Okay. All right. All right. Okay.

Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. Because we're about to do something on this channel I'm not looking forward to. That's something that happens rarely, responding to another content creator's work, specifically another commenter in the music community, that being none other than Rick Beato, who we have had on the channel before in in an interview.

I've been a long-time admirer of Rick's work. I'm definitely an acquaintance of the guy. We've had multiple conversations about life and music and a host of other things, the content game. Even though I may not agree with Rick on a great deal of things when it comes to modern musical esthetics and things like that. I think the platform he's been able to build on YouTube over the course of his time here is great. When it comes to music composition, music theory, music production, he clearly knows what he's talking about and has a lot of experience.

With that being said, he came out with a couple of videos recently that I feel like I just couldn't keep quiet on. Again, not to paint this picture that I've been quietly seething, waiting for my moment to jump on a Rick Beato video because, again, most of the things I've ever heard him say in his videos that I do disagree with in terms of specifically what makes for good music, bad music, the state of modern music, I feel like mostly just It comes down to personal perception and opinion.

But again, in this most recent case, specifically in regards to the video, "The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse" and its follow-up video, I feel like I really can't hold my tongue. A line was crossed, mostly because I just don't really feel like these are good pieces of content, and the cases they make are illogical. They are not coherent. Frankly, for somebody who is as smart and as studied and as experienced as Rick, I feel like the statements made in these videos are beneath him.

I want to go over some of the key points in these videos, which is going to be really difficult because I feel like one of the major failings of these two pieces of content, especially the first one, is that they are so frigging choppy. They jump from one point to one scene to the next. And a lot of what is being argued across the first video isn't even really bolstered. A lot of these points are just put out there, and they're meant to be just accepted without much scrutiny, which, again, given how surgical some of Rick's content can be, I feel like is just not a reflection of his full potential and really the knowledge that I know he has access to for somebody who is as technologically savvy as he is and is as experienced as he is.

To put a huge swath of the first video here in a nutshell, Rick really starts to make his case here by building this narrative around the ways in which technology in the music industry made music creation easier over the course of popular music's lifetime. Starting back in the 1950s with Frank Sinatra, where if you wanted a good recording, good sound, good everything, a proper record that you could get out there and print and sell to the people, you had to have a single mic, place it in a certain way, be really particular about everything. I mean, as far as popular music and commercially available recordings to the wider public, the 1950s were a pretty revolutionary time. It's not something I would just frame as the Stone Age comparatively in the timeline that we're working with, but still, it's an early stage.

Also, when we're talking about ease of creation here, specifically in regards to Frank Sinatra, I feel like Rick is overlooking the fact that there was a whole system of support behind an artist like Frank, allowing for what he was doing to be as easy as pie, essentially. I mean, for sure, he had to sing well when he was in front of the microphone. That much is true. But Frank also had loads of producers and sound engineers and orchestra musicians, as well as arrangers and oh, also songwriters, so that when old Blue Eyes stepped up to the microphone to do his thing, his songs weren't trash.

From this point, Rick goes on a whole diatribe about quantizing and drum machines and drum parts and Grooves sounding super rigid and just soulless as a result of the way we've locked things to the grid in the studio, in the DAW, which, again, we're also doing a lot of glossing over key and vital parts of music history here. We're also making a lot of presumptions with these points because what Rick is saying here totally ignores the rich history of music, pop, and otherwise that involves drum machine tech and was arguably very creative, very influential, just as good as any Led Zeppelin or Pat Metheny record. For example, there are drum machines all over Prince's "Purple Rain." Are we really going to sit here and argue that there's less artistic merit to Prince's "Purple Rain" because there's drum beats on that record that are locked to the grid of a drum machine?

Also think about the ways in which drum machines and sequenced beats revolutionized electronic music led to the advent of hip hop. Honestly and truly, the only genre of music that this is an issue for is Rock, which I mean, I get. I do hear a fair amount of rock music recordings or metal music recordings where the drums or the Grooves are, yes, very snapped to the grid. Sometimes that is so much so the case that the drum parts sound just flat and soulless and boring and mechanical and awful to listen to. But I mean, that's not really the technology's issue. That's the issue of the artist applying the technology, sucking at applying the technology. And again, this being a problem for rock music or metal, I don't think is obviously the case across the board, because without electronics and drum machines being fused into these genres, we wouldn't have New Wave, we wouldn't have Industrial Metal. And these are just a few of many instances in which an older form of music had been melded with a new technology in a way that was undeniably creative and game-changing. I mean, I get that a John Bonham drum beat with a shuffle doesn't good when you quantize it, but that doesn't mean all quantizing is wrong or bad.

From here, Rick is quick to assume that current day tech basically streamlines everything about music creation rather than adding more complications, actually, sometimes. And his key example of that is a drum set, which you could play in any manner that you like, tune in any manner that you like, mic in any manner that you like. Yes, that is true. And while, yes, that is time consuming, so is going through a thousand snare one-shots in Logic. Rather than tuning a snare, that is often what a lot of producers are doing. They're not just going to the one preordained snare sound and saying, Okay, there we go. That's my snare.

I feel like also this point that Rick is making is maybe a wee bit classist and ignores the economic barrier to entry that a lot of musicians who would like to produce face when they are trying to think up or come up with drum parts for their songs. I'm sure many of them would actually prefer if they had the resources to do so, to actually be in front of a drum kit in a studio with a producer and engineer to capture all these sounds and so on and so forth. But not everybody who wants to produce a song has the money for a drum kit or studio time or a producer's time. Honestly, I don't think that should keep them from making music if they want to.

Around this middle point in the video, Rick makes further points, throws more arguments out there, and they take on a variety of flavors, but I feel like they could all be addressed and deflated with one single sentence – Things being more difficult does not mean the end result is good. I will say this again, adding in the context that Rick seems to be very concerned with the fact that producing sounds, guitar amplifiers, fake drums, so on and so forth. It's all too easy to use. Once more, I will say that things being harder to do does not mean that the end result is better or good. I mean, more often than not, when things are difficult to pull off and execute, there often is no end result at all. There's not even music to speak of to be good or bad.

I say this because in the '50s and in the '60s and in the '70s, these eras of music that Rick and a lot of his fans often will just worship and point to as like, this is the golden era. This was like when things were perfect. This is when people were doing the work and walking uphill 10 miles to and from school. Yeah, that is true. There were a lot of difficulties that came with the process of music creation during that time. But a lot of the music that was coming out around that era was still trash, complete and utter garbage, like bad, shitty novelty albums, annoying, gentrified vocal jazz bullshit, crappy, kitschy pop orchestra records, holiday shit.

If you want to know how much crap was produced during these time periods, I tell you, go to any Goodwill, any Salvation Army, where they might have a record section and see how many trash, dusty, moldy, crappy old albums from the '50s and '60s and '70s that are sitting in those milk crates, sitting in those bins that nobody wants to spin, nobody wants to hear, nobody wants to listen to anymore. If they did, those records would have never ended up there. They would have been taken care of. They'd be getting spun today, but nobody wants to. Because you know why? Because they were trash. They were bubble gum for their time.

Meanwhile, Rick and everyone who agrees with the points that he's making, gets to conveniently advocate for those erras of music, knowing on some level that all the stuff that was awful during that time has just been washed away with the sands of time, and you don't even need to address it because nobody remembers it anymore. There were so many shitty trendy hippie groups. I mean, part of what made Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Inventions so great is that they were taking the piss at a lot of those bands when they were at some of their earliest creative peaks.

Is the noise of mediocre music a bit louder now because there are fewer barriers to entry and just about anybody can do it? Yes, that is true. But every era of music had its crap and had its corner cutters. I just don't think the music of today should be taken to task for that in a way that past decades just aren't in this conversation. Without opening another can of worms, I feel like Rick's final point here ignores the effects of things like capitalism and audience demand and Spotify algorithms and how they all toxify the music consumption circle these days. Meanwhile, Rick over here is like, concerned trolling about phones.

Past this point in the video, Rick makes a very, very, very bold statement that I have to stop up here and quote and address directly. And that's that, dependence on technology prevents people from being able to innovate, which is honestly mind-blowing for someone in Rick's position to say. And what's even funnier is that he boldly throws that out, but follows it up with, I could be wrong on that.

The creative dependency on technology limits the ability of people to innovate, I believe. Could be wrong about that. Maybe it helps them innovate. I don't think so, though.

And it's aggravating to hear him sound wishy-washy saying this sentence because whether he is gung-ho for this point of view or not, this is actually the underpinning point of view that is influencing every mode of thought he's engaging in here. This is the argument of the video, and yet he follows it up with... I could be wrong on that, though. I don't know.

The only way that I feel like you could genuinely harbor this take in your soul is if, again, you're only looking at the ways in which technology have impacted some, not even the entirety, some sects of the genre of rock music, and that's it. Some elements of pop music as well, but still mostly rock music. Because if dependence on technology is, in fact, preventing people from innovating, we have to ask, how and why?

Repeatedly, it's actually pretty provable that some of the most ground-breaking and ahead-of-the-curve music over the entire course of popular music has been enhanced in some way by the cutting-edge technology of the time, whether you're talking about the advent of the electric guitar or drum machines or synthesis.

Think about some of the most major and most popular and influential artists who played key roles in bringing that technology to records that were hits, that were super influential, that were undeniably mainstream. We're talking about Brian Eno. We're talking about David Byrne. We're talking about Trent Reznor.

Look at this dorkus malorkus with his little modular rig. Not only is this man a god of industrial music and rock music broadly, but on top of it, he's also responsible for some of the most important movie soundtracks of what, the past 10, 15 years? Does this look like a guy to you who thinks Is that the technology he works with on a regular basis is preventing him from innovating? I mean, if you actually read this interview in the Moog Patch and Tweak book, it's very apparent. Sometimes he feels like it gives him almost too many options, really a difficulty to learn some of the tech and some of the pieces of equipment that he works with on a regular basis. But the thing is, the versatility is there. The capabilities are there. It's just upon the artist to explore it and go into the weeds and just do it.

Things have gotten to a point in digital audio workstations where you could really create any beat that you could possibly imagine, synthesize any sound that you could possibly imagine. I mean, really sounds that are beyond imagination. But again, if people aren't doing it, that's on people. That's on people.

Rick ends this first video off with some closing comments on music consumption, which I just don't really vibe with at all and I don't get... I mean, the general argument he's trying to put out here is that kids don't care about music anymore because it's free and they don't need to work a job to be able to pay for a record that they want at the record store that they've been desiring, totally ignoring the culture of record taping during that time and how people used to record albums for each other that they may have not even had to pay for. There used to actually be these stickers on records that used to say, "home taping is killing the music industry," when in fact it wasn't. It's just the record label's Crying Wolf once again.

And I'm sure Rick is old enough to remember a time when he probably had a friend of his or so record a couple of LPs for him onto a cassette or something. Absolutely. I know there are members of his audience that remember such a time and a phenomenon, but we're just going to sit here and act like it never happened. I mean, I came of age during a time when it was all about burned CDs. I mean, sure, I bought a lot of CDs, and I saved up a lot of money to buy CDs that I really liked. But personally, I didn't really find that there was a correlation between the CDs that a friend of mine may have burned for me or the CDs that I purchased in terms of which one I preferred or enjoyed more than the other. In fact, there were lots of CDs that I spent good, hard-earned fucking money on in my teens that were fucking shit.

Meanwhile, fast forward to today where everybody's just paying $10.99 and streaming everything for free. And honestly, for my own fucking sanity, I wish what Rick was saying was 110% true. Because if it actually was the case that just kids don't care about music anymore, do you know how free of harassment and bullshit and psychosis my mentions would be on any given day?

I mean, the music from the artist they're defending must matter something to them on some level, even though they're just streaming it for free on Spotify. And plus, when you go on to social media platforms and websites like Reddit or YouTube or or Twitter or Instagram, people won't shut the fuck up about music. They're talking about it all the goddamn time. In fact, this whole beef thing that just happened between Kendrick Lamar and Drake was quite possibly, culturally speaking, the largest moment of singularity our country or maybe even world is going to see in 2024. Everybody was paying attention to it. Even my mom was asking me about it, and she's never heard a fucking Kendrick Lamar song in her life.

So you can't sit here and argue to me that music doesn't matter to people people and people don't talk about or think about music, and music doesn't cross people's minds as a thing that's important to them. It obviously very much is. You're seriously telling me that kids who won't shut the fuck up about Playboy Cardi and Juice World aren't sitting there with their friends being like, Oh, yeah, I love Juice World. Oh, yeah, I love Playboy. They very much provably are. In fact, we have more proof of that happening now more than ever. They're literally doing it on public platforms on the internet for you to read and see. And you know what? They're also doing it at school, too.

I want to quickly address Rick's attempt at a follow-up video here for this whole topic, which I think in a lot of ways was even more piss-poor than the original video. One, because I think the first leg of it is a straw man and ignores the actual point of Rick's video. Because the comments that Rick is responding to here is like, You're just old and you don't like new things and you hate new music. Which, again, that is not the argument that Rick is making. The argument that Rick is making is that he believes that technology actually gets in way of innovation and creativity, especially when it comes to this modern era of music. I think that very provably is wrong because there's lots of music out there using the latest technology that is being released every day that is very creative, very experimental, very weird, totally unlike anything that's come before it.

You're not going to hear or find that music if you're looking for it on the Billboard fucking Hot 100. Never at any point in popular music history has that been the key place to find the most experimental and groundbreaking music? Of course, it has had a space on those charts in times in the past and times in the present. But more often than not, what you are going to see at the top of those charts are songs that, to the lowest common denominator, are going to be just easy to listen to, enjoyable, replayable, especially considering that we currently live in a time period where the popularity of a song is not based on someone going out to purchase a record that contains it at a record store. No, it's how many times you replay it over and over and over and over on Spotify.

I don't know why I should have to say this to someone like Rick, but that has less to do with whether or not your average person cares about music anymore and more to do with how music streaming services and the record labels have arbitrarily decided how sales are going to be quantified now. The audience did not ask for that. The audience did not decide that. That was decided for them, and then they were herded into this bullshit algorithmic jungle that also nobody asked for. And rather than blaming claiming that the most obvious factor in this whole equation. Oh, you know what it is? It's TikTok. That's why people don't care about music anymore. It's TikTok.

Okay, a couple more things. One blatantly hilarious, inadvertently hilarious part of Rick's video is that to prove that there is a decrease in interest in music, he uses a Google Trends chart. If I type in music in 2004, music was at 100%. Where is it now? It's down to 25%. Well, maybe that's just certain types of music. How about pop music? That's probably the bulk of it. Let's look at that. Yeah, that's bad, too. What about other genres like hip hop? Oh, that's really bad. Yeah, he honest to God, uses people going on to Google to look up the word music.

Okay, Rick, and I'm talking directly to Rick here. Could it be possible that in 2005, that when people were punching music into Google, what they were doing was trying to use Google to actually find music? Maybe because on the internet during that time, the pathways to actually listen to music on the internet or discover it in some way, shape, or form, they weren't as well-developed. Whereas now, our current age, where we are at an all time low of googling the word music. Nobody is googling music because nobody has to google music. When people want music, they just go to Spotify, they just go to Apple Music, they just go to their streaming platform of choice. The only people googling the word "music" right now, most likely are like 65 and up because they don't know where they would go to find music. The Google search engine, because of AI now, is total shit anyway. It barely helps you find anything good.

Rick also brings up the fact that kids don't really seem to want to learn instruments now or when he talks to music teachers, they're saying that their students aren't practicing. I mean, yeah, of course. You're talking about kids, you're talking about teenagers. The vast majority of them don't want to practice their instruments. They find it boring. I've been playing bass guitar for, fuck, over two decades in my life now, and I love it. I devoted tens of thousands of hours to it. I personally I'm pretty great at it. But early on when I was a teenager, I'm not going to lie, there were a fair amount of lessons that I went to where that week I didn't practice for shit. To be honest, a lot of the best learning that I did on bass guitar was after I stopped doing lessons altogether when I was 17 or 18 and just started looking up things online and learning stuff that I was seeing on YouTube.

When you go on to the TikTok platform that you have so much of an issue with for whatever reason, I see new young musicians on there all the time doing crazy dope, fantastic shit. Somebody's practicing their instruments. Where did these kids come from? Like, Berkelee, for example, and loads of private music, higher education institutions across the country, across the world, admit thousands and thousands and thousands of musicians every year, they must be practicing their instruments.

Again, I just feel like this video from Rick is beneath him because it involves him just painting everything with a lot of broad strokes in ways that just don't make sense if you're actually paying attention to what's going on in modern music, especially if you allow yourself the privilege of just peaking just a little bit under the hood of what's cropping up in the top 10, top 20, top 50.

I'm sorry, but the algorithmically platformed slop that you see topping the charts every day is not always a reflection of what's actually going on in terms of what people actually want to hear, what people want, what people desire.

So yeah, I don't vibe with this video. I don't jive with this video. I think this video is yuck. I think, again, Rick is above this. I think his opinions should be a bit more informed, given his experience. And hopefully, he finds his way to that point. Maybe we can have a conversation about it in the future. I don't know. If he sees this video and thinks any of my points are serious, I'm certainly open to that. But for now, anyway, those are my thoughts on Rick being angry at the current state of music and whether or not technology is at fault for that. I think I will leave it there

Love you guys a lot. Anthony Fantano, Rick Biotto, forever.