Is music dead? And if so, how long has it been dead?

[cl1ck]

Music is not dead, tastes in society have shifted to crap. People like what other people like to fit in.

[Emman85]

Originally Posted by donniedarko

It seems like literally nothing is going on in music right now. Indie is more or less dead, I mean Mumford and Sons, Foster the People, even M83 is just as boring and lacking in originality as Rihanna and Katy Perry. It seems like all music today is either aimed at teenage girls/small children or rooted in nostalgia and trying to palely imitate the classics.

I even miss 90's music now, and I hate the 90's. Say what you want about the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, at least they were a phenomena. Even 2005 had noticeably more going on. I've heard people say 'who's Carly Rae Jepsen', seriously. NOBODY aside from 13-17 year old girls and hipsters are paying attention to modern music. Because it's so boring and breaks no ground.

Man are you missing the big picture, in 2011 EDM exploded big time, it is definitely a huge, huge phenomena the likes of which we haven't seen since the disco era. It's influences are literally seeping into everything, from commercials with dubstep backdrops to artists from many different genres having to adapt to it's sounds if they want to remain relevant. It almost seems like dance music might be having it's "punk/new wave" moment, it was getting tired out with the endless sawtooth trance synths, it is now focusing on mid range bass warps, micro edits, and weird vocal manipulations. It's been a long journey for dance music in the US but it seems to be making a fundamental shift in music from the previously dominant hip-hop/alternative rock paradigm.

Rihanna interpolating dubstep wobbles and trap beats into her songs is definitely a lot fresher than countless indie bands regurgitating sounds and styles that have already been done in 1968 or 1982, this is a period where a lot of the mainstream music(in places) actually seems more adventurous than the "indie" scene.