Is the collapse of college campuses killing music?

Instead of “video killed the radio star”, it’s now video games killed the audio star.   

I haven't read all the responses, but I'll reply to the original post first..

I'd say no. I went to college back in the 90's and I don't remember anyone "trading" anything. CDs were just becoming affordable and CD players in cars were starting to become a thing as well as portable CD players becoming available.

Most kids I knew in college had favorite bands and had tapes or CDs of them already. Generally they found the band via the radio then went and bought the album.

I don't think college had much to do with it. I think radio had more to do with it, but even then, I think MTV still had a considerable influence too.


So here's my take.

I think the increase in availability of music caused the downfall of "music".

Think about it.. Back then, there was only a few songs you might have liked on the radio/MTV/movies/TV show/etc so you went and found it and bought the album, then listened to the songs you liked from the album until you got tired and then found something else. You remembered the bands because there were only a few of them being promoted.

It also took effort and time to go through this process, much like watching shows or movies on TV used to be.. With just a few channels, you planned around what you might want to watch, etc.

But with the rise of availability, you start hearing more stuff that falls within your likes and you spend less effort and time searching and now it's just served up by the hundreds. Band after band of similar music shuffles through your streaming service and each track sounding more similar to the last and nothing stands out anymore.

You've become ear-blind because it's all too similar and when you're exposed to something so much, it means less and less.


You end up listening to the genre instead of the artists.


And then you start listening to it as "background" filler rather than listening to the songs. Same thing happened to TV as well. Now you have cable with 200 channels and 4 streaming services that you pay for but can never seem to find anything to watch.. Because it's far too much choice to be decisive. You struggle to find something to watch while you eat dinner and then you turn it off four seconds after you take your last bite of food, then you turn on some music while you do the dishes or the laundry.

College didn't kill anything but careers with their hundred choices of worthless diplomas that cost more than someone will ever earn with that diploma.

What killed music and TV is too much choice. When people are faced with too many choices, they tend to not choose anything.

The unwritten law of capitalism, only the strongest survive has certainly applied to and led to the closing of many smaller weaker schools who during the pre pandemic boom spent every cent on expansion of “ remote campuses. Well the expensive class A office spaces they called remote campuses. The perception of a crisis of a exists because most of the public has seen it all play out through the lens of copycat journalism that is partly the result of the weakened programs that was the result of all these expansion dreams planned out by MBA’s who attended these expansion dreams. But nobody saw it coming.

Counterpoint: the rise of community non-profit radio stations. This has happened for a number of reasons: FCC relaxing restrictions, aging DJ’s with big record collections, disgust with commercial programmed radio, etc. I’ve seen it in small towns and big cities, and it is rad. There’s hope yet.

There are still college stations like KEXP with a strong online presence, which are better resources for discovering new music than they ever were. They are still tastemakers, along with influential playlists on streamers. Then social media, of course, has organically let some very talented folks find their audiences.

It’s a shifting landscape, as it ever was. Music is more alive than ever, with everyone having access to distribution channels. The only thing that is harder is making a living at it.

There is nothing transgressive about modern popular music. Tailor Swift just tried to copy Madonna’s Erotica and Sex but unlike Madonna there is nothing sexual about Tailor Swift. She also copied and collaborated with Florence Welch who copied Loreena McKennitt. It is the dumbed downed robot music of the already dumbed downed, tuned mostly robotic music. And that’s just the most popular artist.

Nirvana and Public Enemy were transgressive. The b side of nevermind is nuts for a pop rock record that often sounds like a heavier cheap trick with polly, territorial pissings, breed, drain you. even lyrically. polly is explicitly about a teenage girl getting kidnapped, tortured, raped, and presumably murdered from the perspective of the serial killer.

The radio never really bothered with the b side. If a kid likes that and doesn’t just wear the shirts, it’s a gateway drug into hardcore and celtic frost, and then you can pretty much play him death metal. it only takes like a few steps from a diamond record to get kid into crazy shit and then into real music from the people who made the crazy shit who could play and guys who made the poppier stuff who could really play like soundgarden.

Black Hole Sun is a gibberish lyric psychedelic rock song played through a Leslie and Kim Thayil has a shred solo in the middle of it. Yeah they fader rode it down but it’s there, it’s cool, and it’s a gateway drug to all kinds of crazy psych rock and shred metal.

The same with Jesus Christ Pose. When I was a kid I wanted more bands that sounded like that. And I found no other rock bands who sounded that heavy and fast until I got into Bolt Thrower, Cathedral, and Incantation. And Jesus Christ Pose was banned from MTV for being anti organized religion and Incantation? Holy shit those Miran Kim paintings are still surreal today like Larry Carrol in an abattoir. They’re disgusting and revolting in a way Tipper Gore could never imagine.

90s metal was insane until it was corporatized and the artists like Morbid Angel got on major labels like Giant Records but even though it got dumbed down, Warner Brothers signed a death metal band. I mean Beherit got on Universal in the early 2000s and all of the wall of noise stuff ended up in mainstream record stores. And it still sells. NWN is killing it with the reissues and merchandise that UMG wanted no part of. They’re not interested in free money. They’re interested in social media influencers to please their corporate owners who are all lazy sloths making new music that sounds like trash while the old music is out of print. Warner let all of this metal stuff go out of print for bands who still tour every year like Deicide and Suffocation. It’s free, easy money. It’s just that they gutted their a&r, their low level marketing guys, etc. Warner owned Roadrunner and let all those titles that sold go out of print after they fired Monte Connor.

Anyway the industry is run by shitty conglomerates who are so vertically integrated they have no idea what’s going on now, what record is selling 500 copies, who sold a few hundred demo cassettes, and if they can make that a few thousand lps and CDs and get some real money and do that 100 times. Instead they’d rather license out crap they own the rights to and sue rappers for sampling.

Nice to see Loreena mentioned. My buddy Pete and his wife and a couple of their friends often serve as her backing band.

As for metal, the new Kings X brings the heavy. Dug is what, 72 or something and still kicks ass.

Onto the subject of the thread. My kid, who is 18, often chides me for listening to boomer guitar bands. He couldn’t have less interest. Music just never clicked for him, although he heard plenty of it growing up. He is on the spectrum, so when something clicks it usually has staying power. Music just never did. Otoh another friend has a kid on the spectrum who is the same age and is studying trumpet at university. He obviously got the bug in a big way. Although he doesn’t listen to much of the same music his dad did and does.

Cheers,
Geoff

Probably more like Tik-Tok/YouTube Shorts. Kids don’t have the attention span for an entire song, let alone a full album.

Umm that would be capitalism, the market sets the price, if nobody wants to pay it the price goes down.

College rock wasn't primarily driven by college students, it was driven by the audience of college radio stations who were allowed to have more wattage than they are now by the FCC. This created a commercial outlet for less mainstream music, allowing more people to make it and participate. The audience was everyone listening to those stations, not just students. The FCC killed "college rock".

It's the Collapse of Common Sense!
I do like 10CC.