"Streaming has killed the mainstream"

Oh please... there’s always been the old adage “don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” The Beatles did it in 1964 (Can’t Buy Me Love, She Loves You), but sure let’s use it as another dig at the terrible young people.

 

Streaming has no doubt hurt the mainstream but there's a reason for it.

It took me a very long time to come around to streaming but with quality hi-res and an unlimited choice's of music at the touch of a few key strokes streaming has got me listening and enjoying more music than ever.

 

I agree, with the caveat, as others have noted, that streaming vs. physical media isn’t an either/or choice. Today, I can have all my favorite records on CD and LP - and use streaming to explore obscure artists and genres that once would have been an expensive pain in the neck to track down.

 

This statement made me think of watching our favorite musical artists in '50 and '60s. It was a shared expeince with pretty much everyone you knew. For both the first appearances of Elvis Presley and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan over 80% percent of television viewers were all watching at the same time. For the Beatles my entire street of kids emptied as we all rushed home or to each others house to catch the show, remarkably, with our parents. That 'moment of sound' was a beautiful shared experience that lasted a lifetime to this day. It wasn't solitary and it wasn't asocial. I miss that kind of collective experience. Now you would stream those shows or tape them or call them up on demand and experience them all by yourself and not in the moment. But I guess I'm just an antiquated baby boomer. Streaming to me is just another step closer in putting us all in our personal solitary confinement.

 

Do highly streamed artists or records get added to radio stations playlists? I don't think so --- the folks programming the stations (Clear channel) think they know better

 

Video killed the radio star.

 

Kind of fun to look up a rare psych record on Discogs , and have a you tube link to some or all of the record. Discovered a few gems (and more than a few dogs) there.

 

I was just in a house with a teenage and pre-teen group of about 25 kids. They sang a Cardi B rap hit together by heart. There were a great many words and it went on for a long time. It would not be easy to memorize. Yet every single kid knew every word and they joyfully sang it together perfectly. There are communal music experiences now. Just not the ones we old folks tend to know about.

 

Cardi B -- here today, gone tomorrow.

 

Yes, in the same way that the local jewelry store sells 2 watches and 4 bracelets a week. They are lucky to make rent, but wind up staying in business for another month. Vinyl is a Hipster trend, I don't mind it, it's cool actually. But it's not a valid form of music delivery, just a curiosity for the nostalgic.

 

So? Twas ever thus.

 

Some of them might, but who's listening to FM radio in the teen to early adult age range? More likely they're just streaming to their BT speakers or to the BT / aux-in in their car.

 

This is where you really need to have a better understanding of streaming as you couldn't be more wrong.

One of the fundamental reasons that streaming is so popular is because of its built-in social features. On streaming, you would amass a few hundred followers who would hear what you're listening to and be offered songs that you recommend. You'd create playlists of your favorite genres or artists and hundreds of people would subscribe to those playlists and every time you added or removed a song it would be added or removed on their devices. Families, friends, co-workers, strangers......if you've got a passion for a particular type of music or some expertise in a period of time, you'd be anything but "in your personal solitary confinement". You'd be experiencing that feeling of connection to others that you remember from your Ed Sullivan youth.

Join a streaming service. Learn what it does. Clearly, it will surprise you.

 

Except in the memory of these kids.
They will probably remember their 2019 singsong when they are in their 60s and wistfully think about how the kids of the 2070s don’t have an experience like their Cardi B singalongs.

 

This is where I believe streaming has one negative drawback. I believe if you don't have it in your hands, hold it, touch it, read it...like a vinyl record sleeve...you don't make a complete emotional connection to the music. The lyrics are there, the sound is there but something is missing. Same goes with books and photographs. Digital music, books and photos are too disposable. Hard copies last a lifetime.

 

That is true for some people, not for others. I am 63, own over 20,000 LPs and CDs, collected since 1970, and I feel no emotional connection at all to the physical music objects, the packaging and art and lyrics. Zero connection.

I love to just be able to look up the lyrics and information about the albums online. The online information is much better than at least 95% of the liner notes material in my physical music objects.

Holding an LP or CD in my hands gives me no thrill at all. I don’t have the physical music object fetish.

 

My kids in 2060:

"You kids and your cell chips in your head. I remember when I had to walk uphill, both ways, to get a cell phone signal and then my battery would die on me after only a few hours. And we liked it...made us more organized and responsible in how we used our phones, unlike you spoiled kids."

"OK Zoomer"

 

Do you wash your dishes by hand? Or let the dishwasher do that for you? Do you pick your coffee beans? Or just put the pod in the Keurig?

The encumbrances of cardboard and plastic are a thing of the past. Has been for 15 years. 15 years. its stunning we're having this conversation now, it's almost as if the iTunes Music Store download era of 2004 - 2018 never happened and streaming is the threat to CD's. It's unbelievable.

 

Yes I wash my dishes by hand and Keurig coffee sucks the bad part of my ass. French press or GTFO. Any other questions?

 

As a 63 year old who loves streaming truly great programming on TV, and streaming music on Spotify Premium, I suggest that those of my age group who have not tried streaming should actually try it. You will find it is not nearly as negative an experience as you are theorizing.

 

Not everyone has a dishwasher or a Keurig or multiple Rolex watches like you, Mr. Elitist.

 

Gatefold sleeves are great, but music is intangible. It’s an arrangement of sounds in time, not a physical object.

 

Streaming devalues music (IMO), and keeps me at an arms-length. When I'm listening to physical stuff I've bought, that sense of ownership keeps me more engaged in the music than the ephemeral feeling I get from listening to streaming.
Which is fine for TV shows when I'm "one & done", but music, or at least the music I like, gets better the more I listen to it, so streaming kinda works against that, as it throws too much crap at me, and keeps me from being more engaged in an artist than I would be otherwise.

Also, comparatively, sound quality for streaming is pure crap, so there's that.

 

Weird article. Simon Reynolds is one of my favorite music writers but he sounds surprisingly out of touch or “past it” here. The “death of the mainstream” has been a steady process for a couple of decades now as the internet has grown and displaced traditional “gatekeeper” media.

 

Kids singing that Cardi B song — here longer than phillyal1