Old Man Yells At Soundcloud

There are various complaints about what passes for music these days: homogenization, where too many are beat quanting and autotuning and compressing and using all the same plugins and samples, or where distribution and track selection is centralized and has all the blight and rot one expects from an excess of Mammon—Payola, or AI innovations invented on the spot. With too much music, the value of eight hours, forty four minutes, and fifty three seconds of "Telemann Collection - Baroque Music" is fairly low. Don't like it? Swipe to something else. Another innovation would be to remove the swiping: pre-cradle to grave sonic sculpting based on biophysical feedback. Creepy? Probably. Corporate goal? Probably. Think of those profit margins!

However, complaints about new things are not new; Rameau's theory of harmony reportedly caused some to complain that it made music too easy to compose, now that anyone could put together some notes without the requisite uphill snow walking. Others might regard at least some of the USW as composers hiding their techniques to preserve various competitive advantages. DJs even without much centralization one might suspect of "following the herd" as there are pressures to play what is popular (by way of listener counts and thus ad revenue because the rent is due), and the smaller stations might follow the trends of the bigger cities, or at least someone else, as basing your work off what another has done means less effort for you.

A mostly global internet where most folks are funneled into what amounts to an AOL or two will have various effects, much like Pangaea coming together did way back when. As with Pangaea, one can still find innovation (and failure! so much failure!) hidden off on the fringes.