Disagree.

This is a subjective dismissal for a topic that is objectively been enshitified.

This isn’t “back in my day”. There is objectively less quality and massively more quantity.

* With studio quality equipment being reduced to almost literally nothing anyone can be in the game.

* Studios don’t need to pay to developer artists. They are entirely disposable now.

* Albums aren’t at all important. There is very little in the way of major releases outside some traditional artists. Just dump a single to Spotify and walk away.

* Directly from an executive that worked a major label - people that actually like music are no limited to basically just sound engineers. Everyone else has a MBA and couldn’t care less if they were making movies or music or gears.

* From the same high up executive I am social with - Rap has been hit the hardest. It is objectively garbage. There are no Nas, or NWA, or Eminems coming up. The last of the actual poets that got any play at all like Kendrick for example just aren’t pushed. It comes back to quantity, but as a side note he did lament how these guys are the worst to try and deal with if they try to at all.

* Automation has hit this industry with its massive influx of quantity. Basically get on Spotify and get to a level, then you’ll get an automated contact, maybe they’ll front you a few thousand at a bad deal so you can set up your own tour and make a couple dollars. If you fuck up or whatever they just move on to the next one. Literally no one cares about you until you hit a Spotify number.

* previously there were things like handlers and PR. But now, as an artist you are entirely on your own. Want to do a porn or have a mental breakdown? Ok so what, you are more of a number in a system than you have ever been. There is no “guy from the label” until you are at the top Spotify tiers.

* it’s not all studios and MBAs and labels. There’s a side effect going on as a culture we don’t really have a shared listening experience. Since the invention of radio, we all heard roughly the same thing at the same time. Now, kids have their on playlists and maybe they recommend some thing on that playlist to their friends, but you go one school over and they can have drastically different collections. They aren’t hearing the same song on the radio, there is no Casey Kasem‘s Top 40, everyone has been down selecting their own optimization.

* trust me, if you knew my history with music, you’d be shocked as I would typically be the last person in the world to recognize any positive effects that labels and the industry had on the art. It’s strange days my man.

* do you know the phrase “it takes a lifetime to make the first album, and the year to make the second”? Part of that is it your first album has so much polish. You need to hit hard to get the eye of a label. There’s no reason to hold a song back now at all, to work on it, to have versions that you’d like to hear better when you’re touring, versus on a car stereo versus in the studio… there’s no reason to polish anything anymore. You get it out you were Lisa you put it on Spotify and move along. Just like everybody else is doing.

So no. Objectively, the quantity of music has grown exponentially and the overall and polish quality has gone down.

I will old man shakes his fist of clouds all day, but I won’t take some thing so obvious and as many examples is this has, and just dismiss it as that.