The Fading Sound (And Influence) Of Music

Monday evening, I gave my cohort Suzanne a sneak preview of yesterday’s ‘loudness’ rant, and an interesting email exchange (we’re on opposite coasts, thereby begging the question of why my dear friend was still working past 9PM ET, but I digress…) ensued. So interesting, in fact, that I thought I’d devote today’s post to an expanded version of our cyber-discussion.

My contention is that nowadays, only a miniscule percentage of the people who are supposedly listening to music are really listening to music. For most folks, in contrast, music is something that’s playing while they’re simultaneously doing something else. In my discussion with Suzanne, I used as an example my experiences (which Stereophile has also sadly noted) at music festivals. Assuming I don’t have access to a soundboard feed, I stick my mics 13′ in the air, where they’re unfortunately often exposed to wind noise, because the alternative din generated by the audience is far more disquieting. I look around me, and hardly anyone’s actually tuned into the sounds coming from the stage…or for that matter, even looking at the stage. Instead, they’re all shouting at each other, or into cellphones, so that they can be heard over the music. Not to mention the fact that many of them are roaring drunk (or otherwise intoxicated), thereby stumbling around and bumping into me and my gear, no matter how inconspicuous I attempt to locate myself…

Is it just me, or do you also think something’s very wrong with this picture? Why did these people spend abundant money and time traveling to-and-from and attending a music festival, if they aren’t actually listening to the music? This isn’t, of course, just a festival-only situation. Be honest; for how many of you do least one of the following scenarios fit?

• Music in the car is primarily a stimulation means by which a driver stays awake during a long commute
• Music at the health club provides the motivation to power through a workout
• Music at home supplies a simultaneous counterbalance to boring housework, or fills the otherwise-awkward gaps in cocktail party banter

Even if you’ll grant my point, you might still ask ‘what’s the point’ beyond the grumbling of an admitted music fanatic? In the spirit of interdependence, I’d argue that this increasing dispassion with music affects numerous segments of the entertainment and technology industries. Consider these exemplars:

• I’d argue that most folks’ ambivalent-at-best attitudes towards music directly correlate to the increasing prevalence of piracy and other forms of copyright infringement. People who don’t value music also don’t have any compunction about stealing it or inappropriately sharing it. Granted, P2P-fueled bandwidth consumption might be good news to ISPs, but it’s decimating the music creation industry. And regardless of what you think about record label intermediaries, at the end of the day no budding musician is going to make this his or her primary occupation if there’s no tangible income-generating potential involved. So let me ask you; what affect will a dearth of new music content have on the entire music infrastructure…hardware, software and services? And don’t get me started on what generally passes for musical ‘talent’ nowadays…
• Next, I’ll focus on one particular segment of the hardware infrastructure; home theater playback equipment. The evaporation of the high-end, unit profit-rich portion of the market is a direct consequence, I feel, of the fact that few people listen to music in a critical, focused manner anymore. Without a viable high end to technologically continue pushing the entire market forward, innovation stagnates, any semblance of profit disappears, and nobody makes money (even at high unit shipping volumes).
• In a related point, I believe that the lack of popularity for critical music auditioning was the key factor in the non-emergence of surround sound. As I’ve written many times in the past, surround music presentations can be highly immersive, whether they’re used to create special effects or the illusion of performance auditorium reverberations. But in order to meaningfully experience surround sound, you need to be sitting still in the sweet spot…an audition scenario that’s unfeasible if you’re moving around in the room while the music’s playing.
• And what about music quality? High-resolution audio as a successor to the Red Book audio CD has proven to be a non-starter; if anything, thanks to an embrace of aggressive lossy compression by suppliers and consumers alike, the counter trend has occurred. This quality degradation has serious implications to semiconductor suppliers hoping to up-sell their customers on ICs capable of large sample sizes and high sample rates. It’s also counter to the higher-capacity demand aspirations of HDD and other mass storage suppliers, considering that consumers’ priority seems to be squeezing as much music as possible into a given amount (and price point) of capacity, not in maximizing the quality (therefore the bit rate, and per-track file size) of that music.

Add your voices to the chorus, folks; does the sad song I’m singing make any sense?