The streaming era turned music into sludge

I feel like I'm experiencing a golden age of music. Not a week goes by that I don't find something new or something forgotten that quickly becomes part of my ever growing daily playlist. From Magdalena Bay to The Queers I haven't found this much good music since the days of WinMX and AudioGalaxy. That said, I stay far away from "hot" or "trending" over the last 12 months since I paid for ytmusic I can count on one hand the tracks I found in those sections that I didn't immediately want to turn off. Yet that blemish aside I absolutely love ytmusic engine, it does an absolutely stellar job of ensuring the next autoplay or related track is something I want to hear or might want to hear. I used Tidal for 6 months prior and before that, for years, Spotify and it's really no comparison in that department.

I haven’t read the article but I have been absolutely LOVING Apple Music Classical.

Trying out the app and spending a few nights listening has completely rekindled my love of classical music that consumed me for much of my 20s (although that was all with mp3s, it’s wonderful to hear original master recordings now of all my favorites, like Vladimir Ashkenazy’s phenomenal recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 23)

Now I listen to it because I want to, while cooking, etc. and my kids have started enjoying it too. It isn’t being played to expose them. It’s just there. I’m just dancing and waving my arms to it, and the passion seems to be infectious.

(All that to say that I still love streaming music, all depends on what you’re streaming)

I have a very eclectic taste in music - classical, jazz, prog rock, electronica, world music. I have found streaming amazing (I use YouTube Music Premium.) I might start with a playlist,or just a "radio" based on a particular track and often after 3 or 6 tracks there is one that I want to hear more of. I often "thumbs up" and find the album or artist to hear more. I'll listen to the album the track was from, possibly exploring more if I feel like it. The autoplay then seems to adjust its selections and end up finding something new. Listening to whole albums is how I think nature intended us to listen to music.

This just kinda feels like the author telling on themselves.

You won't have this problem when you listen to albums, not playlists.

If the music you're listening to isn't interesting enough to carry a full album, you're listening to low quality music.

I think the article is right and wrong. The top 10 has degenerated as the population consuming music has broadened. Not that there's nothing ever good in there. But it is objectively simpler music, very barebones, a beat, 2 or 3 chords, no instrumental melody, autotune voice, meaningless lyrics (not meaningless as in they don't mean anything, but meaningless as in written to be a song and not written because they had personal meaning to the author(s)).

However, it's far easier to find any niche music you like. You can sit at home and go through entire historical back catalogues.

It doesn't seem like a good time for musicians. My take on that is that there was a period of time when some musicians were able to sell themselves due to changing technology and that coevolved with cultural changes. Now we're seeing a reversion to the mean where music isn't worth that much. If you write something new you're competing with everything written before and some of that is pretty good. Too many people are good at playing to make good at playing be a major selling point. I don't know how sad we should be about that. I'd prefer a world where it's common to play music at home than one where we just consume the music produced by a few bigshot artists.

Music has always been 95% sludge, 4% tolerable, 1% good.

Most of the top 100 from each decade will be at least decent, with a small portion of that actually timeless. The difference today is that consumers now have to sift through all of the music sludge that DJs used to short-list for you.

If you want good music, seek out curators.