noteworthy wrote:

It sometimes seems as though this new technology is the major change in the popular-music scene. People may therefore assume that the continuing decline in CD sales represents merely a shift to music downloads. In fact, the decline is greater than that explanation would allow. People are buying less music today than in previous years. While the effects of downloading are often discussed, it's not just the music-delivery system that has changed. What we have long considered to be mass culture has increasingly become a collection of niche cultures.

I do lament at this factual little nugget:

Early hip-hop stars like Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy were at least as critical of American society as Dylan ever was, and they led some commentators to imagine hip-hop artists as authentic and politically significant spokespeople for poor, urban African-Americans. But in the last 10 years or so, even though hip-hop artists like Jay-Z are popular music's most innovative contributors, the form has become less political, and its performers seem less culturally central.

But I think the real instigator in this phenomenon, the root cause if you will, is the fact that people don't have the time to partake and participate in music the way they did. We are a nation built on toons because we don't have time to sit down and listen to an entire album end to end anymore. As my good friend Luke said, it's a decadent luxury to spend that much time on something like reading a book or listening to an entire album by one artist. It makes it that much harder for an artist to convey their message and change your perception and lest we not forget that we live in a much more complex world. I just recently listened to an entire album end to end about a week ago. It was probably a full year or more since I had done it before that, and another year before that for the previous one. That's just wrong.

RE: Where Have All the Rock Stars Gone?