Once all the conversation over music distribution settles and once we stop worrying how people break through to a mass audience and once we stop imagining that music has the slightest chance of being unimportant, there is just one question: does music matter?
People listen to less music now than they did 30 years ago. I really don’t see how they can be listening to less music and would guess they are listening to vastly more simply because there is so much and it is so available. In that sense, it is similar to television. Network viewing is down 70% but television viewing is just about constant everywhere.
The average person in the US consumes tons of music, it is everywhere from piped in at supermarkets to on your Iphone. The problem isn’t people not listening to music though it may be about people not caring about music.
Rock nyc writer Steve Crawford said: “I don’t think that as many people listen to the same music as they did in the 1970s. There was much less independent music back then and fewer music outlets. Now, anyone can release a CD and there are satellite and cable stations that are segmented into small niche interest groups. I think just as many people are listening to music, but the shared/community experience is gone.”
So, the take is music has gone from front to background in most people’s lives. That’s sad indeed unless if it hasn’t for you, if it is still way FOREGROUND.
Still, Steve has a point and I think it is a point that can be taken further. Rock scholar Bill Holdship made the point that music doesn’t matter to people anymore and it, sadly, appears to be true. I think it hasn’t mattered less since the birth of jazz in the 1910s. The roaring ‘20s through the 1950s jazz was integrally the sound of the States and the sound of America, eaten up by rock and roll in the late 50s and rolled over by MTV.
Pop music stopped being the center of too many lives. There were too many options and really the generation gap kinda faded away and so with an infinite amount of distractions and with no social gum to the sound, music disappeared into the world of background clutter.