One often hears that there’s no money to be made in music anymore. But then, there was no money to be made in music when Bob Dylan started his career either—at least according to Bob Dylan. “If you could just support yourself, you were doin’ good,” he says in an interview clip included in the short compilation above. “There wasn’t this big billion-dollar industry that it is today, and people do go into it just to make money.” He appears to have made that remark in the late nineteen-eighties (to judge by his Hearts of Fire look), by which time both the industry and nature of popular music had evolved into very different beasts than they were in the early sixties, when he made his recording debut.
“Machines are making most of the music now,” Dylan adds. “Have you noticed that all songs sound the same?” It’s a complaint people had four decades ago, thinking of synthesizers and sequencers, and it’s one they have today, with streaming algorithms and artificial-intelligence engines in mind.
Not that Dylan could be accused of failing to change up his sound, or even of refusing to acknowledge what advantages they offered to the individual musician: “You can have your own little band, like a one-man band, with these machines,” he admitted, however obvious the limitations of those machines at the time. But he understood that this new convenience, like that introduced by so many other technological developments, came at a cultural price.
Even in the seventies, recording was becoming perilously easy. In the sixties, no matter if you were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or indeed Bob Dylan, “you played around, you paid enough dues to make a record.” But bands of the following generation “expect to make a record right away, without anybody even hearing them.” As for the solo acts, “if you’re a good-looking kid, or you’ve got a good voice, they expect you to be able to do it all,” but “if you don’t have experience to go with it, you’re just going to be disposable,” a mere instrument of producers who took authorial charge over the records they oversaw. All these decades later, when it’s become easier than ever to find any kind of music we could possibly want, nobody must be less surprised than Bob Dylan to hear “so much mediocrity going on.”
Related content:
Bob Dylan’s Famous Televised Press Conference After He Went Electric (1965)
Brian Eno on the Loss of Humanity in Modern Music
The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse: Rick Beato Explains
How Computers Ruined Rock Music
How Bob Dylan Created a Musical & Literary World All His Own: Four Video Essays
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Yeah because the 60s and 70s didn’t have corporate machines pumping out one hit wonders with short lifespans. /S
I argue that since anyone can make music these days and collaborate more efficiently with anyone around the world, we have better music today… On average… Than ever in history.
incroyable
The golden age of rock n roll and pretty much all else is behind us certainly. It’s harder and harder to be original and create something new as it’s all been done now. Access to recording and instruments let the flood gates open and now everyone and their momma can post their garbage online. Dylan is/ was one of the best and that won’t change ever, best take what he says as gospel cause he really was a conduit antenna to the universe and we were lucky enough to hear what he had to say. He influenced everyone.
Bob: “Well, music’s getting worse because nobody these days has learned the art of how to become America’s great musical taxidermist by taking dead works, stuffing them with just enough artificial life, and mounting them in a dimly lit museum of borrowed ideas. You see, you have to really work at being a folk fraudster in the guise of a patchwork poet dressed in the garb of authenticity while looting the past like some smooth-talking con artist at an estate sale. If we just had more people who could learn how to be the grand larcenist of song — a cat burglar of culture — we would have many more deeply beloved aesthetic graverobbers, just like me, for everyone to mythologize.”
Old man yells at cloud. Plays his multi platinum 3 chord song he stole from a literal slave.
Aloha, it’s unfortunate that the Music World succumbed too the greed in our Country.
i agree. almost all the young people around me can make music on their phones. My band does not have the passion to preform anymore because we unfairly won at a school concert. i say, “let’s make music ” And in response i get, “I can make music on my phone, it’s faster and easier” Wheres your passion? you leave the soulless ai you claim to hate in the fate of what you create? maybe we’re too young to be taking music seriously right now but I just wish more people around me had the passion. But i understand it being easier, sometimes i get lazy. But i wish to put my soul into the music i want to make, I think maybe i have the passion but not the talent. But yeah, modern music especially those made for music apps just sound so soulless and when people DO have soul it’s seen to be “cringe.”
This is true for many but not all. My son DavidCombs writes all his own songs, most topical as news evolves. His band called BAD
MOVES was chosen to open the festival at Wolftrap Park. He now plays in 2 additional bands.
Many of our friends think he looks like you! But his music is all new and original. He grew up writing songs with me. I am not a professional like he is , but have recorded many of my own songs when I was a high school history teacher and tutor.
The gift of melody. Not a thing. Mastering and playing instruments in unison. Not a thing. Producing a catalogue of songs each year. Not a thing. Lyrics that express feelings, thoughts, dreams in rhythm and rhyme in uncringable language. Not a thing. Sings that follow intro, verse, chorus, verse format. Not a thing. Songs are spliced together from many takes, and many tracks. That’s the thing.
Bullshit. 1–4‑5:6 chord progression, 1–3‑5 turnaround is all you hear now because of entitlement. Shit for brains mediocrity demand a place in the music business regardless of the piss poor product they put out. Talent remains uncompensated and loser thieves steal from the gifted to maintain their presence in the industry due to nepotism.
Such a stupid disgusting title I’m not even gonna bother to read the dumb fucking article
Words to live by and “artists” to forget.
We all take our riffs from someone else. From Hendrix to Eddie. Sorry to those shoulders we stand on.
HipHop and Rap killed music, not technology.
You become whatever your around Many people have never the beautiful folk songs gospel songs and so on. They have only heard modern day garbage Creativity is being lost or never learned.scary and sad
Love Bob, got most of his albums, but sadly he’s got old man syndrome. Remember when your dad told you that everything you listen to is crap and music was so much better in my day, and it doesn’t matter how old you are this applies to every generation. Music will always evolve but always be influenced by what came before. New instruments, new ways of thinking, new ways of recording. Mozart embraced the new and was ostracized, Coltrane, Davis, Beatles, Bowie, Prince, Rotten, Knuckles, KLF, I could keep going but you get the picture, they all grabbed what they had and took it to a new beautiful place. Embrace the new or become an old man. Viva la revolution.
I’m sorry, but who songs sounds all the same. Bob dylan definitely writes the same song every single time.What. at this point I can’t even say I have any respect for this person.I don’t know why we were still worshipping.HamHe doesn’t had a good song for seventy five years lol.. Talk about projecting every single one of his songs and albums is almost indistinguishable from the next. Lol. I think you could even call him a one hit wonder.Because most people can only name one of his songs…for real i actually used to be a fan. I don’t know how many I could actually name two. Lol
Do you really believe the plastic, unmelodic, derivative, repetitive, lyrically vapid popular songs of today are on the same artistic level as the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, et. al.? What beautiful place are you talking about? Songs today are manufactured in recording studios by ten or twelve sound engineers rather than composed by genuine melodic geniuses. Is this the beautiful place you speak of?
Like Kevoglee, I agree regarding “old man syndrome”, (in politics, too). As soon as one decides it is over, it is. It was ever thus. Perhaps the biggest issue, today, is just how much more is out there- including good. Like really incredible. Of course there will be lots of mediocrity. So what. Makes the great stuff greater, the gems brighter. Now, I can directly reach out, congratulate and encourage, help, participate, unlike the good/bad old days. Old man syndrome is real- I’m 67 and fighting it constantly. The silent killer of the soul.
Like Kevoglee, I agree regarding “old man syndrome”, (in politics, too). As soon as one decides it is over, it is. It was ever thus. Perhaps the biggest issue, today, is just how much more is out there- including good. Like really incredible. Of course there will be lots of mediocrity. So what. Makes the great stuff greater, the gems brighter. Now, I can directly reach out, congratulate and encourage, help, participate, unlike the good/bad old days. Old man syndrome is real- I’m 67 and fighting it constantly. The silent killer of the soul. PM
I’m wondering, does he explain why he’s always been a complete asshole? If someone tells me yes I’ll actually read this article.
You don’t even need talent to make music and get it through the masses today. Anybody can afford a digital studio now, and can make music without playing any instruments or understanding theory. That’s why there’s so much bad music. But there is a lot of good music today that you don’t hear on the radio.
You don’t even need talent to make music and get it through the masses today. Anybody can afford a digital studio now, and can make music without playing any instruments or understanding theory. That’s why there’s so much bad music. But there is a lot of good music today that you don’t hear on the radio.
Well said! At a time when we have 100s of millions of songs literally in our pocket that we can listen to it at any moment, how can anyone complain about a lack of good new music?! I get it if people don’t want to take a few minutes to explore new music…you like what you like…the old stuff takes you to a happier time…whatever the reason. But people who say there’s no good new music are simply ignorant, and probably a little lazy. If they don’t like the algorithms, get out of the house and check out a live band this weekend. There are so many touring bands out there that you haven’t heard of who are working hard and sound very good! But you do have to put SOME effort into it.
Give it up poser, your sad attempts at poetry are great examples of why Bob rose and not one person in 8 billion knows who you are. Cute but trite!
I have always been a fan of Bob Dylan’s and find it a bit unusual for him to put anyone’s music down or be so judgmental toward it.
Reminds me of how his “going electric” was received and what the older generations along with the “FOLKIES” said about it.
Come on Bob, don’t start showing your age now!
I’m gonna have to call B.S. on that,no way is any genre of today’s music better than the 5os, 60s 70s or even 80s for that matter
I’m gonna have to call B.S. on that,no way is any genre of today’s music better than the 5os, 60s 70s or even 80s for that matter , karaoke killed the blues 😊
Most of today’s music is, yes, “mediocre” and most singers, all sound like whinny little girls and there’s not one concert I would attend to, not one. The 60s, 70s, 80s was the best and I don’t give a shit if I’m showing my age. Yes, I’m 80 years old and all the really great rockers, singers,composers are gone and we’re left with mostly repetitive garbage.
Are you serious.? It’s your opinion I know but in the future like 20 years from now classic music/songs will not exist as all. Sad but you know it true. Good luck finding a bar somewhere 20 years from now and there’s a band playing classic hits from 2025. And
There’s nothing wrong in going back in time, if you’ve got something to say. A man a guitar, or any other instrument is enough if you’re lyrically creative and your message resonates with someone else. People today may be hungrier than one might think to a time of simplicity. I go back to Bill Halley, grew through dogwood, the English invasion, Country while. serving in the Army etc. Disco a complete turn off, rap seems more of a racial response to grievances. We all know Dylan, but what about Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits? In my mind. it’s time to turn back the clock. If we do, maybe the world can be a better place. Sorry for the rant.
No he does not. Listen to his stuff from other years — Like the songs from TOOM are not the same from the ones in BOTT or BOB, y’all clearly have only listened to the 3 or 4 early folk albums. He also uses many different chords a chord them.
ChatGPT could offer a more incisive explanation of whether music has gotten worse, and if Yes, actually explain Why. Why did OpenCulture publish this empty blather?
If I’m reading this correctly, this isn’t based on any quotes from Bob that are more recent than the 1980s, making this a pretty pointless clickbaity article.