The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it when discussing why streaming recommendations feel stale, why polished modern music feels homogenized, and as a source for the quantization/grid-editing critique.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2024 to 2026.
What it is
Rick Beato, a music producer and YouTuber, argues in two acts that music is declining because it is too easy to make (DAWs, quantization, pitch correction) and too easy to consume (streaming, endless catalog). He discusses the combined effect on musicianship and listener engagement.
What people said
Recommends noufalibrahim · 2024-07 · Hacker News · on “Why don't they compose music like Bach any more?”
I don't know about Bach. However, one thing that strikes me is that the easiness of producing something of high quality probably means that it's just high enough to seem so for most people and not really as high as the things that were considered high. Rick Beato had an interesting video on this phenomenon. I'm not very musically literate but I found the general idea quite insightful [this video]
Recommends Kelteseth · 2024-12 · Hacker News · on “Spotify Shuts Down ‘Unwrapped’ Artist Royalty Calculator with Legal Threats”
After nearly 10 years of Spotify I think I have heard it all. Now my discover weekly is filled with rock covers of pop songs or music I'm just not into. So either the algorithm got bad or I discovered all music I like. I can recommend everyone this video by Rick Beato: The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse [this video]
Cites kmeisthax · 2024-07 · Hacker News · on “Copying is the way design works (2020)”
It's important to note who is pushing the deception, here. Creative industry is composed of both labor (artists) and capital (publishers). I file artists under labor because their valuable economic resource is time. They make money when people pay them to make art. Unauthorized copying has harms, but the primary effect is that artists have to expect to be paid money up-front, since the only way they get profit participation on the sale of copies is if there's a strictly enforced set of laws to grant a monopoly on copying. That being said, money up-front is still a very common way for artists to get paid, so "artists need to make a living" is a half-truth. Paying per-copy and agreeing not to
Cites throw0101a · 2026-10 · Hacker News · on “What Is Gridifcation”
> [LINK] Source is "The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse" from 2024: * [this video] * Found via transcript search for "fool in the rain": [LINK] Also similar "HOW WOULD JOHN BONHAM SOUND TODAY? (Quantized)" from 2019: * [LINK]