Music hasn’t gotten worse, you just haven’t dug deep enough.

“Songs these days are so commercial and repetitive.”, “Music is boring, it used to have soul.” These days, it is common amongst the older generation of music enthusiasts, or disenfranchised younger music fans to have the same sentiment about modern music. I am here to declare that no, music hasn’t gotten worse. You’ve just likely never looked hard enough for good music.

As a younger music fan, I understand the sentiment. It is easy to look at the current top 10 global charts on Spotify, and just think that the repetitive, same-y pop acts such as Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars and Harry Styles, who gave often dominated the global charts since 2010, are truly representitive of the music pop culture zeitgeist of the 2020s. I am here to provide an alternative opinion, that no, popular music isn’t stagnating. Instead, it is evolving and becoming increasingly diverse.

Foreign acts such as the Kpop boyband BTS, and the hispanic Grammy winner Bad Bunny have taken the music world by storm, with 12 songs from BTS’ comeback album, Arirang, taking 12 of the top 50 spots on Spotify; and Bad Bunny’s Grammy winning, non-english album Debí Tirar Más Fotos taking the world by storm after an electric Super Bowl performance, which showcased diverse South American and Latin culture.

So, if current music is getting more and more diverse, why is the decline of music quality and diversity a popular talking point amongst many music fans? Rick Beato, a music producer and YouTuber with 5.54 million subscribers makes his stance clear. Rick’s main arguements, are that the ease of access to music production technology, and ease of consumption through streaming apps, have decreased the quality of modern music substantially.

This point of view argues that the mass production and consumption of music has made music less valuable, potentially due to the law of supply and demand, driving oversaturation. While a sound arguement, this perspective often limits the increased possibilities and differing perspectives produced from amateur music. In the 1990s, a similar arguement was raised, with the introduction of tape-recording. This created a boom of home-grown talent, from off-kilter acts like Ween helping to influence the creation of Spongebob, to the rise of raw and heavy grunge in Seattle with bands like Nirvana. This era introduced many cultural shifts in music, thus disproving the notion that oversaturation drives a lack of creativity in the music industry.

So, if the ease of access to music production has bolstered creativity, how do we discover new, good music in this day and age? Homegrown communities such as Album Of The Year and Rate Your Music are score aggregation communities that showcase community-driven voting and have a focus on the quality of music rather than celebrity fame.

Such acts to become successful due to such communities, are personal favourites of mine, YouTuber-turned musician Quadeca, and the psychedelia-drenched pop duo Magdalena Bay. Both artists are boundary pushing, innovative musicians who’ve gotten much recognition from the wider internet music community for their work, both being praised and rated highly by YouTuber and music critic Anthony Fantano. He has rated Magdalena Bay’s album, a prestigious 9 for their album Imaginal Disk, and Quadeca’s Vanisher, Horizon Scraper an excellent 8, showing that modern acts have the artistic acumen to produce good albums.

So, has music truly gotten worse? Depends on where you look, but, if you look deep into various communities, you’ll find gems of human expression, music that probably won’t see radioplay anytime soon, but the fact doesn’t diminish the quality of the work.