LogFAQs > #941334635

Muscles posted...

I don't need to be a judge, the fact that they turned an art form into a soulless money making machine isn't up for debate

Music has always been a soulless money making machine. Bach's choral works - despite now being regarded as some of the most complex, intricate pieces of choral music ever written - were largely ignored in his lifetime because the masses (by which I mean the aristocracy, since the actual masses didn't have much to do with music until the advent and proliferation of recording and playback technologies) were more interested in complex keyboard works than complex choral ones. One of his contemporaries literally described some of his choral pieces as having "far too much art." Contemporary choral composers saw more success by dumbing down their choral pieces to be more accessible for the average chorister because those pieces were more widely performed and recognized during their lifetimes.

That was in the early 18th century. 300 years ago. As a professional industry, music has always favoured people who produce things that are popular over people who produce things that are technically or creatively demanding. Obviously, that paradigm has progressed and evolved as science and technology have enabled more effective, lower-effort means by which to act on it, which is why comparing The Messiah to Teenage Dream is more than a little silly, but the fundamental mentality is the same. In order to be significantly commercially successful (which is the only way to define any given era's "pop music"), composers have always and will always have to cater to the lowest common denominator, both on the performance end and the listening end.

Quite simply, you have two choices:

• Get over yourself and enjoy listening to the music you like (which will always exist) while letting other people like what they like
• Continue insisting that you're better than the unwashed masses that consume music you don't like and be miserable because nobody cares and nothing will ever change

Personally, I'd recommend the former, but then I've never been one for sacrificing happiness for the sake of a little impotent self-satisfaction. Your mileage may vary.

---

This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.