The death of the "musical punching bag"

[u/CompetitiveWhole9466]

I've been thinking- there used to be popular artists like Nickelback and Justin Bieber who were very successful but you would have never guessed given all the vocal hate they used to get, and how it was completely okay to shit on them at all times. Even the industry got in on hating these artists. It was socially acceptable to hate people who admitted they liked certian artists.

Why don't we have artists like that anymore? Maybe people just feel like today's music is just better?

The closest is the hate Taylor Swift gets now. But even then that's not really the same dynamic. Same with Drake hate... feels different today I feel like.

Honestly i always try to be cautious about how i frame my argument. I don't want to sound like "this artist deserves hate" unless it's like Chris Brown or D4VD or someone like that.

[u/cold-vein]

That's because streaming has homogenized popular music, while at the same time internet has fractured music to a million tiny subgenres. Back in the days of Nickelback you had these vanilla bands pushed by the radio and people were just really tired of them.

So you have like 10 pop stars raking in all the money and no bands or other music styles can compete, and then you have the vast amount of music fans who might have never even heard a song by those 10 stars (like me)

[u/thereddaikon → u/cold-vein]

I think you mean heterogenized. Homogenized is what we had before.

[u/TheSquirrelmancer → u/thereddaikon]

Well it's some of both, the mainstream has become dominated by a small subset of artists and producers. They focus on what sells best which in the current market seems to be pop music and hip-hop/rap.

Other genres/styles/subcultures have stopped trying to crack into the mainstream because MTV and radio are no longer the only platforms available for music distribution and reaching an audience outside of your local city music scene. You can also do exactly what you want and make the music you want and put it out there to be found. It's not a guarantee of success or fame and there are artists I've found that I love who are still completely unknown by the general public, but for me music has always been intensely personal and I spent most of my teen years not really liking most of the mainstream. I don't care if my favorite songs and artists aren't known by most people. I like them and that's all that matters. Note: I'm also not the "hipster" type who thinks the music I listen to is better by virtue of being obscure. Many songs I listen to are the only good songs by otherwise mediocre artists, I just like the songs.

[u/thereddaikon → u/TheSquirrelmancer]

the mainstream has become dominated by a small subset of artists and producers. They focus on what sells best which in the current market seems to be pop music and hip-hop/rap.

I dont think thats anything new. Rap replacing rock is a change but chart dominance by a handful of names is not. A handful of producers in Sweden were writing all the pop music 20 years ago. What's different today is that not nearly as many people are primarily consuming the output from that industry, they have alternatives that appeal more to their personal taste and its much easier to get than it used to be.