For the last decade, music purchasing has dropped off precipitously. Studies have repeatedly shown that older folks tend to buy more music than young people do, in increasing numbers. Labels blame this situation on all kinds of scenarios, most commonly file sharing. You've heard it all before.
That's not the same thing as saying that the music that's been made the last decade is any less interesting, relevant or of quality than the music made during the 1970s-1990s, during the heyday of punk etc. That's silly, and usually said for reasons that are more autobiographical than anything else.
The difference is that technology purchases, and investment in different media has come to supplant, or displace the centrality in consumption, and culturally, that music purchasing was once able to claim, for kids starting the in the 1960s, slowing down in the last ten years.
That makes an awful lot of sense. People only have a finite amount of money, and a finite amount of things they can get their heads around. Also, games, technology etc are marketed at young people like music once was, and that has impacted the value placed on music, as well as youth focus.
That doesn't mean that those folks who are exclusively devoted to being into music, and their respective scenes, are any less authentic in their fandom and cultural depth. It just means that that orientation is more niche than it is shared, less a collective experience than it has been in the past.
Best, Joel
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting argument, but it doesn't fit with my experience
> - how do you gauge youth interest in music?
>
> Personally I feel like the past decade has been a golden age for
> music. I'm not sure how much that has to do with it coinciding with my
> twenties and how much it's generalisable. But I wouldn't trade it for
> any other.
>
> Mike
>
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:54 AM, joel schalit<jschalit at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If only kids were interested in pop music, like boomers and 80s-90s
> > youth were. I worked in the music business for fifteen years, both as
> > an artist and eventually as a label manager. The decline in youth
> > interest in music in general was clearly discernible starting in the
> > late 1990s.
> >
> > To be fiercely into music, such as became the case during the
> > indie/punk period that began in the US during the 1980s, is now a
> > generational hallmark, rather something indigenous to contemporary
> > youth culture. Music is enjoyed more as part of larger cultural and
> > technological ensembles than on its own.
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-- joel schalit editor, Zeek author, Israel vs. Utopia skype:jschalit email: jschalit at gmail.com web: www.joelschalit.com