this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
88 points (94.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

34471 readers
1297 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.

Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?

OQB @Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 9 points 5 days ago (15 children)

You're exactly right.

WTF algorithm was there to serve us on demand copying mix and demo tapes? We had to touch physical media to get the songs. It took effort, sometimes $5 in gas money, a stack of blank tapes at home, and working two-deck stereo.

Not just for Rage-type alt music and punk, but the entire early hip-hop and rap scenes were almost exclusively bootlegged and home-made.

This isn't about "kids today have it so easy" - this is about good songs overcoming massive headwinds to get popular and simply heard. Music discovery was word of mouth, rumors, and who had what on hand. The thrill of the hunt got you amazing results.

Right now there's probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Right now there’s probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems

Respectfully, i think this is the wrong conclusion. There are more sophisticated listeners today than there have ever been and sub-genre communities are great at spotting new gems. But while the number of listeners grew linearly, the number of bands has grown exponentially, making discoverability very difficult to achieve. That's not anyone's fault unless you consider musicians are at fault for creating so many good bands.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Absolutely fair point, and I agree with you to some degree. I imagine that it's somewhere in the middle, where bands have flooded the space so that if no technical means exists for discovery, we've traded off friction points. Instead of the 90's version where people would drive 40 minutes to the cool reord store in the next town over, now discerning listeners looking for gems have to wade through more and more bands they don't like. It's no one's fault, it's just how it is.

[–] apostrofail@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

the ’90s* version

load more comments (12 replies)