The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse: Rick Beato Explains [Video]

Ear­li­er this month, a North Car­oli­na man was charged with gen­er­at­ing songs using an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem and con­fig­ur­ing bots to stream them auto­mat­i­cal­ly, thus rack­ing up some $10 mil­lion in ille­gal roy­al­ties. Though that amount no doubt star­tles many of us, in this age when legit­i­mate musi­cians pub­licly lament the pit­tance they earn through stream­ing plat­forms, such a case prob­a­bly comes as no sur­prise to Rick Beato. This past June, the promi­nent music YouTu­ber put out a video deal­ing with just that inter­sec­tion of cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, with the high­ly click­able title “The Real Rea­son Why Music Is Get­ting Worse.”

Con­sid­er the ques­tion of how we evoke one par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al era rather than anoth­er. We can use its fash­ions, its slang, or its inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, to name just a few pos­si­bil­i­ties, but noth­ing works as pow­er­ful­ly or imme­di­ate­ly as its music. Most of us grew up in a world where the sound of pop­u­lar songs changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly every decade or so. This hap­pened for many rea­sons, prac­ti­cal­ly …