By Skye Milburn
Music has always been extremely important to culture and society, but are we starting to devalue it? The uniqueness of music and the people who listen to it is something that has been ever changing throughout the century. Music is something that we as a society can always rely on to help bring us together, and, personally, it’s something that I simply can’t live without. Sadly, however, a lot of this diversity and uniqueness is starting to be overshadowed by trending music. This music can be found on a lot of different social media platforms that people are using every day, so they feel that they have no need to discover new music and just stick to what’s popular.
Now, don’t get me wrong, popular music isn’t necessarily bad, but it causes other really great bands and artists to not get as much credit or attention they deserve. In this day and age, social media and other online platforms are the main way to form fan bases and become known. So if all of these platforms are only filled with popular music and popular artists who are already popular, it becomes really hard for these smaller artists to succeed. Let’s take Taylor Swift for example: she is probably one of the, if not the most, popular artists in the world right now. Her billions of fans and followers on social media platforms cause the algorithms of these platforms to constantly be showing her content and songs to people who like music. The same cannot be said for smaller musicians.
A person’s music taste generally comes from their personality. If a person is more mellow, they might like genres of jazz; if a person is more outgoing, they might like rock or pop, ect. It’s not necessarily the genre of music that is flawed in our current society, but it’s more of certain songs and artists that become more popular than others. The fact is so many talented musicians are overlooked due to the mainstream pop industry and its need for profit.
If the music industry wants more money, they aren’t going to showcase really good smaller artists, but rather they are going to keep showing the most popular ones. If the music industry cared more about talent than they do popularity, things could be different. Back when these mainstream artists were first getting popular, there were a lot more diverse popular music options. These days all you hear about is like the same group of 20 or 30 people. According to Rebecca Nicholson, a journalist from The Guardian, “Spotify launched 16 years ago and now claims to have 615 million users worldwide: in less than two decades, it has fundamentally changed the way we consume music.” This shows that ever since mainstream music became popular, everything changed when it comes to the way we listen and consume music. Hopefully in the future, the music industry will be less flawed, but it’s highly doubtful.
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