Comparing Taylor to The Beatles is an insult to the great band

The Beatles appeared as kings of The Golden Age of Rock. Taylor Swift appears as the queen of The Golden Age of Mediocrity. Kali Yuga, man.

As a musician, it's frustrating knowing that there is a professional team collaborating on every 3-minute pop song, with up to 5 producers and 5 songwriters, even using AI, while I can't seem to find anyone to listen to my homemade music which I create and perform as a human being.

People used to buy music. That’s the big difference. You put your money where your mouth is. Now people are just clicking for a monthly fee. There’s no way you can compare these 2 formats.

Taylor in 2024 sounds much like Taylor in 2016. Compare ‘Love Me Do’ to ‘Rain’ and then realize only three years separate those songs.

Taylor Swift is like fast food whereas the Beatles are a meal prepared by a chef. No comparison.

There will never be a new genre of music again. There’s hasn’t been anything new in music since the nineties. America as the creative innovator is dead.

This is an important point. The shift away from human judgement and towards analysis and data. Modern spiritual sickness.

As an independent musician, singer, songwriter, guitar player, I can tell you unequivocally, that these streaming services do only one thing. They get you heard but nothing more. You can have 250,000 plays and only make $25.00 bucks getting paid less than a cent per stream. You can have 250,000,000 streams and only make $250.00 bucks! It's effing maddening. And venturing into touring when you've already made so little ti finance it is a non- starter. The music industry today is as much of a ripoff as it was 40 years ago. Everyone makes money but the artists.

The same issue has drifen out creativity in American cinema. Frank Zappa said the record industry was better when it was run by old guys who didn't understand the music, and took a chance on an artist if they thought the kids might dig it. A&R departments trying to second guess audience taste ruied the industry in his opinion.

I have been saying this to anyone will listen. It's the McDonalds-ization of music. Cutting costs, cookie cutter, assembly line, and understanding the lowest common denominator ways they can poke pleasure centers in people 's brains.

The word "PRODUCT" says all.... If you don't give a fuck about making money or becoming famous the problem does not exist. The pure joy and depth of creativity is in essence a playing child that's discovering and renewing all the time. Creativity isn't a formula. .. ...

One big event that helped destroy both competition and quality of popular music was the Communication Act of 1996. It allowed a few corporation to buy up multiple radio stations in muiltiple markets across the U.S. Before this law was enacted a DJ might promote an artist or multiple artists from their home town or local area. Each radio station would create its own play lists. This allowed local flavor of different areas to flourish. An artist might become big in their state or geographic area long before gaining national success.

Today, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If that formula had been enforced with the Beatles, Yesterday, Michelle, Eleanor Rigby, etc, would not have been released. Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys would not exist, no Stairway to Heaven, no Bohemian Rhapsody ...........

Pop music & Nashville, too; designed by marketing departments based on consumer habits rather than artists' ideas. I love the moneyball analogy!

Noel Gallagher said that the music industry doesn't like mavericks, today it's full of people who only care about profit and listen to whatever the companies tell them. In the 90s you had bands like Oasis, Primal Scream, Blur or Manic Street Preachers, in the 70s you had bands like Sex Pistols, The Jam, The Clash, T. Rex, Pink Floyd and David Bowie, in the 60s you had the Beatles, Beach Boys, Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Jimi Hendrix, etc. All of them experimented, changed, weren't afraid to go out of their comfort zone, now it's not like that, they just want people like Taylor Swift or Harry Styles, they tell them "wear that dress and shut it. Wear this, sing that and go home"

This guy is spot on. It's all about market analysis & number crunching now instead of judgement. MP3 Science instead of trying to come up with new ideas. People are so worried about AI but what AI does is not much different from what record company execs have been doing for decades. Scraping from the existing catalogue for maximum efficiency & predictable content.

This situation exists throughout the entertainment industry. Large, risk averse corporations control much of the market for movies, music, literature, and video games. The result is a lot of dumbed down, safe, lowest common denominator stuff that has nothing new to say, and specifically in video games, there are gambling mechanics and microtransactions to rip people off. These companies pursue whatever is likely to generate a short term profit for the least amount of effort and risk. Artistic quality doesn't enter into the equation. It seems like most consumers have been conditioned to desire whatever is safe and familiar. I think this is natural on some level - if you like something, you will want more of it - but a lot of people have lost the ability to get out of their comfort zone and explore new things.

Moneyballing in music has been around for a long time: Tin Pan Alley, teen idols in the 50s with professional songwriters... I'm not disagreeing with your point, I'm just saying it has been like this for a long time for mostly "disposable" music (decades later we only remember the classics, but in the time of the Beatles the charts were full of throwaway pop too). The change is that is has become a lot more dominant and calculated.

When comparing music, I sometimes look at it this way. There are roughly two kinds of hit songs. First there are those that are hits for their time, but gradually fade away and are mostly forgotten. Then there are songs that enter the public consciousness and retain a lot of popularity for decades or longer. The Beatles had a lot of songs in the later category. Michael Jackson had a fair number too. On the other hand, I have to confess that I don't know a single Taylor Swift song. I listened to a few but I wasn't particularly impressed and I quickly forgot them. I just remember them sounding very stock to my ears. But that's just me, and I'm squarely in the boomer category. The point is, if people are still listening to Taylor Swift songs as they do Beatles songs, 30+ years from now, I would call those great songs, regardless of if I like them or not. However the jury is still out on that.