Why does music not hit the same anymore?

Is it me, or has music not really been that great as a whole recently?

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I feel like I’ve been struggling for a long time to stay consistently interested in new music and I find myself constantly going back to older albums and artists because I don’t enjoy as much new stuff as I used to.

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I’ve always loved music. Ever since getting my first iPod shuffle back in the day. I was six years old and had to ask my aunt to download 808’s and Heartbreak and American Idiot from iTunes with a gift card that I had received for Christmas.

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It was the white one made out of plastic that had the usb port directly on it so you could plug it straight into your computer.

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Those were the days.

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Ever since then, I have been obsessed with music, always staying up to date with what’s new and what new artists are coming up.

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I even carried that hobby into college, where I would eventually become the Concerts Director for my school and was in charge of booking real artists to come and perform throughout the year.

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I even was making an effort to enter into the music industry for a short while in college (I never went through with it obviously). I interned at one of the top talent agencies in the world at the time for a quarter during my senior year where I had to commute from Riverside to Los Angeles three times a week.

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So I say all that to say, yeah I like music a little bit. Unfortunately I’ve more or less made it a cornerstone of my personality for the past 20 years of my life.

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But these days, I feel like music just isn’t hitting the same.

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I have a few theories as to why I may be feeling this way.

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I’m getting old.

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Maybe as I get older, I just don’t enjoy as many new things that come out. I think about old people and how they always talk about music that was coming out back when they were young. They talk about the good ole days and how the music these days is trash and compare it to the music from their youth.

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Maybe a version of that is starting to happen to me now, but I’m only 25.

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But I’ll be completely honest, I’d rather listen to Late Registration by Kanye West than the new Yeat album any day of the week.

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Maybe I’m just old now.

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‍Music isn’t as good anymore.

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This is a crazy theory and honestly I don’t even think I believe it or want to believe it. Music taste is all relative, and what I think is good, you might think is terrible, and vice versa.

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When I was in high school, going to music stores trying to get my hands on all of A Tribe Called Quest CDs I could find, I felt like there were so many artists and so many things to discover and it was never ending.

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It seemed like there were so many artists to find that I would be finding new music forever.

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But now, there’s probably more artists than there ever has been before thanks to the internet and social media. With this logic, there should be even more good music out in the world than there ever has been before.

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But also, maybe the sheer amount of artists has watered down the overall quality of music so it sounds worse as a result.

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I’m not challenging myself enough.

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I’ve considered the possibility that I’ve become too comfortable with my music taste, and I’m not pushing myself to investigate enough new artists and genres that I hadn’t looked into before.

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Maybe I think I’m trying to find new things, but really I’m not trying hard enough? I’m not challenging my palette enough to the point of things just not feeling interesting or refreshing.

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This could be the case, and if this is true then I don’t even know how to find new music outside of the ways I already do. I feel like I sometimes get into my own echo chamber of artists and it’s hard to break out of that.

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But on the other hand I do be finding myself listening to songs that just sound like a tin can bouncing around a concrete room, and I’m liking it. I think I try and push myself pretty hard.

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I’m overstimulated by everything (spending too much time on the internet).

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This is the theory that is probably most true for me personally, and maybe for everyone else too.

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Maybe music isn’t hitting the same because there’s just too much damn stuff to watch/listen/read/learn.

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Rarely do I ever listen to music for the sake of listening to music anymore. It’s always on in the background as I do other things like drive or do chores. The same goes with youtube videos also. It seems like somehow I’m wired now to always have some sort of media playing in my ears while I multitask and do something else.

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It honestly feels like I have ADD or something, because I feel the need to constantly be distracted by just noise. It doesn’t even have to be something amazing or incredible, just something that is relatively interesting and it will work just fine.

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I think the overall overstimulation of our brains with things like youtube, social media, music, and then just regular life stacked on top of it is making everything else seem less special and impactful. And as a result it just begins to feel like it blends in with all of the other noise.

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When you have so much of something, the perceived meaningful quality of it goes down because it seems like it’s everywhere and never out of reach.

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Economics baby. Law of Supply and Demand.

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I really think that because there are just so many things we can consume, it effectively waters down what we do end up consuming.

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Hearing a good song isn’t as impactful anymore, because for the past three hours you’ve been flooding your eyes and ears with just noise that you end up forgetting in about 10 minutes anyway.

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So what now?

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I’m actively trying to fix this. I’ll literally go out and do things while actively not listening to anything (like a normal human being).

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I’ll walk my dogs, read a book, maybe even write this blog with nothing but the sounds of the world going and my unfiltered thoughts flowing through my brain.

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It is actually nice sometimes to be able to focus on one task at a time, but when I want to zone out and not use my brain muscles, I always fall back to playing something in the background.

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It’s a work in progress. I’ve learned your attention span is something you need to work on.

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But I don’t know, if anyone else feels the same and agrees or has any other theories as why this is happening, let me know. I think I’m going crazy.