There’s a lot of change happening with music. Which ones are you having trouble with? What’s making you sad about music?
If it seems like the world is changing at warp speed, I’m with you. And frankly, I’m having difficulty adjusting to the slow, continuous upheaval and evolution. It’s making me quite sad. Maybe it’s just because it’s January and there are months of cold weather ahead. Or maybe it’s because things that I’ve known and held dear for so long are disappearing. For example, I’m having trouble with:
- The decline in popularity of physical newspapers and magazines
- QR codes instead of proper menus at restaurants
- The decay of Twitter into the cesspool that is X.
- Fast food that’s now insanely expensive.
- Take-out pizza that seems to be skimping more and more on cheese.
- The struggles of network and linear TV.
- Too many confusing streaming choices. When I hear about what could be a cool new show, I spend half an hour looking through all the platforms to find it. (Addendum: The endless scrolling through Netflix to find something both me and my wife will want to watch is really, really annoying.)
- The fact we can’t buy an actual box of Kleenex in Canada anymore. Silly, I know, but…
Then there are the changes in the world of music. Here’s a list of things that have me bummed out.
- Sum 41 has announced their last tour and last show after which they will be no more.
- Rage Against the Machine says we’ll never see them play live again.
- It’s doubtful we’ll ever see Ozzy live again.
- Memories of browsing through multiple record stores hoping to be surprised by something.
- Elton John has retired from touring and I never got a chance to see him live.
- Music charts that actually mean something instead of just being a collection of gamed statistics.
- The loss of radio and music publications like Radio and Records.
- The prospect of AI announcers on the radio.
- Music no longer has any centre. In the pre-internet days, there was a collection of artists that everyone would rally around. Everyone is now free to do their own thing–a good thing–but at the expense of being part of a larger community of music fans.
- Madonna is 65? Paul McCartney is 81? William Shatner is 92?
- Fewer and fewer rock acts are being booked for Coachella and Lollapalooza.
Anyone else want to contribute? Vent away.
fyi try justwatch.com to search any show or movie to find what streaming service it is on, or in the case of movies, if it’s rental only.
Here’s one that’s bumming me out: the fact that, increasingly, the concept of owning one’s entertainment is being phased out in favour of a subscription model, or pay-2-view. The most obvious examples are music and movies, as physical media continues to die a slow death at the hands of streaming services. I still buy CDs, but it gets tougher with each passing year as artists prioritize platforms like Spotify and vinyl. And as for films and t.v. shows, I get a lot of mileage out of my streaming subscriptions, but I continue to invest in blu rays to ensure that my favourites are always close at hand and not subject to the vagaries of licensing agreements.
But this trend is extending to other mediums as well…
At one time, I viewed digital comics as a godsend. They could be bought for less than their physical counterparts, they didn’t take up any space–which is great, considering how much real estate my collection currently occupies–and they could be purchased at any time from anywhere. After investing a considerable amount of money and amassing thousands of digital issues, Amazon, who bought out Comixology, my preferred platform, decided to absorb it into its existing e-book setup. The e-reader, which was once intuitive, has now been stripped of nearly all of its functionality; my library, which used to organize my purchases in an easy-to-navigate way, is now merely a massive haystack in which I need to now root around for one particular needle or other; and the storefront, with its elegant design, has been subsumed by the digital big box store that is Amazon, making it all but impossible to search for specific titles and issues as Amazon’s search feature is more likely to come back with a link to paper towels than it is this month’s Batman. So what do I do now that my library, trapped as it is on Amazon’s servers, has been rendered virtually unreadable…?
And just this morning, on Twitter, I saw a growing discontent among gamers, stemming from a UbiSoft executive’s warning that people should start getting used to the idea of not owning their games. It seems the gaming industry is hoping to follow Netflix and Spotify’s fine example by levying fees instead of letting you purchase their wares outright…
As it’s still early in the new year, why don’t we all resolve to start investing in more physical media in 2024 and supporting brick-and-mortar stores? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the comic shop, and then to Sunrise Records. Here endeth the rant… 😉
I was going to suggest that too. It even knows Candian streamers