Nope, I disagree. Amanda's analysis nails why. I had a similar experience (I think we're around the same age) of being into decidedly non-mainstream music and only being exposed to it through painstaking amounts of zine-based research. It's much better now when, with two clicks or so, I can find the name of every band that everyone I like in any band has been in, and also what
their favourite bands are.
For one thing, I doubt musical taste was ever quite as homogenous as this guy is suggesting. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a disco to hate. As much as you can go on about Kids These Days and Their Terrible Taste In Music, it is entirely false that mainstream music was somehow better or more meaningful when I was growing up. I remember just as many manufactured boy bands that I couldn't stand. Even within the limited scope he's talking about (white and black people living in North America and the UK), there wasn't consensus that certain songs were classic until much later. Most music of any era is crap, and we only conceive of Musical Moments in hindsight.
He's also wrong that it doesn't happen now. You might be sick of K'Naan's "Wavin' Flag" but you probably all have it stuck in your head now that I've mentioned it. As does my mom if she's reading, and my kids if I mention it in class tomorrow.
Nor am I convinced that there's anything wrong with a diversity of musical tastes and genres and subgenres. My musical taste didn't freeze at 19 like some people's seem to. I think that there is a higher volume of interesting music coming out now than there was when I was a kid and we only knew about what MuchMusic (or MTV, if you were American) played. The lower barriers to production and distribution might mean that no one makes incredibly huge amounts of money making music, but it also means that there are more people making more music, and different kinds, and while 99% of everything is crap, that 1% that isn't gets drawn from a bigger pool. It's not a perfect model, but it's a more democratic model than that of the music studio, and I think it's resulting in better music.
When I was growing up, there were the goths and the hip hop kids and the rockers and the folkie throwback types, and the kids who listened to music based on how hot or popular the artists seemed to be. You could, if you were a goth, confess a shameful love for one or two country songs, but if half of your CD collection was rap, your cred would certainly be called into question.* I am continually blown away at the tastes of my kids who are into music. Certainly, they mostly listen to music that I think is awful, but they will be interested in very different sorts of awful music and will not, for example, avoid listening to dubstep because that's music for stoners. Or classical, because that music is for old people. I know black kids with baggy pants who are bigger fans of classic rock than my Nice White Lady self. Yes, there are a million subgenres now, but people who are into music don't define their tastes based on them.
I fail to see how this development is a bad thing, or how one could be nostalgic for watching the same video on MTV every hour.
Besides, NyanCat is totally
our Musical Moment and you all know it. You also all now have it in your head.
* This, despite the famous Sisters of Mercy/Public Enemy concert at Canada's Wonderland. Yes, really. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
