The barriers to entry are so low that there is mediocrity in music - it's like everything else these days. But like, say, BLOGGING, the opportunity for talent to be recognized is also more available.

Unfortunately, as an old coworker used to say: talent is cheap.

I think music and a lot of culture in general has just hit a creative wall. From the 1920s to the 1970s, progress in American music came from cross-pollination between white and black music. Sometime after hip hop and punk, it all just ground to a halt. The best music since then, from Nirvana to Kanye West, has been derivative of the past.

When the midi interface hit the music industry, it gave composers a rapid turnaround of their ideas, that they'd never experienced --Frank Zappa said it made composing more like painting.

But I remember this, from an editorial in the New York Times in the early 90's: it won't give us more Beethovens. It will just give us more Hummels and Diabellis.

..."Sturgeon's Law".

I've been thinking a lot about the effect of reproduction cost on the value of art. When you admire an art object one major attribute is the effort the artist put into the artifact. During an art tour a local water colorist showed how he reproduces his work with a scanner and ink jet printer. While he numbers his prints there is no way he can break the litho plates that made quality prints expensive. But just because I can operate an ink jet printer doesn't make his art less valuable.

For most of history music has been a performance art, troubadours would sing for a meal. The first music charts were the sale quantities of sheet music still performed by musicians. The record music industry came about because of the expensive recording and reproduction technology. Recording and reproduction was the bottleneck between the artist and the consumer and the industry controlled the quality. Now with the near zero cost recording and reproduction there is no bottleneck, and no restriction on the quality.

Musicians now are distinguishing themselves by there live performance, gaining an audience of followers and creating an new culture. The Earshot Jazz festival started with Garfield High Jazz band, winner of the Ellington competition, and ended with an original composition by Evan Flory-Barnes: Acknowledgment of a Celebration, with live orchestra playing hip-hop to a packed house. Kids playing big band, orchestras playing hip-hop, this is the new culture.

Let's talk about the record industry -

These dinosaurs refused to accept the realities of the internet revolution and still cling to hopes that we can go back to the 1970's golden age. It's not going to happen.

Let's also talk about the horrible acts marketed by the brilliant gate keepers of the music industry- the 1 hit wonders, born of the MTV age, whose looks mattered more than their musical talent. (Hell, throw some auto tune on it and any talentless hack can be a star!)

Let's not forget the corporate radio industry. They killed music through consolidation and narrowly defined play lists and unlistenable amount of commercials. (No wonder nobody listens to commercial radio anymore!)

The record industry collapsed because of their own crapulence. I say, good riddance!

Sure anyone can make a record and post it out on the internet - but in this new reality, there are some real gems emerging. You have to wade through the crap - but it is well worth the effort.

Viva la revolution!

When literacy and inexpensive paper became widespread, I bet the professional scribes got upset, too.

Now everybody can produce recorded music! Sure, Sturgeon's Law still is in force, so at least 90% of it is crap. But even the crap is usually crap with a beat, and personal factors can make it quite endearing.

Which would you really rather listen to, a Duran Duran re-union record, or your daughter's excursion into making beats?

Or maybe a random Salon commenter can win your heart: http://www.soundclick.com/justjohn

But I don't expect to get rich doing it.

I too am a musician (one obsessed with history in fact. My band Pinataland writes songs about forgotten historical stories) and am a little mystified by someone making the claim that there's little good music being made. I'm completely down with the idea that the larger problem facing the music industry is the lack of barriers to entry and I've been saying it for years to anyone who tells me how downloading is bad. Basically, in the 60s-90s, the recording industry made it seem (really for the first time in history) that being a musician was an economically viable career choice for a large swath of the population. When in the 90s the barriers to entry were reduced to practically zero, it made for a huge explosion of musicians and the reducing of the value of any one of those musicians to virtually zero. But the problem is *not* the music that's being made. There's amazing music being made all over the world that's accessible in an instant. You don't even have to be that dedicated to find it. You can click around on myspace for half an hour and probably find 5 bands you want to hear more of. The problem for the industry is that audiences are so fragmented that it costs more to find and reach these tiny niche audiences than it pays to sell to them. And I think audiences don't share music with each other the way they used to since everything's so accessible, so you can't even count on word of mouth to help. But blame the situation on a lack of great music? Hardly.

I'm surprised Kutiman hasn't come up yet. He's an Israeli musician who used Youtube clips of other musicians to compose his last album. His work is pretty catchy; I would call it a new sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the "Internet is stifling the creativity in music" position. My take is that if there is a lull, it is because musicians and music lovers are in an absorbing phase. They've been given easy access to an incredible amount of material. They (we) are working through it, but when they're saturated and feeling ready to create again, think about what they'll be able to create from all the sources they've been absorbing. I predict a rash of articles on "new creative era" and "cross-fertilization brought about by the internet".