What innovation could change the face of music during the next decade?

Question

Yahoo! Staff Note: This is the real Pete Tong, please see the Yahoo! Answers blog for further details:
http://uk.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-qT1KKPQoRKdVT4lowpJCljbFokkuIzI8?p=1086

How we discover, buy, listen to and enjoy new music has been changing rapidly over the last decade. The rise of MP3s, music blogs and forums, virtual bands, music-focused social networking sites – all of these advances have made a massive difference. But nothing stands still, so what the next seismic shift in music culture will be is a hot topic. Where do you think we’re headed?

Answer 1

i think it would be somthing like abelton, somthing with a very easy interface which can perform live editing on the fly, or mabe the innovation could be somthing that is used with abelton like a touch screen system which could make live editing much quicker. personaly i love using vinyl and i think you cant beat the feel of mixing in that way and with all this new technology it might get forgotten. i hope not though!

Answer 2

I have always found that music trends will follow a pattern. There will be a huge interest in dance music and everyone will love dance music or something along a similar line and everyone will want the latest technology in electronic equipment , then everyone will get bored and follow rock music and watch live bands and want to be a part of the genre.
If you think (as a brief generalisation) about the 60's, this was the recreation of blues and soul such as:aretha franklin to diana ross, as well as jimi hendrix and santana.
Then in the early 70's had the explosion of disco e.g earth wind and fire.
This was followed by the early 80's where it was dictated more by bands such as adam and the ants and madness and david bowie but to name a few .
The late 80's had more electronic sounds from artists such as pet shop boys and yazz.
The early 90's was mostly dominated by the grunge era nirvana and boy bands east 17 take that.
In the late 90's, this was mostly dominated by dance and amazing bands such as underworld.
Over the last couple of years though we have had an explosion of bands, such as: kaiser cheifs and libertines just as an example.
Over these decades though both bands and electronic music has evolved massively and branched out into many different genres some being popular and mainstream and some types that may never be that popular.
Rock music has changed vastly creating emo, punk and ska bands more recently.
Dance and electronic music has changed vastly too ,especally with the advances of technology, with cdjs and music programmes for computers. More recently we have had breaks music, grime,as well as techno making a come back more recently.
So if you look at music over the past few decades it might be easier to predict what would be the next innovation.
As music technology has become so user friendly and easy to use i think we will see more people creating theyre own music at home.
I think that the time span for music genres being popular will decrease.
I also think bands will still be popular because everyone loves that classic sound and watching bands and they always have, they will probably have better technology though and better sound equipment.
Music artists will build upon the music which is already available to them.
music is evolving constantly with technology.

Answer 3

Internet and technology so much that people have forgotten the golden rule of music, which is to learn how to play something. I have been playing the drums for 15 years and am presently in a band which has a following of a few hundred people. Unfortunately the record companies seem no longer interested in the gigging bands and opt out for cartoon characters or people who have samples on the Internet. I feel that this is just degrading the music industry as stage presence and musical ability to me are still the foremost attributes to being a musician. When I was a child I looked up to many musicians for the talent that they had but now I see most as being lucky rather than talented. With all the new technology anyone can be a musician and a lot of people are but I feel sorry for all the other bands like mine that will probably never make it due to some puppets dancing to a mixed sample CD. Nostalgia shouldn't be a dirty word. Yes art thrives on innovation but the legacy of what has gone before has a lot to offer us, and I hope in the coming years there will be a tendency to appreciate this - I think perhaps it has started. Swing is slightly cool again, for instance, but it needs to go further than that! Also, where is all the light-hearted music now? People are writing too many songs about angst and misery... Let's lighten up!For me, that's the future: no more big stars and huge egos but a real musical democracy of people reinterpreting and reinventing what already exists and what's to come. An infinite musical patchwork quilt, in many ways. And that doesn't just involve music from the West but music from all over the world. That DIY ethos will really be the infinite legacy of Punk and dance culture. A perfect hybrid.

Answer 4

This is something that is already happening, but I think it is the way forward. We need music that is well thought out, not done to a certain standard so it's only just good enough, but it has to be above the bar, it has to be exceptional. The group I'm thinking of is of course Angels and Airwaves. I've been listening to their music, and songs like 'The Adventure' are the type that just scream for your attention. Every second of it is fantastic and it grips you.

That's what we need, more songs that reach out to you. Also the instruments used should actually fit together. It's pointless having a song if you can't hear the words because you've got the bass guitar sending ripples through your brain. It's even worse when you've got a jarring tune and a grating voice, like, hey, I don't know, Lily Allen?

I do think the internet has revolutionised how we hear songs, but I don't think it's for the better. Personally I hate the Arctic Monkeys. The lead singer's voice doesn't fit with the music they're playing and as far as I'm concerned, he can't sing anyway. That'll probably stir up a debate but I don't care. That's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.

So I think we need the music industry, to sort the rubbish from the good. But they also need to rethink what's good. For instance, and I'm not saying I thought they were any good, but Busted got turned down by Simon Cowell, and look how successful they were. In their short career they produced a couple of number ones and even did the theme tune for a film. They actually had success, but they'd been turned before they were accepted. Obviously some of the public thought they were good but why couldn't Simon Cowell's record company see that?

So I guess, to summarise, the next decade of music will be the same as the last unless the music business can become normal people again and find out precisely what we want to hear. Because, in general, the public hate manufactured bands. The Backstreet Boys got back together a while ago, did anybody actually notice? No, not really. And why was that? They don't really have any input into their songs, they all vaguely look the same, and their music videos are all stereotyped (either with their shirts off, on a beach somewhere, or doing pathetic dance moves, which all add up to that same old formula of NOTHING SPECIAL.) It was the same with The 411. Anyone remember them? How about Mis Teeq? They all looked the same, were there to look sexy, reeled out song after song after song about the same meaningless drivel, and for some strange reason they got away with it.

However I think the singer/songwriter phase is just a blip. That'll fade soon. It's okay to have a band that write their own songs, so long as the person who is best suited to singing it actually does the singing. In fact, I think that's the best option. That way, it's all original, but it's performed the right way, no grating or jarring voices and no more recycled tired songs. So my example for this one is Keane. The lead singer actually has a nice voice, but he doesn't write all the songs on his own.

But what you're after is an innovation... it would have to be several things at once. Get rid of Simon Cowell, he obviously has no idea about anything any more, get rid of all manufactured bands because they are, putting it politely, really REALLY bad, re-educate the music business bosses about what's good and what's not, stop recycling old songs that were great in the good old days but are terrible now, especially when given a tinny dancefloor beat to try and jazz them up because it just doesn't work, and invest in people who can actually sing and produce good music. Now if that isn't an innovation I don't know what is.

Answer 5

The ingredients are:

(1) Internet making world music available to anyone with a computer. This is a broadening.

(2) The push towards licensing and artists resale rights, to ensure that musicians can make a living. This is a protectorate.

(3) Technology making the process of making music entirely different. For instance, I beat a drum, the tech musician types stuff into a computer. This is expanding.

(4) Music amalgamates very quickly. It used to take years to get a song known around a small area. Now, some songs are heard instantaneously. I could probably sing my latest offering into the computer, and have a chance that someone might hear it. This is growth.

(5) And all the while I write this, the vision comes of a band of musicians, traipsing through the gorse and briars in rather ragged clothes, singing beautifully when they come to a Hall, hoping for supper. And this is tradition.

For so long, music was a face-to-face affair, a social contract as well as artistic. Just listening to a recording isn't the same thing. I've talked to lots of very different people who like different kinds of music. Most of them prefer less than perfect artist to a pristine recording. (Which explains the concept of tribute bands).

The innovation could come from the continuing interaction between computerised technology and people. Virtual audiences, made up of real people, even virtual bands, jamming ethereally. Whatever innovation comes, there must be a way of communicating between musician and audience. Tele-conferencing a jam session? Yeah. Maybe. But with the collaboration of an audience.

Answer 6

Now the music is based around the Internet and technology so much that people have forgotten the golden rule of music, which is to learn how to play something. I have been playing the drums for 15 years and am presently in a band which has a following of a few hundred people. Unfortunately the record companies seem no longer interested in the gigging bands and opt out for cartoon characters or people who have samples on the Internet. I feel that this is just degrading the music industry as stage presence and musical ability to me are still the foremost attributes to being a musician. When I was a child I looked up to many musicians for the talent that they had but now I see most as being lucky rather than talented. With all the new technology anyone can be a musician and a lot of people are but I feel sorry for all the other bands like mine that will probably never make it due to some puppets dancing to a mixed sample CD. If anyone does want to see my band go through the link on my 360 page.....Please!

Answer 7

Do away with playlisting and corporate radio soulless shells, and replace it with a healthier more intouch music selection not just catering for the 12 - 18 year olds and segregating audiences because they are hitting 25 - 30. .Also instead of playing the same 5 songs in a row, on the hour every hour get a dj with some taste on primetime to make a few decent choices other then back handers or stuff they have spoon fed by thier mates.

Somone mentioned earlier a Show thats judged by the public, great idea, perhapssomething similiar to the way New Yorkers did it on the 'Showtime at the Apollo ... If the artist is rubbish they get booed off, however with the choices from the likes of those in control at radio and tv central the talentless primetime winer wannabees, it just be might boos all through the show...

Bring back real instruments, musicians, real singers without the help of autotune and you might be onto a winner... And stop filling peoples heads that they all have a chnce to make it in the music industry and tell them it takes talent not just a pretty face or a fashionable mullet hair do. Sad to think all those classic years of Jazz Rock and Soul might just well have been in vain if we forget what real music sounds like or how it should be made. In the trailer to the movie 'the day music died' they reckon, in todays music industry the likes of Ray Charles would never have made it. To go forward you got to know the past, and I salute those who take a bit of that with them when they try to push it forward.

Answer 8

Seems to me that the biggest innovation is a change in the way that bands interact with the consumer.

If manufactured bands are being overwhelmed by the new breed of 'self-made' groups then this is due to the fact that bands no longer have to pimp themselves to schoolkids by touring the assembly halls and making two minute appearances at 10 Friday night clubs just to get a few singles sold.

Now the WWW means that any musician, whether they are from a local school gigging in garages to friends or international DJs mixing music in high tech studios can go direct to the consumer with little cost.

I am not entirely sure that this increase in diversity will lead to anything strikingly original. Let's face it, Artic Monkeys might be a really good act, but they are hardly the most original sound around, it is just the way they got noticed that made them interesting.

At the end of the day once the market becomes so noisy (i.e. so many different voices clamouring for your attention), then it will be the ones that shout the loudest who will be heard. This could come from radio and TV coverage, or even a net prescence, but will take money, and the source of cash at the moment is in the hands of the record companies.

So if any innovation is still to happen it will be in the way that the corporations go out there looking for artists and marketing them to us as listners. Not sure if there are any marketing directors reading any of this, I would love to know what they are thinking, hopefully a few daring people out there will be moving quickly to set up an infrastructure that helps new artists showcase their music and generate innovation, but at the same time puts the listener in touch with these bands in a constructive and easily interactive way.

Come to think about it, I can see some of them eyeing up MySpace for a commercial buyout!

Answer 9

Probably even more monotonous, thumping, artificial music that has been sampled and looped. No-one makes innovative and new music these days.

Read an interview with Bob Dylan recently where he was saying that modern music is just not worth the money the record labels demand for albums these days, and therefore doesn't have an issue with people illegally downloading stuff. He even said that his own new album sounded better in the studio than on CD.

I think that rather than a "new" trend in music, we'll start heading back to the 60's and 70's - or at least drawing inspiration from those decades - there is already evidence of this in recent times, for example, The Bees did a song called Chicken Payback, very 60's, and the Pipettes did that track Pull Shapes - very Phil Spectre-esque.

The sooner we start seeing more decent, creative real musicians who can actually play instruments and create music, as opposed to "DJs" and geeky computer buffs who just recyle other people work, the better.

MODERN MUSIC IS A DISGRACE, UNORIGINAL, BORING AND VERY VERY GENERIC

Answer 10

I guess, to summarise, the next decade of music will be the same as the last unless the music business can become normal people again and find out precisely what we want to hear. Because, in general, the public hate manufactured bands. The Backstreet Boys got back together a while ago, did anybody actually notice? No, not really. And why was that? They don't really have any input into their songs, they all vaguely look the same, and their music videos are all stereotyped (either with their shirts off, on a beach somewhere, or doing pathetic dance moves, which all add up to that same old formula of NOTHING SPECIAL.) It was the same with The 411. Anyone remember them? How about Mis Teeq? They all looked the same, were there to look sexy, reeled out song after song after song about the same meaningless drivel, and for some strange reason they got away with it.

Answer 11

The popularity of tributes and covers shows that we do want the styles of the past to live on. Nostalgia shouldn't be a dirty word. Yes art thrives on innovation but the legacy of what has gone before has a lot to offer us, and I hope in the coming years there will be a tendency to appreciate this - I think perhaps it has started. Swing is slightly cool again, for instance, but it needs to go further than that! Also, where is all the light-hearted music now? People are writing too many songs about angst and misery... Let's lighten up!For me, that's the future: no more big stars and huge egos but a real musical democracy of people reinterpreting and reinventing what already exists and what's to come. An infinite musical patchwork quilt, in many ways. And that doesn't just involve music from the West but music from all over the world. That DIY ethos will really be the infinite legacy of Punk and dance culture. A perfect hybrid.