The Songwriter Forum - songwriting reviews, tips and chat
Songwriter Forum => The Bar => Topic started by: S.T.C on November 24, 2017, 12:11:09 PM
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The music scene has changed /evolved over the last 60 years. It's seen some good times. creative times and many great bands and artists have had a chance to shine.
At the moment we still have some of them about, but they will die or retire in time and just leave their legacies on music databases.
The so called music charts are dominated by the American and Swedish writers /producers , with exception of a few artists like Adele who enjoy a certain amount of self determination , have enough clout to stand up to the big labels...but these are few.
The music industry does not support or promote any indie music or rock , or at least not prepared to spend money on them , instead just taking what the talent shows cough up.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs , it has to change in time , but to what?
Albums on vinyl have comeback, to everyone's surprise , so things can happen .
Whats the future of popular music when Max Martin and co buzz off. Has the skill of proper songwriting been snuffed out so we can enjoy one note melody , sampling, beats ,generic melodies for evermore?
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Garlic bread, I thought that was the future.
Who knows what the future of music holds but I think sites like this show that there a still plenty of us 'proper' songwriters waiting in the wings to step in and fill the void when the time is right.
I'm sure the same goes for 'proper' bands and again, when the industry see's a need for them (or rather profit) I'm sure they'll be there ready to jump in.
That's if the industry as such still exists by then.
If this all takes too long though, I think there will need to be a period of reinvestment in musical education before the good stuff filters through. Music education is all but non existent in some schools now and most young people don't value learning to play an instrument, favouring instead Mc'ing or singing, safe in the knowledge that someone else will be there to do the actual music stuff for them.
Before too long though, there won't be as I think there will be a real skills gap. The flip side though is that it could lead to more work and better pay for 'those that can'
Yodasdad
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Garlic bread, I thought that was the future.
Who knows what the future of music holds but I think sites like this show that there a still plenty of us 'proper' songwriters waiting in the wings to step in and fill the void when the time is right.
I'm sure the same goes for 'proper' bands and again, when the industry see's a need for them (or rather profit) I'm sure they'll be there ready to jump in.
That's if the industry as such still exists by then.
If this all takes too long though, I think there will need to be a period of reinvestment in musical education before the good stuff filters through. Music education is all but non existent in some schools now and most young people don't value learning to play an instrument, favouring instead Mc'ing or singing, safe in the knowledge that someone else will be there to do the actual music stuff for them.
Before too long though, there won't be as I think there will be a real skills gap. The flip side though is that it could lead to more work and better pay for 'those that can'
Yodasdad
Nothing will happen if it doesn't involve the big labels protecting their assets.
The masses could get totally bored with the present business plan of manufactured artists , but i don't think this will happen for quite a while.
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Interesting thread...
I have wondered whether services like Spotify might change things by bringing out 'Spotify originals' (like Netflix does for series) which might help change the direction of popular music by giving money and access to better recording facilities to those lower down the pecking order. That's just pie in the sky but is a nice idea.
Anyway, at work so can't reply properly :P
Darren
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I don't think sites like this, and the immensely talented people here, will make even the tiniest dent in popular (i.e. chart) music. Indy bands, rock. Nope, not them either. What I think will happen for popular music is that computers will soon create it all. Pretty young things will be employed to be the face of this computer generated music, and the software will be so clever at analysing 70 years of pop music and recreating all the emotional triggers, that the music created will be indistinguishable from the best that humans can create. Much of this music will be used in films (full of CGI) and TV shows (more pretty young perfect creatures) and the juggernaut will grow and grow. The not so pretty young things will have the requisite surgery and take the necessary drugs to appear as perfect as those that are projected into their 3d headsets and everyone will be happy.
I think there will be a huge undercurrent of great live bands, and great real song-writers, and I don't think any of them will bother the charts more than once or twice a year.
Yet when it happens, the very thing that makes them unique will be analysed and before you know it computers will be generating stuff that is indistinguishable from those performers, too.
You read it here first. And I wouldn't put money against it not already having happened.
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Thats a more dystopian view than i would have predicted .And yes to certain degree that's probably what is happening now. They analyse music in such a way as to create algorithms to it's potential as a hit song...we know they sample like crazy...i hear so many songs on the radio that have used bits from other songs, even sections of melody and hooks.
I was thinking today at work about music cycles and how they are getting longer. To a certain point ,i think you could say (rock 'n' roll 55-65 ) ( rock/ pop/ psychedelic /prog rock 65- 75 ( punk / new romantics/ soul boys etc 75-85 ) ( hip hop/trance/ edm etc 90 -2015 ...the present scene? maybe for decades?
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But how much prog rock, punk, psychedelic, EDM, trance, actually made much of a dent in the charts? Sure there were pockets of success, but insofar as popular music's concerned, I'm not sure those pockets were ever big enough to mean much in the big popular music picture.
There will always be cycles, but my guess is they will happen outside of the pop charts, although the marketing types will simply market their products (i.e. those pretty young things lip synching to the computer generated magic) to maximise revenue from whatever cycle and demographic is most lucrative.
In a way it's no different to what's always happened. Going back to punk. I recall the punk ethos, and the wonderful idea that anyone could do it, and I recall going to see many a rough old band that only knew three chords (or at least one barre chord shape) and were out there gigging in phlegm-flying rooms, and the fans wore all manner of wild home-made clothes and hair styles... and yet within months there were punk clothes available in department stores and bands with record deals that were marketed as punk but by golly they could play and were every bit as good as those that had existed before punk and even bands that themselves (probably wouldn't have described themselves as being punk) were marketed as such just to ride the wave and get in the charts.
What we need to pin our hopes on is the future of non-popular music. With the amount of routes to market available now, I think that's where the real magical stuff will happen and the wonderful music will be available.
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I wasn't just referring to the top 40 . In many ways the charts determine how record companies function , and of course music streaming.
Morrissey said in an interview , the big labels know music is dead and they're just trying to suck up as much as they can.
I can't see a fashion led music scene like punk or rock for a long time ,if ever , because this time around the music industry will not promote it over what they have put in place...
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If we're not talking top 40, then I think popular music will thrive. I've been to quite a few gigs recently where an artist is only popular with a tiny percentage of the population, but that audience is still big enough to enable that artist to make a living. I don't ever see such scenarios ending, in fact I see them thriving with all those channel to markets I mentioned previously.
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So the future is much like now , a two tier system where the 'industry' which is only about profit and promotion of it's own assets , continues as long as the masses out there tolerate it.
The independent artists/bands continue to do what they can with the resources available .like the internet , although with this #netneutrality issue looming, sooner or later i think it will all be monetised and controlled.
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The difficult bit will be where do songwriters who don't perform fit in?
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If , as mentioned above, there are 'proper songwriters' then are there 'improper songwriters'? And, if so, who are they - the tone of the conversation would infer it is the people that make serious £$ through a songwriting career as opposed to bedroom producers who do it for hobby? There's a self-defeating logic in there if people pause on it for the moment...
IMHO this conversation kinda verges on elitism at times and seems to imply that writing commercially is not legitimate nor difficult. I've said it before and I'll (continue to) say it again, if writing these pop songs that apparently pander to the lowest common denominator are so easy to write why hasn't anyone on here written a smash hit and made £$? I think the big hitters like Max Martin are due a lot more credit than they are given at times on here. Defining what is popular, now and lucrative is no easy feat and yet these peeps have consistently done it.
Also I'm not sure the use of modern technology lessens their talent at all. Yes, the building blocks may be more readily available but it takes a certain magic glue to put it all together in a way that clicks. After all, writers on here can avail of the same loops, samples and technology to a certain degree and they can analyse the algorithms and trends used as much as Max Martin, Dr Luke etc can but can they adapt and use this in the same way as they can?
In any event, the move to technology was envisaged decades ago - in fact James Morrison said as much in a famous interview that eventually music would not be played by humans but by machines.
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Not sure which post you're responding, too, Sing4me88. But I don't disagree with anything you've said. I've been talking about how I perceived the future of popular (chart) song-writing (which was the topic), not the skillset of the current batch of popular songwriters. And I stand by my prognosis. I reckon in 40 years then a huge percentage of the music that gets bought and played in the popular genres will be created by computers.
I hope I'm wrong, although I'll be long gone, so it won't matter to me. It won't just be music, the same will happen in many of the arts - as I've said before, that Rembrandt ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35977315 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35977315)
... that the computers have come up including analysing the brush strokes and depths, and using 3d printing to replicate it) is getting close to being indistinguishable from the real thing, except that it's an "original". And that's now, not in the future.
I reckon the real talent that the big record companies (although it'll probably just all be done by Amazon, Microsoft and Apple) will be (or maybe already are) seeking out will be software engineers. Loops and samples will be old hat and not needed at all. It'll all be brand new, perfect, and perfectly designed to tug on just the right heartstrings, leg muscles, emotions, and ear-drums.
We already have this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHZ_b05W7o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHZ_b05W7o)
which with lyrics and harmonies written by a human is a long way off computer generated song. But again, this is the level we're at right now. Isn't computer progress on an exponential curve? The future may be closer than we think - and I suspect we won't always know when we hear the computer generated stuff until years or months after the event.
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Fascinating point about software engineers being the future. I can see that - like people designing new synth sounds and patches and the likes. That kinda thing?
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I'm thinking more about someone who can take a song, all those and notes and words and rhythms, the way a singer breathes ... how often the breath is audible versus how often it isn't, and where in a line that little cute breath occurs, and how often that line is in a chorus, and whether it's the first line in a chorus or the last, and how many times those songs got to number one versus number ten. And do that for a little huskiness in a voice, and maybe a Scottish accent versus a Californian one, and a clean guitar sound versus a Mexican trumpet or a bagpipe, and how much reverb, and how long the intro should be and... etc. etc. for every element in every song (i.e. a number of combinations and possibilities that it would make Deep Blue look like a 1970's calculator). The software engineer who can write the programmes that enables the computer to start this analysis, then self- teach itself deeper analysis, until that song can churn out the basic framework for hit song after hit song in a whole variety of styles. That's the software engineer I'm thinking of. Someone who can programme a computer to think and analyse and teach itself to think and analyse even more.
It is a little dystopian, I admit. But then just a few days ago I read how it's now possible to 3d print living flesh. Now! Things are moving so fast that what we can scarcely imagine today will be BAU in a few years.
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I think what DelBoy's getting at is more AI development and machine learning. At some point the computers will be able to analyse the most popular songs, 'understand' or deconstruct what makes them tick. Then they'll use the knowledge as a template to write new songs which they'll also be able to produce entirely without human assistance or use of musical instruments. Just knowledge to zeros and ones, which when compiled into a wav file, will be the most popular song of 2026.
The comment about people not realising it until a fair while after the event is probably accurate too. I have a feeling computers are already doing much more than the media/ tech world is telling us. In fact, did you know that Saudi Arabia recently granted actual citizenship to a robot? Strange and scary times.
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I think that's not only plausible but probably a natural progression. I mean we've driverless cars and the like now. I wonder though if these machines/bots will be able to self-learn to the point of coming up with a curve ball 'outside the box' genius idea/hook/lyric the odd time? That's be the scary part!
100% bang on the money Tone re technology being more advanced that we are told. Invisibility, for example, we are led to believe has been perfected to over 99% - but IMHO it's probably been perfected 100% years ago. Mobile phones, drones etc all used in the intelligence/military sphere years before released into the public 'leisure' domain.
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IMHO this conversation kinda verges on elitism at times and seems to imply that writing commercially is not legitimate nor difficult. I've said it before and I'll (continue to) say it again, if writing these pop songs that apparently pander to the lowest common denominator are so easy to write why hasn't anyone on here written a smash hit and made £$? I think the big hitters like Max Martin are due a lot more credit than they are given at times on here. Defining what is popular, now and lucrative is no easy feat and yet these peeps have consistently done it.
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First of all, the hit songs become hit songs because the labels saturate the airways,TV , Internet with them..this is a fact.
It cost between 1-3 million dollars to sign and promote a new artist..any Taylor Swift track for example gets a million spent on it..at the moment at work ,i'm having to listen to Heart radio..they must play the same songs 10 times a day...you get to know the song whether you want to or not.
Maybe people on here have written a smash hit...do you know what these big songs start out has? sometimes they're simple acoustic songs, then they get processed to death....
Also this is not a site that favours commercial pop , so there's a surprise.
Max Martin is clever...he can organise music using ,music maths , so many people get a credit on these songs now, hard to say who contributed what really..there's a lot to say for high production values , that's why i've paid for such services myself.
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Not sure where you're getting this elitism vibe from STC. I certainly am under no illusions that writing a hit song is easy. But you're also right about the marketing required to make a song a hit, regardless of the song itself.
My point was more about human processes being overtaken by machines. It won't just be pop music - it will be classical, jazz and everything else on the spectrum. I mean - imagine being able to compose and perform an entire symphony without ever having to pay a composer, conductor or orchestra ever again, let alone studio costs, engineers etc etc.
Everything in this world is being reduced to an ever-evolving algorythm. Who knows, maybe the machines will end up better than us at all of this? I don't want that outcome, but we just don't know.
I certainly wasn't belittling pop or max martin though.
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I'm well aware that most hit songs start off as a basic acoustic guitar/piano track in some form but I'm not sure why you were raising that point or what it was adding to the discussion. Indeed, I may have been presumptuous about the smash hit point - but, in my defence, no one has disclosed their smash hit success for me to know/think otherwise. Kudos to such folk if they are quietly going about their forum business! I guess I should qualify the smash hit point by saying I meant that no one on here has broken into the UK Top 10 or the US Billboard in the same way and in the same time frame and with the same consistency as Max Martin, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran etc.... I literally mean a 'smash hit' like Baby One More Time, Shake it Off, Shape of You etc.
I don't buy the 'hit songs are only hits because of industry hacks' argument. Yes constant exposure and slick PR certainly helps and yes those backed by the millions of the industry are beneficiaries of this but ultimately n the final analysis the song has to be catchy/hooky/good enough to begin with. Whatever about how they are promoted and who they are promoted by/for, in substance they have to have that little something about them that will help them appeal to people. In many cases they are promoting a tried and tested product that they know will work. Listen to some acoustic covers of modern hits and you'll see even in their most stripped back form they have a commercial appeal. There was an interesting thread on here recently about being objective enough to evaluate one's own songs. Being completely frank and truthful can you say that when listening to the songs on Heart in work you really thought for even the slightest moment that your own songs were catchy/hooky/ as appealing as the ones you were listening to were? Could you genuinely imagine one of your songs coming on next and it feeling completely at home among the well polished, well written and well performed songs with proven commercial success that you were hearing?
IMHO Max Martin is more than just good at musical maths, he is incredibly talented. He wouldn't have cornered the pop market if he was simply a guy with a keyboard in one hand and a calculator in the other. It wasn't today or yesterday or last year or even 10 years ago that he was ripping it up - he's been at it since the Ace of Bass days. He's got a musical background so I'd hazard that his success is down to more than some chicanery with octaves... Again he's doing it with algorithms and with software that is available to people on this site - he isn't drinking the blood of anointed virgins or taking ground-up unicorn penis in his tea to give him the magical ability to write these songs! The key is, though, that he has a substantial degree of talent and has honed his craft meticulously over the years. That, plus an acute understanding of musical maths - that is REALLY knowing what works, what doesn't, when to stick to the rules, when to break the rules and how to do this in a way that 'clicks' - on a very gifted level, I'd submit, are the reasons why he has written a list of hits that far surpasses anything we are likely to accumulate between us times a thousand.
Also, why wouldn't it be legitimate to co-write with several people? You seem to infer Max Martin is somehow doing something wrong by writing with others and splitting credits. Modern technology has made collabing with many more people much easier. For instance, when MO and Major Lazer were writing 'Lean On' they were sending each other stems via the net from wherever MO was touring at the time. The current state of play is that many hits are written by songwriting TEAMS rather than a single team; literally, one team working on an intro hook, anther on the chorus, another on the verse etc. I don't think it matters if a song is written by 1 person or 100 people if it ends up appealing to people and tops the charts. It isn't wrong or devoid of talent to do what Max Martin and others do. In fact, it's a proven route to success...
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I quoted sing4me88 Tone☺ not quite what his point was either.
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Not sure where you're getting this elitism vibe from STC. I certainly am under no illusions that writing a hit song is easy. But you're also right about the marketing required to make a song a hit, regardless of the song itself.
My point was more about human processes being overtaken by machines. It won't just be pop music - it will be classical, jazz and everything else on the spectrum. I mean - imagine being able to compose and perform an entire symphony without ever having to pay a composer, conductor or orchestra ever again, let alone studio costs, engineers etc etc.
Everything in this world is being reduced to an ever-evolving algorythm. Who knows, maybe the machines will end up better than us at all of this? I don't want that outcome, but we just don't know.
I certainly wasn't belittling pop or max martin though.
I was quoting sing4me88 ☺ not my words .
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Not sure where you're getting this elitism vibe from STC. I certainly am under no illusions that writing a hit song is easy. But you're also right about the marketing required to make a song a hit, regardless of the song itself.
My point was more about human processes being overtaken by machines. It won't just be pop music - it will be classical, jazz and everything else on the spectrum. I mean - imagine being able to compose and perform an entire symphony without ever having to pay a composer, conductor or orchestra ever again, let alone studio costs, engineers etc etc.
Everything in this world is being reduced to an ever-evolving algorythm. Who knows, maybe the machines will end up better than us at all of this? I don't want that outcome, but we just don't know.
I certainly wasn't belittling pop or max martin though.
Nothing you posted gave me that vibe but when the general conversation coalesces around talk of 'proper songwriters' it's hard not to detect an undercurrent of elitism whether that's intentional or not.
I concur 100% re the rise of the machine. I wonder though will the machine that replaces the bass player still be the 'poor cousin' of the machines... my turn to indulge in a spot of casual elitism ;)
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@sing4me88
Just popping my head in to say, yes I concur! In my book Max Martin is a genius. A very very talented and hard working songwriting genius. I've seen it with my own eyes and also know people who work/-ed with him. (Sweden ain't that big ya know?!?!) ;) The man absolutely loves music and always have!
Peter
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Amen to that Peter. Finally common sense prevails! I'm well jeal that you've seen Max Martin at work and know peeps that have worked with him. They guy is my songwriting mancrush to the nth degree! I'm a huge fan of the Swedes (and other Scandinavians like Kygo, StarGate etc) who have brought commercial pop music to a dizzying new level production wise. Your people are clearly a very talented bunch and it's either something that's in the DNA code or in the water - if it is indeed that latter any chance of shipping a few gallons of Swedish drinking water my direction ;)
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Interesting thread.
The idea that the essence of what is liked in music can be engineered is kind of dark. But if molecules can be put together by the atom a binary composer is not far away.
The problem is that very much of the music that has been made sounds the same. A lot of songs are just borrowed parts put together both from songs and from genre conventions. Do we really want to make a computer that tears down a wall in our pretty pop music dollhouse?
The music industry has produced the same music for 70 years. Just different hair cuts. People need bad music. They make it. Sometimes they make good music and that's bad.
Most of the time people just don't want to give a damn. And the want to do so listening to music.
So this robot Bach can't be learning from the best. He's gotta learn from the lame.
Martin
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I'm not sure about the whole Max Martin debate - keep it going guys, I feel a consensus coming.
About the Robot music - it already exists (http://mubert.com/ https://www.jukedeck.com/) - soon it will become mainstream and we would not be affected (we - the people in this kind of hobby)
If it's successful - it will replace the current bots (sample packs, autotune, soulless-ill-do-anything-robo-humans). The top pop stars will be affected and the labels will profit and this is where it ends.
The amount of listening time "ear time" is limited and over saturated anyways. Background pop music can be already made by bots, I wouldn't know or notice. The top of the top pop music which made it against the odds regardless of having an actual soul will still get there anyways - it works against the current anyway so what will change for it?
On another hand, people value handmade stuff more and more, this happens right now even though the robots are not even part of our lives in a way which will demand counterreaction. There is a surge in DIY classes for anything, handmade stuff is getting more and more popular even for smallest of things (etsy.com and all the local Sunday markets). The actual vinyl records outperform digital sales, the live music arena is growing (at least where I live). The value of actual human-made craft is rising on all fronts.
All of this and more indicates to me that the future of pop music might be going back to live-performing megastars (not rock, probably something new) and perhaps a separation of pop into genres which will indicate - background pop from human pop with dedicated usage according to your current needs.
How about a hybrid?
Music is played according to what you see on your screen (like google ads) and if the content of the screen identifies emotional response (prolonged reading time, weird mouse jerks or scrolling) it will switch from Robot music to Human music to enhance your listening. Isn't that the Idea of pop music? Making easily accessible emotional context available on demand?