“Everything is too easy,” Dylan said of streaming music. “One stroke of the ring finger, middle finger and a small click is enough.”
music industry legernd bob dylan comments on the boom in streaming services over the last few years. In an interview with wall street journalthe singer-songwriter shared his belief that the industry’s pivot to streaming has made music “toothless.”
Dylan said:
It’s all too easy. A single stroke of the ring finger, middle finger and a small click is enough. I dropped a coin into the slot. We’re pill poppers, cubeheads, day trippers, hanging out, hanging out, eating blue devils, black mollies, whatever we can get our hands on. Not to mention nose candy and ganga grass. neither. It’s too easy, too democratic. You need a solar X-ray detector just to find someone’s heart.
wait, what?
Dylan’s problem seems to be two-fold. It’s music that takes time, and the music itself is becoming less emotional. Dylan himself has revealed earlier in the interview that he is a streamer, explaining that he primarily uses streaming his services, satellite radio, and (gasp) CDs to listen to music.
Unfortunately for Dylan, the age of streaming is going full steam ahead comeback As the preferred format among Generation Z millennial generationAccording to Statista, streaming is most profitable way Music consumption will increase significantly in 2021, and its popularity began to overtake traditional formats such as CDs and digital downloads around 2014. 83% of music industry revenue Streaming is also the cheapest way to consume music in this day and age. Spotify When apple music, the two most popular streaming services in the world for $9.99 and $10.99 per month respectively. Frankly, more people listen to music than ever before, and that’s probably not an entirely bad thing.
Whether music has become less sad in the streaming age, or, as Dylan puts it, “toothless” is entirely subjective. There’s something to be said for the way streaming forces music labels and artists to prefer playing it safe to pushing boundaries. TikTok virality When Post-release edits Shape how you create art.Hypermanufacturing of this music And the pursuit of hits that satisfy the public’s taste buds is itself a toothless approach.
But Dylan’s point that music makes painless may not be entirely accurate. A 2018 study reported by music news outlets pitchforkIn the 30 years from 1985 to 2015, music could have gotten sadder. BBC reported similar findings in 2019, ion reported similar findings in 2020. For an anecdote, see “Driver’s License” by Olivia Rodrigo.An absolutely poignant heartbreak ballad about love going wrong was definitely one of them greatest songs of 2021 and Juggernaut for the Streaming Era Since then, the song has racked up 1.6 billion plays (remember, it was the relatively unheard of debut single for an actress-turned-singer-songwriter).
Some music has no teeth, some doesn’t. Some music is painful, some music is painless.maybe it Sounds smooth on a computer, but may sound gritty on vinyl. Whether or not these things are true is up to the listener and not entirely dependent on how the music industry responds to technological advances.