Hey, everyone. Disthony Coursetano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well.

I wanted to address an interesting post that cropped up over in my subreddit recently with somebody asking whether or not the general quality of discussion on the topic of music has gone downhill, noting the tier list boom as being a moment where it nose-dived. And this poster was actually also asking those who might be older to dig into their memory banks and actually assess whether or not things were better a decade ago.

It's funny to think about the answer to this question, especially within the time frame given in the original post, because 10 years ago at this point was 2015, which in terms of the progression of online musical discourse, you're pretty far into the evolution of that in the modern day at that point. If we really wanted to make a comparative testing ground here, you would have to go back at least five to six years earlier than that, which at that point, you're talking about the discussion happening on music forums, on Japanese image boards, my YouTube channel starting in 2009, the blogosphere boom, Pitchfork being much more relevant at the time than it is today.

We're also talking about a time where generally less people were on the internet, too, or at least weren't it quite as often because we didn't have the internet in our frigging pockets all the time. Also, streaming hadn't quite become the industry game-changing business model that it would eventually become, too. It was a completely different paradigm for music discussion and consumption.

With a lot of mainstream discourse and consumption still being relegated to traditional media and stuff like that, a lot of the music engagement that was happening in these small communities online, be it on a 4chan or a Reddit or a random message board somewhere, or a blog, or a small up and coming music review site, the discourse generally was more interesting. The music curation tended to be a bit more adventurous, too, because, generally speaking, the communities around all of this stuff were much smaller, much more manageable and localized. The people who were there engaging in the topic were really, truly the heads and the most passionate and the people who have obsessed over this stuff the most.

However, I was there, and I'm not trying to paint this moment in time as this perfect slice of history when it comes to music discussion and consumption. These forums and communities, in my opinion, had their limitations, too, and tended to sometimes be very toxic, very aggressive, very dismissive, creative, very elitist. The range of taste and albums and artists discussed sometimes could be limited with a lot of meme-based discourse around certain projects. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea posted over and over and over and over and over and completely perfect and fine and A-OK that it couldn't be improved upon in any way whatsoever.

I wouldn't have started my YouTube channel. I would have just been like, 'No, this is good. We don't need anything else other than this.' Because also at that time, I found some of the hype cycles that were being endorsed and engaged in during this period to be boring. I thought that there were a lot of great artists and albums and sounds that were out there that were worth engaging with that were being overlooked. I thought that a lot of music discourse and reviews and analysis tended to be one-sided and very top-down. It didn't feel very reciprocal. It didn't feel very communal.

And when it came to a lot of the indie stuff that was popular at the time, there was a very incestuous relationship going on between the very small amount of relevant labels that were pushing some of the biggest artists on the indie circuit at the time, the even smaller amount of PR groups that would help promote these artists and push their MP3s out there and give them hype. The blogs and music websites like Pitchfork, they would disseminate that stuff, too. It was very clicky, very cool kids club, and personally, I didn't really care for it.

So, yeah, this time period certainly had its upsides, but it wasn't perfect by any means. And look, some aspects of music discourse online have improved since then, but there have been some, I guess, things that have backslid a bit, too, especially when you fast-forward from there to now. I mean, I could see why the original poster here would see this period of time, like 2015, as a bit of a grace period in a way, because around this time, it sucks that we've seen the degradation financially and culturally of all of these once great and influential institutions in music reviews and coverage, be it pitch fork, be it Rolling Stone, so on and so forth.

I know that there's a lot of people that don't really decry the fact these websites and platforms, they're not as popular as they once were. They're not cool anymore. They're not putting on the artists that we like anymore. Why does it matter? I'm not interested. They're working with a format that isn't interesting at this point, which like, okay, you can make those points if you want.

However, these places were once huge institutions that when you dig through their archives, are essentially like the historical ledgers of art and culture, and frankly, helped cover and popularize a lot of really cool, relevant stuff, the influence of which is still significant and felt today in a lot of the modern music that we hear. And the articles and coverage of these platforms give us a really cool insight into what things were received like around this time. And it's really sad, unfortunately, to see these places slowly become hollowed out and left to die, especially in an age where it is very, very, very difficult to have an informed discussion on anything on social media right now. It's just hot takes, quick aggro in your face reactions, trying to get dunks.

And for sure, around 2015, there was this grace period of these bigger platforms going downhill, more music music discussions, going on to social media and platforms like Twitter and Reddit not being so trash, not being so chockful of bots as they are now, with there still being some music websites and blogs of note operating that were doing good stuff. Algorithms weren't quite homogenizing everyone's taste at this point yet. Playlists weren't so goddamn loaded with AI bullshit.

Again, this time period of music discourse on the internet was definitely more manageable, and I think there was some good stuff coming out of this in terms of artists that were worth championing and being excited about, both in the underground and the mainstream.

And look, current day, the music and arts community, for all of its flaws, I still think is putting out good stuff. However, I don't think this post is wrong in assessing that things are not in a great place right now. However, I wouldn't really attribute that to much else other than the fact that the platforms that this discourse is happening on right now at this moment just suck fucking ass. And a lot of the platforms that people discover music through right now suck ass.

In terms of user experience and what you're actually being recommended and exposed to, Spotify is worse than ever with, again, more limited algorithmic recommendations, blander playlists loaded with fake music. The algorithm is getting more aggressive in terms of hurting people into certain songs and trends and singles and so on and so forth.

Any given social media platform where there's a decent amount of music discourse going on at any given moment are objectively worse, too, in terms of, again, dealing with spam, dealing with crap, dealing with bots, dealing with comment sections that are engineered to basically show you the dumbest and most offensive and most controversial content and comments first, basically erasing any chance of a thoughtful discussion or analysis of anything happening, as you're pretty much guaranteed to not be seen by anyone once you start trying to do that.

None of these platforms are designed to foster or create community around anything now. And as a result, it's more difficult for us to be able to communally have any genuine discussion or understanding about where we are right now, culturally and artistically. And to the degree that is happening, a lot of that takes form and shape of these very cult-like fandoms that are super polarizing and aggressive when it comes to dealing with people who are a part of other fandoms, like you have to be in this tribal war state at all times. It's enough to make you not want to talk about music online at all.

And again, that's the thing. Every social media platform that you use is so heavily programmed right now. It's essentially like a TV station in its own way in terms of what's being decided to be shown to you at any given moment. It's very planned, it's very predetermined. It's no longer this cool, innocent, organic thing, even though it may seem that because you're not seeing the invisible algorithm hand throwing in front of your face what it throws in front of it. And more often than not, the algorithm is deciding what to show you based on whether or not it's going to get some rise out of you, not whether it'll inform you or improve your life in some significant way.

And there's more I could say, but I feel like that is, at least from my perspective, a general assessment of where things are at when it comes to music discourse right now. It's not great, but I attribute most of that to the platforms it's happening on, not the people who are doing it. And I feel like if people want to get back to that, they need to start exploring platforms or building places to do that thing where it can just be a little bit more organic, not so heavily controlled, or botted, or whittled down to the most dumb and baseline and aggressive aspects of it. Regardless of where music discourse is happening, those elements are always going to be there, but it really needs to be balanced.

Now, look, that's not to say that there aren't bright spots in the music discourse world now, that there aren't still websites like Stereogum doing their thing. There are community-based review platforms that are most definitely worthy of respect, like Rate Your Music and Sputnik, and Album of the Year. Music discourse isn't currently in such a bad place that it's all terrible, and it's all awful, and it's all garbage. But in my opinion, a great deal of it is being taken up and ruined by the social media platforms where nothing good is happening.

And if it's to ever get back into a place where it's in a much healthier state, I think a lot of actual passionate, genuine music fans maybe need to start building and creating another place to do this thing. Seek out alternatives where a majority of the conversation isn't just simply like, fighting with each other over a chart positions and other random bullshit.

But yeah, that's my thoughts on all that. Let me know in the comments what yours are. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, music, discourse, forever.