My response to Rick Beato.

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"Cannibal Corpse listening party" is basically how we like to spend our Saturdays.

Reading album linear notes was definitely a thing for me. What brands of gear did the band use? What studios? Who was the producer? Studio musicians? Guest performers? This could have been minutiae but I was captivated by it…almost as much as the music itself.

When Rick Beato said it, what I understood was "The Real Reason Why **MAINSTREAM** Music is Getting Worse". So I didn't think he was necessarily "wrong", his argument just didn't apply to anything I care about. I too think it's an exciting time to be a musician. Even a no-budget, no-name nobody like me 😁

I still remember when I got my first walkman and first scorpions cassette after saving for over a year. The novelty of taking the music wherever you wanted and having headphones to immerse yourself in was a big win.

This is a prime example of how to have a real discussion that includes disagreement. It's positive, well thought out and articulated such that it's very clear where you stand but shows that you are listening to the other side of the argument and respectfully hearing the points being made. It's totally okay to agree with some and disagree with others while furthering the discussion. I seriously wish more conversations about divisive topics played out exactly like this. Great response Bernth! Like you, I too enjoy Rick's content and have my own set of experiences that can live in both worlds.

I think Rick Beato's point was about mainstream music. That which is distributed by the major labels, and receives the most media attention, thanks to marketing teams. These "artists" are treated like consumer products. Pop music is getting poorer, that's a fact, but the music galaxy around it is getting richer.

And here's I'm sitting thinking "What?! You had digital camera when you were a teenager? Not film? Ouch. I'm getting old."

Two things can be true and your views vs Rick’s are certainly not mutually exclusive. Rick has very clearly been speaking about the ills of mass-market music, while you are discussing independent artists. This type of scenario has already been described in a famous quote: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” The music that is being heavily promoted via mass-market media is unquestionably getting worse in most cases. But yes, talented artists can independently produce incredible music and make it readily available to everyone. There’s another famous quote I feel is appropriate: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Without a label and their publicity/distribution power, a very limited number of dedicated enthusiasts CAN find your music, but WILL they?? Meanwhile the regurgitated AI, quantitized, autotuned songs that all use the same samples, presets, and 4 chords are flooding the airwaves, being featured in commercials, boosted by paid influencers, getting exposure at corporate music festivals, etc. Rick’s point is about the widely available and therefore mass-socially shareable music being degraded into a cheaply produced homogenized commodity. The quality and diversity of a 1974 or 1984 Billboard top-20 vs a 2024 Spotify or iTunes top-20 is striking, and not in a positive way.

Album cover art is what I miss.

This is so true. I created 2 singles. Instrumental with 1 guitar. 1 recorded on iPad the other on iPhone. Cost $9.99 each to get streamed to 250+ services. They actually got play on Spotify, YT, and Apple Music. Will I make money? NO and that wasn’t the point. The point was to do it. To be published. A life marker. I’m 62 and did this! That was the point.

Rick B ain’t wrong my friends

There's absolutely no way I've would have discovered my favorite bands/albums if I didn't have internet.

Pretty soon the labels will collude with tickeaster. "Want to play live nation venues? You'll need to be signed to one of Warner Media Group subsidiaries. And they're taking a 95% cut.

Pretty much 100% in agreement with you here - I'm 64 and I've been paid to play off & on for over 50 years now, and I'm more than a little fed up with many of my contemporaries who say that music was better then / is worse now - I think that maybe there is an argument to be made that audiences aren't as good as they used to be... Though I'm not a huge fan of digital sound (it gets better as memory becomes cheaper), I totally agree with you with regard to the level playing field argument. The World Wide Web works best when it connects disparate groups of people who otherwise would not know of each other's existence - those connections collectively add up to more hits than any one artist, however well hyped, can achieve alone. Frankly, anyone who hasn't been blown away by the sheer variety of talent on offer really isn't looking hard enough. Music is a big place, and as far as I'm concerned is something that you should do rather than a commodity that you consume. Here's to open minds...

The world need more positive and kind people like you

I have been writing metal music since 1996.. but because of Rick's points, I ended up just focusing on my IT-related day job & my music kinda took the backseat for decades. THIS video is a wake up call for me. This is TRULY a good time to be an musician since everyone has a fair shot at the market. - and at a GLOBAL scale, at that. Thank you for inspiring music & words, Bernth. There may be hope for a lot of us old-school independent musicians, yet.

A lot of my favorite songs were never played on the radio they were on albums I bought because of the songs that were on the radio.

I am "old school", I was raised in the 80s and 90s, and I can assure you all that listening to music was a very, very different experience. I learned about what music was out there almost exclusively through MTV and whatever friends had discovered. I also started learning to play guitar and bass, and in Portugal where I grew up, guitar players were as ubiquitous as soccer players, so needless to say I was immersed in an environment where music was treasured and was a common topic for discussion. I can't hold it against anybody for the environment they grew up in, but in so many ways the "next generation" simply can't see how diluted their musical experience is, compared to having to buy music one album at a time. Its entirely true that music used to be not only important and valued but also DELIBERATE, if you wanted portable music you had a walkman or discman and you had to choose in advance what you were going to listen to. Its not only about music but about art and entertainment, the fact that you have endless choices now days means you can listen to something for 30 seconds and just move on to the next thing like it doesn't matter, there are thousands of fantastic artist out there, but you don't value any single one of them, if you look up "cool dragon art" you have an infinite supply of it, so each artist is just a drop in the bucket. Its the same with the dating pool, in fact, you don't value the person you're dating because if they have some minor flaw that annoys you then just keep looking, instead of being satisfied. And that's it, the more you have the less you are satisfied, the less you value any one thing. But it can't be helped. The internet is an ocean you can never fully explore, and it is past the point of no return.

Those were the days when I bought CDs at the store and went home listening to it while reading the boklet included. It was a whole experience