By Kevin O’Brien, Staff Writer, Emerson College
Anyone who can pirate a software recording program and steal their uncle’s old Yamaha keyboard can make quality music now, which has lead to the world being inundated with more music than it has ever known. And with all of this music readily accessible on pirating sites, or even available for free by the artist, we have the opportunity to listen to it all of it. There used to be a reason to listen to music and to spend time with it; listening to music was once ritualistic. You’d have to go out of your way to go to a store and buy a physical copy (CD, tape, or vinyl), then go home where you’d feel obligated to listen to that music until you loved it. Now with tens of thousands of intangible sonic concepts ready to listen to at the click of a button, it’s hard to really give musiche attention it deserves. You listen to a song, get a minute into it, and find yourself thinking this song is pretty good, but I’m sure there’s one I like more in my library, and then you click the skip button. With music, and media in general, being so accessible it becomes disposable, less cherished, and easier to ignore. Musicians are forced to find a way to stand out and get people to listen to their music, and the aesthetic state of modern music is a direct reaction to this psychological phenomenon. The one artist in particular that has been exceptionally successful in having the spirit of the distracted youth manifest itself in his music is Skrillex with his brand of dubstep.
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Anyone who can pirate a software recording program and steal their uncle’s old Yamaha keyboard can make quality music now, which has lead to the world being inundated with more music than it has ever known. And with all of this music readily accessible on pirating sites, or even available for free by the artist, we have the opportunity to listen to it all of it. There used to be a reason to listen to music and to spend time with it; listening to music was once ritualistic. You’d have to go out of your way to go to a store and buy a physical copy (CD, tape, or vinyl), then go home where you’d feel obligated to listen to that music until you loved it. Now with tens of thousands of intangible sonic concepts ready to listen to at the click of a button, it’s hard to really give musiche attention it deserves. You listen to a song, get a minute into it, and find yourself thinking this song is pretty good, but I’m sure there’s one I like more in my library, and then you click the skip button. With music, and media in general, being so accessible it becomes disposable, less cherished, and easier to ignore. Musicians are forced to find a way to stand out and get people to listen to their music, and the aesthetic state of modern music is a direct reaction to this psychological phenomenon. The one artist in particular that has been exceptionally successful in having the spirit of the distracted youth manifest itself in his music is Skrillex with his brand of dubstep.
Read More Here