With the increased use of technology and social media taking over the 21st century, the music industry has had to change a lot in order to keep up. Unfortunately, lots of these changes have been negative and have caused issues for musicians, created burnout for listeners, and lowered the standards of contemporary music.
While it’s easier now than ever to create a viral song, the problem is with how it’s gaining popularity and how long it’ll stay relevant to users. Social media allows its users to use short snippets of songs (usually the chorus) and apply it to their own videos. This is how songs become recognized for only a short segment. An example of this is Steve Lacy’s song “Bad Habit”—it became incredibly popular on TikTok. However in October 2022, when Steve Lacy played the song live, the concert goers only knew the chorus creating a very awkward situation.
Another problem is songs becoming overplayed online after being used in multiple videos, creating real burnout for listeners. Sabrina Carpenter’s song “Espresso” is an example of this. It became very popular, and for awhile, people couldn’t get enough of it. Then people started to get annoyed after hearing it in all the videos they watched. This oversaturation has caused too many songs to become unlistenable because they have been overplayed.
Social media does allow for small artists to develop a fanbase after creating a catchy tune and having it go viral; however, many music makers won’t ever make it that far. The likelihood of a musician making it big is close to nonexistent, but the creative process is a grind for most musicians. Sally-Anne Gross, and Dr. George Musgrave, lecturers on Music Business Management at Westminster University, published a book on the mental health of music professionals. In this book, they studied over 2,000 artists to discover their experiences and work conditions. Over 70% of them reported having high levels of anxiety, and 68.5% of them reported having depression. They found that the reason there was such a high percentage of musicians struggling mentally was due to their “status of work, status of value, and status of relationships.” They had financial problems from being self-employed and struggled to see success. This left many musicians questioning whether or not their profession could even be classified as a career. Musicians typically correlate their identity to their creative abilities, and in an industry where their wellbeing is not typically considered, they are left chasing after markers of success and status in order to “make it.” This causes them to have anti-social working hours and an “always on” mentality to keep up with publicity. Even when musicians do break through to some amount of success, they must keep putting out music to stay successful, often at the expense of meaningful relationships and valuable time.
On top of this, popular modern music gets stripped of its depth. Studies done by Joan Serrà, Álvaro Corral, Marián Boguñá, Martín Haro and Josep Li have shown key elements of music, such as pitch and timbre, have lost variety over the last 50 years. Their studies have shown an increase in loudness that has caused the dynamic range to be restricted. This also crushes the emotion of soft sound and it ruins sound quality.
There will need to be dramatic changes in the music industry in order to prevent any more damage that threatens music. Music lovers can redeem the art to some extent, but so much of modern music is determined by industry demands.