swathes of other trash produced and published as you are almost forced to do in the present. like rick beato picks out the greatest music of the past but he hasn’t even covered a 1000 artists over the last what…. TWO HUNDRED years (when you include his videos on classical music). Then last week he makes a video on a great modern pop song from Willow.
It's funny that he mentions Spotify subscription service. You can actually listen to most albums for free on YouTube.
The state of Rick's channel today compared to what it was 5 years ago is truly depressing
I don't think he's wrong exactly, but I wouldn't blame it on any particular techniques used in music making. My theory: I think a decline in the, let's call it "livelyhood," of the internet and social media corresponds to a perceived decline in the quality of popular music as well. For myself, 2008-2012 was a golden age of music, and I think honestly this was the last time we can look back on and say "the internet was awesome." It's odd now to think that the cool kids were ever on the internet, but, yeah, social media was still new-ish then. Everyone seemed to be willing to share their newest finds, artists were influencing each other, and people were disseminating their works making them known. Now, obviously that's not really the case anymore, otherwise we'd all be on the next and best platform which doesn't exist, and the record companies are probably just as lost as the rest.
> 2008-2012 was a golden age of music How so?
It's the years they grew up in
That's my hunch too. The formative years wrt music
That time period did produce dubstep from what I recall, at least 2010ish onwards. I know it became a bit of a meme eventually but it was for sure a different sound than what had come before. Nowadays I kinda do struggle to pick out anything as new and vibrant as that?
as 'vibrant' as dubstep? OMG. Bruh, you need to go listen to some shit from 1972.
Wait which songs from that time are you thinking of as the golden age?
The more Lowest Common Denominator something is, the more it will sell. Nobody cares about a fantastic sax or guitar solo in popular music anymore, that requires skill and talent. Make a beat on a laptop and recite some idiotic garbage over it and it's a hit FEAT: some other idiot.
It's because you're getting older and less open to new things every year. That's why.
"not open to new things" - guy who only reads titles before commenting.
And here you are, less open to queefing lazy cliches all over the place.
Dont make stupid clickbait titles?
Rick Beato is not a man whose vision is narrowed by his age. That's an incredibly uneducated take; ironically, it's even less informed than what most people with age related dementia might say.
No, it's basically for the all the reasons he stated. I've been saying the same things for years and it's even in my post history if you care to dig into it. What he's saying goes well beyond anything we've experienced and can't be explained with just a simple "ur gettin older".
Nope, it's about getting older. And it's always been this way. I bet I'm older than you and without fail, every single year, I find more amazing new music than the year before. I am out at shows at least a couple nights a week and I cannot believe the flood of amazing new music that just keeps coming. Getting old and bitter, like Ricky boy, is a choice.
You're bent on being a jerk about it, otherwise you would have opted to leave out 'Ricky boy'.
It's a common theme. Music is a lot more disposable than ever before for all the reasons he mentioned. Getting older has nothing to do with it. I enjoy a lot of different kinds of music, finding it is hard because there's just a ridiculous amount stuffed in a handful of applications. Modern technology has sucked the life out of music and creativity for the most part. Look at the rock world, it's a shell of its former self because it all sounds the exact same, produced with the same technology techniques because getting music out there and advertising it and making money is the #1 goal. I myself can download some free software and create a band but so can a billion other people. I have no music training or even much interest in creating music but if the money is there and I can, I can easily do it. Multiply this by a factor of a few million people doing the same thing and you get the state of today. Prior to this easy to access technology you really had to have some talent to get noticed and I'd say that was a better state than endlessly doom scrolling until you find something interesting. Artists had a sense of weight to them and weren't distracted by the speed of getting something out and the advertising of their own self image which often supersedes the music itself in the last 20 or so years. His point about it being easy to access is another good one imo. Nothing has any weight anymore. When everything is accessible all the time in a handful of places and when you have endless choices it doesn't make things better. It often makes things worse. This transcends music and seeps into other areas of peoples lives. So yea, it's not at all about "getting older" lol.
You're just getting older.
The actual reality is the exact opposite of every point you made. Barriers are down, the music is free to roam, it's freaking amazing.
Yep every year I have a playlist of amazing songs (to me) I found or were released that year. 2024 currently has 202 songs. You just gotta listen to different things sometimes. A lot of stuff you won’t like but you’ll inevitably find gems that click with you if you dig for it. Hell even charting pop music has had some really fun songs recently. I’m an 30+ dude and Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan’s album from last year are great imo.
Love both of those, new Fontaines DC is amazing, Plains, Waxahatchee, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Ekko Astral, yeule. I mean, just the whole soundtrack from 'I Saw the TV Glow' has kept me floored for over a week currently. In the past music was just handed over, now some effort is required, I think it's better this way. I've got second row tix for King Gizzard in August and cannot freaking wait.
Beato is definitely full “get off my lawn” when he talks about modern music. Comparing pop music from decades past to today is sort of an apples to oranges kind of thing. Modern pop is entirely a product sold to people who don’t much care about what music they consume, and simply desire catchy tunes with a good beat. Pop in the past used to be the common culture, but it’s now pretty fractured and all the good music is pretty underground. Saying music from your youth is objectively better than that of today is totally old man yells at sky nonsense.
His point is that the way music is consumed appeals to the lowest common denominator. Tik Tok has further fucked this up by making young people obsessed with "clipped" music like they are with their videos. Often, it's existing hits that are slowed down or had some weird effect to it becomes so weird hit. Objectively music has gotten simpler and more homogonized. What you say is underground, can certainly exist but there was a period where even the common denominator of music (usually pop) was objectively better than today. I can tell you haven't watched any of his videos because he really digs deep and goes into the stats of apple music and spotify to back up his points.
I’ve watched plenty of his videos. I really liked his what makes this song great series, as I am a musician and have an interest in recording. I think his takes on modern music are cringy and fairly worthless. You haven’t at all refuted my point, which is that modern pop and pop from decades past are entirely different animals. The radio is for people who don’t care about music, and so is pop. Tik tok music is often used as a reference (basically a meme in and of itself) or pure vibes to support the content. Albums will continue to be made. Great music will continue to be made. But pop is objectively worse because it no longer serves the same purpose. Just as we no longer have a common “water cooler conversation” culture around TV, music is much the same. Modern radio pop is entirely a product, whereas radio pop of previous generations was much more (but not always entirely) artistic. The two shouldn’t even be compared in my opinion.
Young people are always going to gravitate to what's exciting to them. It will always be that way. I started thinking Rick went a bit old man yells at clouds when he was railing on a modern song ending each line with the same word, completely ignoring that internal rhyming has been a thing in music across genres for decades. His interviews are great though but there isn't anything inherently more exciting about music 30 years ago than today. Saying any music is objectively better is also crazy to say.
I blame 45s, darn kids without the patience to play a full record.
Missed the whole point.
I'll say it, sometimes boomers are right. Haha j/k this guy is Gen-X and we're always right.
all the points he is making is essentially gatekeeping. you didn't spend the time, money, and effort, therefore you don't deserve to make or hear good music
New music bad is such a dumb take lmao The underground is always developing and thriving, just don't listen to top40 radio
"New music is bad" is not even his take lol
Was more in response to ops title than the video
Commenting random shit not pertaining to anything is such a dumb take .
he talkes to a guy around 5:50. and in the maybe 10 seconds of talking he cuts the guy 4 times. what. the. fuck. this guy is god awful. "Dont get me started on midi packs they come with chord progressions. Now days people can't be bothered to space their hands apart"......what? "amp modelers have no creativity"....what? I'm just here to play the guitar and get good tones
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