I'm probably the umpteenth person to say this, but a huge factor has to be the quality of the music itself.

Not only is it much worse than it was 20 years ago, the approach to writing is totally different.

Artists used to write albums. They put thought and effort into creating a body of work that would be attractive to consumers. They put out singles for main intent of getting people to buy the album.

Nowadays, it's not unusual for an artist to just release a single that may never appear on an album. They're all looking for the quick hit, and can't see past tomorrow's Top iTunes Download List.

But it still goes back to the music and frankly, writing and playing skills are not nearly what they once were.

Wrong. Just look at the disco era of the 1970s. Do you think those people that were in those discos every night were teenagers and youngsters? No, because teenagers and youngsters were too young to get into discos. Most of those people were grown and had been teenagers during the late 60s and disco music was totally different sounding than the music they had grown up.

The same thing in the 1980s after disco's death. Do you think the people in the nightclubs were teenagers or youngsters from the 1980s. No, because they would have been too young to get into clubs. Those people had been teenagers in the 1970s and the music of their youth had sounded different than what they were partying to as adults also. Even a lot of folks that grew up in the 1960s loved 1980s music.

I never heard people bitching about music to the point of saying that it actually "wasn't music" until the shit hop era of the 1990s. Why? Because shit hop isn't music. It's just a bunch of stripped down "nothing". Styles have always changed and people don't mind change. But when the change is worse and becomes a cheap stripped down "nothing", yes, people do mind. And as for style changes, we haven't had one since the early 1990s which is the longest period ever. Shit hop dominated then and it still dominates. Why? Because it's cheap. Styles used to change around every five years. Why won't they change now? Because they have manipulative labels and radio stations keeping the style the same....cheap, cheap, cheap.
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[Edited 3/11/09 6:43am]

guitarslinger44 said:

Disco was exactly what hi hop has become. It was everywhere, and many well known artists had to "go disco" if they wanted to get any play.

Disco turned into pop-funk that dominated the 80's as well.

Take off your rose colored glasses. There are plenty of grow ups at the clubs these days, so I don't know what you're talking about.

RodeoSchro said:

I already issued a pretty long post about the rise of the album over the single during the 1960's due to the advent of FM radio and the reinvention of the album as a thematic art form instead of the collection of singles, but you are right. Not only are songwriters today looking for that quick hit (often at the behest of those same record labels), but they are literally writing songs as mass merchandising product. Not only do the lyrics and melodies have to be made very simple, but they have to write music to be sold in multiple formats. It used to be that artists, songwriters, and producers would try to craft a decent song that would get played on the radio, but now they have to craft a song that will not only get radio airplay, but also can be sold as ringtones, be licensed to TV shows and commercials, and be licensed to video games as well (and I'm not just talking about Rock Band, Guitar Hero, or Dance Dance Revolution either). In the R&B and hip-hop world in particular, the whole emphasis of music production is to create music than be sold on these multi-formats.