What will the next trend in music be?

[avedic]

I recently came across an online forum from 1999 that asked the following:

May 8, 1999 8:47 AM
Right now the trend in pop music is guy groups. Backstreet Boys, 98 Degress, NSync, etc. Is their popularity about over, or will it continue? What is the next big thing?
-- posted by bowar

some replies came as follows....

Sooner or later people will tire of such contrived bands. Original sounds will make there way back into the main stream.Bands like the Vines, White Stripes...are a beginning to a more pure effort.
Then there are untold talents that will find their way despite the record industry, the new internet based bands will take off.

The next big blow-up will be Psychedelic Dance!

Good guesses. Turned out to be pretty much accurate. And the last poster predicted the popularity of MGMT and that whole movement.

The last 10 years has seen an explosion of new talent. Electronic music became psychedelic...finally. And "pop" split off into millions of sub genres. The whole idea of "mashups" influenced how a new generation listened to music. Now the idea of a twangy rockabilly riff over a synth bass line and a sampled drum loop from a 1920's record seems not only possible, but quite the norm.

So, what will the next year...or ten years give birth to in the world of music? I think the whole "guitar hero, rock band" thing and the vectorization of music (through tools like www.jamstudio.com) will see music becoming ever more democratized, digitized, and ready to be reassembled with new parts to create new songs.

For instance...like the guitar part in song A as well as the vocal line in song B? Are they in two different tempos and keys? No problem...just whip out your iMash portable music studio and press the "sync songs" option. Instant new user created song. Think the guitar has too much reverb...decrease it. Sounds will not be stored as rasterized analog versions...but rather as vectored quantum digital components that can be altered on the fly.

That's my take on it all. What's yours?
Also...Im asking less what will the music business be like...and more, what will music, creatively, be like.

[avedic]

here's an interesting take: http://www.last.fm/user/Babs_05/journal/2009/01/30/2fy9zv_%5Bmy_gang%5D_music:_the_next_10_years,_2010_-_2020

I don't agree with all of that, but it's interesting. I think the one thing we can definitely be sure of...creativity is going to become alot more fragmented. We don't have singular giants to tell us what to listen to (American Bandstand, Ed Sullivan, the radio, MTv). The internet has taken that power out of "their" hands and into "yours." Expect creative changes to follow.

It's an exciting time to be alive. And young.

Some excerpts from the above article....

...in the 00s we had download culture and a total disregard for what the music industry wanted us to buy. The whole dynamic shifted. We had the internet at our disposal. We could do whatever we wanted, listen to whatever we wanted, when we wanted, and on an increasing number of platforms, thanks to ever cheaper digital technology.

If people were complaining in the 90s that things were accelerating, in the 00s, acceleration was almost at breakneck speed, with trends barely lasting a season sometimes. Some trends arced over a number of years, but even they were forced to evolve to keep our dissipated attention.

As the decade comes to a close, we see a shift away from modern America / Western values in music to an embracing of musical styles from around the world and from history.

...with rising mass unemployment, we can expect to see a surge in social networking, and everyone knows online advertising doesn't work. Artists must be personable and have warmth and humanity to keep listeners coming back. Communication must at least appear to be two-way between artist and listener. ...this new angle will become the new norm.

The current global recession will have an immediate impact on the early years of the next decade. With rising unemployment comes greater creativity.

We can reasonably expect to see more homemade music and it quickly becoming available to all online, especially via social network sites.

The second half of the next decade is harder to see. It depends how well we recover from the global recession for a start.

Where before it was quite easy to predict a return to a particular decade, it's not so straightforward now with no unifying medium to bring us all together.

Instead, it might be helpful to look at how we use music in our lives. We always want dinner music, dance music, background music to shop by or drown out the neighbours and the city by. We always want music to relax to, seduce to, sleep and wake up to. We want music in our cars, on our mobile devices, and we want it cheaper or free. In amongst this almighty racket, we want music to think to, to inspire us, to mull over. We want music to mark out our groups, our social standing, maybe even our age. Sometimes we want a break from music we hear all the time and want to rest our ears on something different. These are all givens.

I think as in fashion, where we no longer have a single defining style we are all forced to adopt, the next decade might be a free-for-all, with us listeners grabbing what we want, whenever we feel like it. We will be less the victims of cynical marketing and more the consumers of music that resonates with us. It means musos will be in heaven and people who need a little guidance, who aren't so into music, will feel a little lost.

The choices of bloggers will therefore become increasingly critical. We might see a shift away from official sites such as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and Stereogum to smaller, individual blogs run by real people with real opinions. They are already seen as more trustworthy. Mass marketing might try to fake it but hopefully, we will see through the ruse.

And with the music industry having less influence on artists, we can expect to see more self-indulgence, more progressiveness across the genres. We can expect baroque prog pop and rock, as well as more jazz-influenced music.

Far from an end to music as we know it, the collapse of the music industry in the 00s will free us to explore and we should see a rise in people enjoying music. It might just be we're not all listening to the one same thing.

[Reino]

VEry interesting, I know in ten years rock will be dead, and most definantly blues

[kitteh]

*sigh* reino.. what? I hope you're joking.

Interesting article, Avedic (or rather, interesting quote, and I intend to read the rest of it ). fun to speculate about. I've been kinda out of touch with current popular music for a while now, but I have noticed a growing trend of people incorporating an increasingly large spectrum of influences in their work.. and this is across the board, genre-wise... jazz, rock, folk, blues, pop, soul (and many more, I mostly know people who operate more or less within these genres)... everyone is borrowing from everyone else, and the music is getting less easily classified as being specifically "folk" or "jazz"... now it's "freak folk mixed with punk, with a free jazz influence".. So maybe I predict the death of the rigidly defined genre, or at least a redefining/renaming of genres (maybe we won't be able to use the word "pop" anymore, per se) sometime within the next decade. I dunno.

[jacstar]

VEry interesting, I know in ten years rock will be dead, and most definantly blues

[wheelyq]

They can't kill rock will a loaded M-16 and a stealth bomber. But garlic, now that might kill rock.

[Reino]

They can't kill rock will a loaded M-16 and a stealth bomber. But garlic, now that might kill rock.

?????????
Come back when your clean.

[Telephone Shoes]

I can see something abit more extreme coming out. Currently the charts are full of whimsy and people more concerned about their 'look'.

What that is I do not know. But generally in music counteraction wins through.

[mash.]

I'm guessing electronics. That's the direction it's taking over here. which is sad because it would be a nightmare if rave culture got too accessible.

[kitteh]

I'm guessing electronics. That's the direction it's taking over here. which is sad because it would be a nightmare if rave culture got too accessible.

yeah, imagine what that would be like.. *flashes back to highschool*

[mash.]

yes, that is exactly what I mean.

[kitteh]

I know, I was agreeing with you!

[avedic]

I never was into electronic music at all. I mean at all...music had to be organic. Have "real" instruments etc.

I don't believe that anymore at all. Anything that can produce a sound is capable of contributing to subtle meaningful music. Bands like MGMT, Animal Collective, and Team Sleep are what opened me up to that.

I actually went to my first "rave" last week. Went with my girl to see and dance to The Glitch Mob. I wasn't at all into it until we actually got there. The sounds shook my whole body and were glorious. Smoked some weed and took some molly(which ended up not working) to enhance the experience....it was a rave after all. Great great time. Would do it again in a heartbeat.

[Jolie]

I'm guessing that in ten years, music will pale from the lack of new creative sounds and revert to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKQMY6x4e5U

[wheelyq]

yes. music will END in ten years. then we will go back into the forests a listen to the squirrels.