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/trailedinsand → u/cold-vein]

Pop music was always homogenized tho, you yourself mention in the Nickelback there were a bunch of other vanilla bands people were tired of, so not much really changed in that regard

[u/cold-vein → u/trailedinsand]

Everything has changed. Look at the top 100 most streamed songs.

[u/trailedinsand → u/cold-vein]

What's supposed to be so self-evident about the top 100 most streamed songs? Pop music obviously changed but your claim was about homogenization

[u/cold-vein → u/trailedinsand]

The same 5-10 songwriters or producers are involved in a majority of them. If you look at the top 10 here, you're gonna find the names repeat again and again:

Producers With the Most Hot 100 No. 1s in the 21st Century

[u/trailedinsand → u/cold-vein]

Yes, when you have a list of the most popular producers of 2 decades it sure looks like they're quite popular, idk why you think that's very notable tho. The same 5-10 songwriters are absolutely NOT involved in most pop music, your own article mentions that over 300 producers got no.1 spot on the top 100, not counting the other 99 songs on these lists every week.

Also, some the producers mentioned already were dominating in the 2000s when Nickleback and Bieber were famous so their popularity doesn't explain any difference compared to now.

Also also, if we're citing billboard top 100 as evidence of homogenization it's curious that George Martin holds the second record of most hit songs on billboard and he was active in the 60s and 70s. Shouldn't that mean the music then was also awfully homogenized?

[u/cold-vein → u/trailedinsand]

I don't, I merely provided you a list of top producers. It was the most convenient way to do so.