A Prisoner of the Platform – How Music’s Evolution Has Been Stunted By Tech

The other day I put on music at the gym that was predominantly rock from the late ‘90s to mid ’00s. While listening to classic offerings from Offspring, AFI, Fall Out Boy, and Lit, I commented to a buddy that not much has changed since then, which is kind of sad.

I thought back to my youth, and listening to the oldies station with my parents, which was playing ‘60s music in the late ‘80s / early ‘90s. The strides made in music over that particular 25 year span were enormous.

From 1965 to 1990 we went from The Beatles, and the explosion of rock n roll, to rock splintering off into a plethora of genres, including punk, and metal. We experienced the incredible soul music of the ‘70s, as well as the birth of disco, new wave, and hip-hop. Heck, push it one more year to 1991, and we have Nirvana, and grunge taking over the world.

What kind of advances in music have been made over the past 25 years?

Unfortunately, the answer to that is few, and far between. New genres of music aren’t being created, and haven’t been for quite some time.

I’ll tell you what has been created – lots of new tech that involves how music is consumed.

The problem is, ever since the iPod made its debut, people have been heavily influenced to be more excited about the tech surrounding music than the music itself. With that, tech began driving the car of creativity.

With tech behind the wheel of that car, music has become a prisoner of the platforms.

Streaming, and more specifically Spotify, has become the dominant medium for music consumption, and with that playlists have become what people listen to, but how does an artist get on one of those playlists (other than major label payola)? They need to have a song that fits the playlist.

This is completely antithetical to artistic creativity.

Imagine if playlists were around in previous eras. Would The Beatles have been allowed to evolve? Would The Rolling Stones have fit into the playlists of the day? Certainly punk, and new wave would’ve been too different for any playlist, and let’s not even talk about how hip-hop would’ve been completely ignored.

TikTok has been another interesting app for music, as it’s led to some artists gaining popularity, but the biggest issue with all short form video apps is that the goal is to go viral, so an artist has to create something that has all the heart and soul of a commercial jingle.

I will say I’ve seen a few success stories involving TikTok, but they’ve been music first, platform second. The best example of this would be Carly Pearl, who discovered her song “Pronoia” ideologically synched up with a trend on TikTok, and connected them.

She didn’t write the song for TikTok, and because of that the connection with the trend on the app helped build her name as an artist, rather than as a content creator.

Back in the day we were all advised to “get in where you fit in,” but with the tech world’s influence on music, the way things are now feel a lot more like “fit in to get in,” and if artists want to eat, they have to play that game.

This begs the question – can tech that’s sole purpose is music consumption ever give us new genres of music?

The quick answer is no.

Something all genres have in common – from punk, to disco, to hip-hop, to grunge, to pop punk – is they originated in scenes.

The thing about scenes is they require people to be present. We have to be at shows, discover the music, create the community, and spread the word. Tech can only spread the word. We need all those other steps if any new groundbreaking genres of music are going to be born.

Punk needed venues like CBGB. Disco needed nightclubs. Hip-hop needed block parties. Pop punk needed Warped Tour.

For everything tech people say they can do with their platforms, the best platform for music will always be a stage.

What I would love to see is for all of us to take the power back from the tech world. Let’s get excited about music again. Let’s have more artists not care about playlists, or going viral, and more listeners ponying up $10 to see three or four bands they’ve never heard of.

Once the artists find like-minded bands, and start performing with them, and the fan bases of those bands come together, and start spreading the word, then we can see a rebirth of scenes, and new genres of music being created.

Until that happens, the tech world is going to have us stuck in an eternal loop of the early ‘00s.