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the problem with modern day music

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Greenmist View Drop Down
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    Posted: June 19 2022 at 03:54
Now i dont expect anybody to watch all of this video below, as its 20 mins long, but i have watched it, and there are a few snippets from the video i agree with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

I think the fact that what with the invention of the internet and youtube and spotify, its totally possible for anybody now to have instant access to millions of songs and albums that are out there, and this has changed our attitudes towards music (well most of us at least).     Im 46, so even in MY teenage years and early 20s, if you wanted a song or album for instant access to listen to, you had to go out there and buy it on vinyl, cassette or CD, or record it from the radio to cassette.   And back in the mid 90s, you wernt able to buy 2nd hand CD albums for only 50p or £1 like you can now,  they were £6 a time, back when we were only earning £3.20p an hour after tax, so a second hand CD cost you 2 hrs of hard work.

And like what the guy said in the video, this meant that the little amount of music we did own, and what with the money we paid for it, it meant that we certainly gave our CD's heavy rotation giving us the chance to really learn the songs.    Where as now, the fact we can have thousands millions of songs at the touch of a button, songs have to begin with attractive hooks, otherwise the youth of today will just be "yawn.....next" after only 60 seconds, and then its forgotten about.

What chance has progressive music got with that youth of today?.  When you get songs that are 20 mins long, or a little shy of 20 mins, those songs need 2 to 4 mins, just to warm up lol.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (2) Thanks(2)   Quote DreamTechPlus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 04:20
I think a large portion of the public is going to be attracted to easy hooks and melodies no matter what. On the flipside, the internet has democratised the process and allowed it to become easier than ever for cutting edge artists to find a niche and an audience without the necessary middleman of label interference.

Love, DreamTechPlus.


Edited by DreamTechPlus - June 19 2022 at 04:24
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Cristi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 04:30
This thread shouldn't be in the prog lounge.
I hope an admin would move it to the general music section. 


Edited by Cristi - June 21 2022 at 10:03
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote DreamTechPlus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 04:34
Isn't it about how progressive rock is influence by current music consuming habits? That seems on brand for me but then I haven't been here as long as you.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chopper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 04:44
The recent ascent of Kate Bush to number 1 in the singles chart may be a pointer - people are going to discover music via TV programs so the way to get heard is to get your music on a Netflix show.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote DreamTechPlus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 06:12
It isn't as though Kate Bush was obscure before.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 06:34
Originally posted by Greenmist Greenmist wrote:

...
I think the fact that what with the invention of the internet and youtube and spotify, its totally possible for anybody now to have instant access to millions of songs and albums that are out there, and this has changed our attitudes towards music (well most of us at least). 
...

Hi,

I honestly think that the Internet, AT ITS START, did what the record companies did not want to happen, and that was to make more materials available from anybody ... and of course, all the way to this day, the record companies still complaint about "lost sales", when they deserved to lose most of it, since so much of it was raped off many bands, and screwed many others. It was time for the "people" (so to speak) to show up.

That our attitudes changed is not surprising since it was a new generation and it had different tastes than we did in the late 60's and early 70's. We appreciated the "new music" and specially in America the FM Radio band (folks here still don't know or believe how it made "progressive" music!!!) and we all went out and bought a small radio that had a FM band on it, so we could hear the new stuff in the new stations instead of the old crap AM cheesy sounding materials ... even on a cheapie the new FM stuff sounded way better and cleaner!

Originally posted by Greenmist Greenmist wrote:

...
...
And like what the guy said in the video, this meant that the little amount of music we did own, and what with the money we paid for it, it meant that we certainly gave our CD's heavy rotation giving us the chance to really learn the songs. 
...

This might be backwards. We only had whatever LP's we could get, and played them. So Echoes got heavy play, so did Passion Play and Tales from Topographic Oceans. There were no "distractions" as we think since there was nothing else to play, but what you already had. Conversely, today, the toobie lists three alternative choices (all off kilter!!!) and you check them out thinking they are similar!

The bad side of things was the early 90's when a lot of streaming services found out that they could sell "songs" for 99 cents ... and that hurt everyone ... Apple did not for the longest time even listed the "albums" and only had the songs. It said it belonged to this and that, but you could not search and get the album ... that changed later (this was one of the issues with the Beatles material, btw!!!) ... but they had the same issue with Beethoven, in that you could not get all the movements of the 9th together, because they were listed as "songs" separately ... that ought to tell you the respect and education level of a lot of those computer minded morons that ran this thing and made millions off it at our expense and we said nothing about it!

Originally posted by Greenmist Greenmist wrote:

...
...
What chance has progressive music got with that youth of today?.  When you get songs that are 20 mins long, or a little shy of 20 mins, those songs need 2 to 4 mins, just to warm up lol.


I think it has a bigger and better chance than ever ... with one serious problem ... the majority of the progressive "websites" treat everything as "songs" and do not care for the serious application of the musicianship at the time, that helped create something ... it may have started with the drugs in places like the FILLMORE, and it developed into something far better, though hearing some of that early stuff now, it sounds really good and way better than the "songs" that we get thrown down our throats!

Until such a time as we help elevate the quality of the music PAST THE SOUND I don't think that "progressive" stands a chance, because it will always be referred to poor sales except for the luck few, although the respect for many of these things, nowadays, is excellent and better than ever ... but look at a thread about the top 5 on PA, and everyone and the kitchen sink chimes in to say something ... post something about Kant Freud Sartre Camus etc etc, and everyone will intentionally ignore it. 

Until we get past the lollipop phase of the top ten ... I don't think our music is gonna go anywhere and will eventually die out ... hopefully to be rescued years later by folks with some serious music appreciation instead of top ten kissers and buyers!

Putting the history of all this in the proper perspective is the way to go ... it was the FM radio in America (the BBC in England made sure to try and kill it with the government staying behind it!) that helped make it when the sales across America hit a staggering number ... and the record companies immediately jumped on it, and 10 years later bought all the FM stations (they were mostly local and private) and then turned them into a bunch of top ten "classics" that many of us still listen to today ... I doubt we actually hear it, since the meaning of many of those songs is already gone from our minds ... hearing Neil Young scream in one song means nothing to anyone these days, except to say that he is just another old fart out there. 

With the mentality in so many fans, I don't think we will ever improve and consider "progressive" music as important as it was, AND IS ... !!!!


Edited by moshkito - June 19 2022 at 06:37
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Manuel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 06:37
Nowadays people have very short attention spans. The modern day way of life, when everything has to be quick, has placed a tremendous amount of pressure in our lives. We are ready to pay hundreds fs dollars more for a cell phone plan that gives us three seconds more of download speed, so progressive music, which requires careful, undevided and careful listening, is not necessarily something that will attract the mind of most people in this era, when electronic devices rule our lives.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote DreamTechPlus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 06:56
We are perilously close to being technophobic reactionaries in this thread.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Greenmist Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 07:01
Originally posted by chopper chopper wrote:

The recent ascent of Kate Bush to number 1 in the singles chart may be a pointer - people are going to discover music via TV programs so the way to get heard is to get your music on a Netflix show.

The only good thing that came out of this latest season of Stranger Things, is that its given Kate Bush a second wind.   Now im hearing Running up that Hill in so many vids on Tiktok now. Confused
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Progosopher Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 11:16
The singles market has become dominant. By that, I mean that the streaming services are more interested in individual songs than whole albums. For a full album listener like me, this can be a problem, but then I still collect CDs. Singles have always been more about quick, easy-to-digest melodies. That said, there is still a lot of new great music being made. We have a problem of riches - so much is available it is difficult to sift through to find the good stuff. And there are scads of players out there now, usually very young, who absolutely rip on their instruments. The music biz has always been a combination of dreck and brilliance. In that way, nothing has changed.
The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty"
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 13:19
Originally posted by Progosopher Progosopher wrote:

The singles market has become dominant. By that, I mean that the streaming services are more interested in individual songs than whole albums. For a full album listener like me, this can be a problem, but then I still collect CDs. Singles have always been more about quick, easy-to-digest melodies. That said, there is still a lot of new great music being made.
....

Hi,

To my knowledge, singles was where the money was for a lot of bands, because the record company did not have to lay out a huge sum of money to get something done. It was after the Beatles and Rolling Stones that this changed somewhat ... but having folks like Sir George Martin, Tom Dowd, and many others really helped things get stronger and many of these were too good to be ignored.

The hard part is that to this day, even AM records doesn't know how the heck CTTE sold so well, and then right after the album they hated also sold well, and then they thought TAAB and PP would tank, and both sold incredible amounts, and although both TAAB and PP did not get a lot of play on the FM radio (the other JT stuff was used instead -- most idiots that were the DJ's in rock stations also had a serious issue with new material ... and one could say that they were told to play the blue dots and the green dots - hits and older hits ... and did not listen to a lot of the new stuff at all ... !!!)

To give you an idea of the mentality and idiocy involved, Guy Guden has the story of one night being on the air, playing Golden Earring ... and the DJ interrupted the song and said "it's not rock'n'roll" to which Guy slowed down the album (a la PF in Pompeii) and said "who cares, it's great music!" and then allowed the record to come up to regular speed ... on top of it ... the song was "Are You Receiving Me?" .... the sheer idiocy and irony is astonishing, and I would have fired the idiot on the spot for adding/saying such stupid stuff about any music on the air, and basically insult the audience ... by that time, Guy Guden was well established with the all foreign music stuff and was appreciated by many folks, many of which are just ecstatic to listen to him again on Twitch! That same other dj also did not have a good ear for music ... and could not even make up his mind about PH and VdGG ... and eventually played some, because Guy did it so much.

I'm not sure, or convinced that easy to digest comment about melodies is quite right, but it is as far as AM radio hit song stuff is, but it would not fit on the FM radio band, until the FM stations were all raped by the great corporate rape! (Radio Kaos! later touches on it! And Jim Ladd to this day says nothing about it, because he is in a commercial environment!).

I'm more concerned about the holistic and internal constitution of many of the folks in both radio and the music business ... all we're saying is that most of them were not very well educated, did not know what listening was about, and only played their favorite songs, most of which were "hits" ... and they did that so they could stack up to their friends for being "cool". 

What we consider "progressive music", for the most part was way beyond all that hippocrisy, specially that on most radio stations in America (FM mostly) that ended up bought and then one day ... KMET in Los Angeles was taken down to come back 24 hours later as a new age station without DJ's! We still don't give a poop about it ... and I think that's a serious problem. We can not have "new" progressive music with the same old folks controlling it! Plain and simple!

Check out the worst business decisions ever ... and both the Beatles and Rolling Stones are 1 and 2 ... and it even quotes a dignitary saying that young men with long hair will never have a hit! It shows you the idiocy, the mentality and the lack of appreciation for anything except the money they can get for their mansions, yachts and so on!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Greenmist Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 13:49
Ok boys and girls, i word for today, is "concise"
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote moshkito Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 18:55
Originally posted by Greenmist Greenmist wrote:

Ok boys and girls, i word for today, is "concise"

Hi,

It's a tough subject that has a massive history, and saying things that belong to yesterday and consider them the same today, is likely an error in the expectation that things are the same. They aren't.

What folks fail to see is how important FM radio was, specially in America, when they were all independent and local (corporate rape started in the late 70's buying all of these -- and later the FCC allowed corporations to own more than one station in a location) ... which helped a lot more music get heard on many ears.

The other major fact is the huge difference ... that we don't understand, I don't think ... AM radio is MONOPHONIC ... and it sounds distant and cheesy to anyone's ears today. The signal 50 years later is better, but still very poor when you turn on a STEREO receiver and play an album or CD.

The massive thing that helped "progressive music" the most, was ... STEREO ... and the FM radio coming up in America WAS STEREO, thus giving all listeners an incredible new experience in regards to the music ... and all of a sudden, the "new" experience, allowed for a lot more material that was widely, and quite different than the hit radio AM stations ... 

There is no history of progressive music, without the radio discussion, and how it developed. Now, the main issue with modern is how it applies, and it is easy to say it doesn't ... in which case all the history of the new music 55 years ago and counting, meant nothing to what today's music is showing us. However, today's "radio" is the internet and the toob ... and our experience in these things is way too wide and different to help come up with a decent "theory of relativity" that explains progressive and a lot of the modern music ... which in my book, the Internet for now, is hurting the experience, as it has become the land of commercialism, and we don't even know what it means, or is, and how it affects us ... thus, as mentioned above, the short attention span, could be said to be a problem ... that started with the commercials interrupting the attention in the first place. I had no issue with it placed as proper episodes, but in the case of the toob, it downright cuts the piece of music anywhere ... and screw you and your attention ... and this is a massive mis-representation of the appreciation of music and how you react to it ... who cares about a long cut if the toob is gonna break it up, and you will NEVER HEAR it in its entirety anyway to have any idea what the "continuity" is all about.

It is a serious issue when it comes to listening ... and how we refer/react to it. In most cases I think that we are so commercialized that we don't care anymore ... and that's a problem for new music, which means it has to arrive in a brand new space where the old hands are not controlling it at all ... which is what is happening now just like before. FM radio was independent until the great corporate rape of the 20th century courtesy of the FCC!


Edited by moshkito - June 19 2022 at 18:57
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Atavachron Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 20:05
Concise enough?

As for the topic, I don't think progressive music has had a chance with young people, that is the average young person between 15 and 30, for roughly twenty years and probably farther back.  The question is: does that matter, and if so why ?

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (4) Thanks(4)   Quote DreamTechPlus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 20:22
As someone who prefers pop music to progressive rock music I have to say this thread is slightly embodying many of the negative stereotypes progressive rock fans have acquired over the years. The fact that some of you accept, out of hand, that a) commercial music isn't good and b) it could only be enjoyed by those with a 'low attention span' is bad faith criticism which takes away from the agency of people to make their own critical decisions about what they enjoy. 

Speaking for myself and many others, I've engaged with a wide array of music and my preference for pop comes from a considered place, I think. You're certainly within your rights to criticise pop music if you dislike it, and there are certainly aspects of the way that industry is run which is in dire need of change. But it's slightly churlish to lament the declining fortunes of progressive rock on the one hand when so much of the pejorative, bad faith criticism coming in the reverse direction is rooted in it.

I'm not trying to tone police, here, but no one from the younger set is going to feel welcome or embraced if your opening pitch is "you like bad music because you're undiscerning and have a short attention span, let me talk down to you and fix things."

There are interesting things to discuss here but this thread is dead-on-arrival by operating on implied pejorative assumptions about how a wide demographic of music listeners behave and what motivates them. Especially given that Taylor Swift and Coldplay each very recently had chart smashing success with ten minute singles, opportunities only afforded to them by the internet.

Everyone in this thread is cool. I have no beef. Those are just my two cents.

Love, DreamTechPlus.

EDIT: Changed "you all" to "some of you" as the former was inaccurate and needlessly incendiary


Edited by DreamTechPlus - June 19 2022 at 21:51
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hugh Manatee Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 21:36
Originally posted by DreamTechPlus DreamTechPlus wrote:

As someone who prefers pop music to progressive rock music I have to say this thread is slightly embodying many of the negative stereotypes progressive rock fans have acquired over the years. The fact that you all accept, out of hand, that a) commercial music isn't good and b) it could only be enjoyed by those with a 'low attention span' is bad faith criticism which takes away from the agency of people to make their own critical decisions about what they enjoy. 

Speaking for myself and many others, I've engaged with a wide array of music and my preference for pop comes from a considered place, I think. You're certainly within your rights to criticise pop music if you dislike it, and there are certainly aspects of the way that industry is run which is in dire need of change. But it's slightly churlish to lament the declining fortunes of progressive rock on the one hand when so much of the pejorative, bad faith criticism coming in the reverse direction is rooted in it.

I'm not trying to tone police, here, but no one from the younger set is going to feel welcome or embraced if your opening pitch is "you like bad music because you're undiscerning and have a short attention span, let me talk down to you and fix things."

There are interesting things to discuss here but this thread is dead-on-arrival by operating on implied pejorative assumptions about how a wide demographic of music listeners behave and what motivates them. Especially given that Taylor Swift and Coldplay each very recently had chart smashing success with ten minute singles, opportunities only afforded to them by the internet.

Everyone in this thread is cool. I have no beef. Those are just my two cents.

Love, DreamTechPlus.

From Opera House to Music Hall music snobbery has been with us for as long as people have been paying to hear music. It shouldn't really matter, and I would hazard that it doesn't matter to those who enjoy the music regardless of whether it is popular or not. Those who wish to build themselves up at the expense of others are probably leading a sad life in need of some kind of validation, but that is largely their problem.

Conversely, those who depend on a the opinion of others in order to gauge the worth of a piece of music are just as much disregarding the merit of a piece of music on its own terms (whatever that might entail).

Having said that, people come to music however they choose and I don't think anything anyone says will necessarily change their approach.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (3) Thanks(3)   Quote Awesoreno Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 19 2022 at 23:17
Looks like some people haven't seen all the hip young people sharing tracks on r/prog.

In all seriousness. Let's think critically for a moment. Yes, one could say that classic prog was far more in the zeitgeist fifty years ago. And yes, it IS true that, generally speaking, the Internet and the devices and whatnot have reduced attention spans. I can say that's certainly true for me. 

BUT, we're kidding ourselves if we think that more people were into music that requires attention, contemplation, and general active listening "back then" than "these days" (and I'm not just referring to prog, it's narrow-minded to think that we're separating the wheat from the chaff in some way by heralding it as the be-all end-all of music). Some of you might just remember it that way because you wore out your limited records and you heard that stuff on the radio. And that makes sense. 

In some ways, I can see how the plethora of options provided by the Internet DOES indeed contribute to shortening attention spans. I've seen it first-hand. But you can't tell me that in 1974, some kid put on Phaedra at a party, and another kid didn't say "What the... hey, this is boring, put Olivia Newton-John back on man, we're trying to have a good time!" It happened then, and it happens now, and it always WILL happen. And that's fine. To each their own.

Except now, more people can actually be EXPOSED to prog and other kinds of less-accessible music, regardless of their financial standing, their nation of origin, or their education. It's all out there. There are more people listening to prog now than then. There's more people listening to every kind of music now, because the Internet makes it all possible. Sure, billions will bounce around, never really appreciating music as anything more than a background mood. And billions will also do the opposite. And billions more will be somewhere in between. Have we ever considered that before everyone around the world was connected, people only knew what was around them? Now we can know everything about everyone around the world (for better or for worse, but let's ignore the societal implications of this and focus on the music listenership trends). So obviously it's going to seem like everything has changed and no one can sit and focus anymore. You're experiencing new opinions, new world-views, new people. People you never could have dreamed of knowing in the year 19XX.

What chance does Progressive music have with the youth of today? A better chance than before if we look at it in terms of availability.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (2) Thanks(2)   Quote nick_h_nz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 20 2022 at 00:53
As a few of the comments have either stated or implied, this thread is more or less an echo chamber for the same old folk to wax nostalgia about the good old days, and moan about the modern state of affairs. To paraphrase Bowie, everything has changed, but nothing has changed.

There used to be active and passive listeners of music back in the day.
There are active and passive listeners of music now.

There used to be people who preferred quick and easy fixes of music back in the day.
There are people who prefer quick and easy fixes of music now.

There were people who loved to dive deep into an album and listen to it as a whole back in the day,
There are people who love to dive deep into an album and listen to it as a whole now.

Etc. etc. etc.

Like any style (as opposed to genre, so we don’t get into that old chestnut of an argument and find ourselves off track) of music, prog had its fifteen minutes back in the ‘70s. Like glam, like hair metal, like grunge. Whatever. They all have a time when they are the zeitgeist. And that period is forever more looked upon as the “classic” period. But in almost every case, that style of music never goes away, and will still be appreciated. Just because it is not as appreciated, and therefore not as commercially successful, does not mean it does not have people who will listen.

Prog, because it is meta-genre (sorry, I was trying to avoid this, but it is hard not to), has a better chance of being heard over many other styles, because you can hear prog in rock, in pop, in metal, in folk, in jazz, in hip-hop, etc.

When people moan about prog and the modern music scene, this is often because they don’t even recognise what it prog in the modern music scene. What they are actually bemoaning is down to their own personal preference and nostalgia. It’s the rosiest of rose-tinted glasses, and an insistence that the glass is definitely half full, and not half empty. I’m not saying they are wrong, because music is personal and subjective, and for them it is absolutely right.

But prog is alive and well today and now - and depending on how you measure it, in a better state than it was in the “classic” era.

Everything has changed 
For in truth, it's the beginning of nothing
And nothing has changed 
Everything has changed
For in truth, it's the beginning of an end
And nothing has changed
And everything has changed
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Greenmist View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Greenmist Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 20 2022 at 04:17
Here's another point to bring up, as far as then vs now goes.    It was around the early to mid 00s that downloading purchasable digital audio files started to happen.     One thing thats good about that is, if you only like just 1 or 2 songs from an album, you can pay just for those individual songs and forget about having the whole album.

Before the 00s, you had to buy the entire album just for only 1 or 2 songs, if those songs were never released as singles.   I myself will own up and say "i dont buy uncheap albums as much as i use to, because of this".   But some people say that because of this, bands and artists have become more lazy now.   Bands and artists like The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Elvis Pressely, Queen ect had to work hard to produce good albums all the time, otherwise they knew angry fans would feel cheated, if the album only had just 1 or 2 good songs on, and the rest were just uninteresting fillers.

As for progressiveness appearing in other genres, its traits and structures tho are different than what it is in progressive rock.   With progressive house for example,  the reason why they are called progressive is just because the songs are lengthy (last more than 4 or 5 mins), and they have things like longish intro's and lengthy breaks in the middle.   House songs structured like this makes them nightclub unfriendly.   I can only name 2 bands widely regarded as progressive house........Leftfield and York.


Edited by Greenmist - June 20 2022 at 04:22
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