MARC CHOQUETTE
Perspectives Editor
What music means to a generation is a question becoming more loaded as each day passes. Each Tuesday, mounds of new releases arrive for our listening pleasure, adding to what our parents’ generation enjoyed.
Further complicating matters, the concept of a music collection is a fairly new facet of culture to comprehend. Only at the turn of the 20th century did recording become prominent with the gramophone disc, so Generation Y is only one in a handful of generations to have recorded music at our fingertips.
While there was certainly music that defined a generation, such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley for the Baby Boomers, only with Generation Y has music surpassed defining a whole generation to defining us each as individuals.
“With our parents, movement was more collective and more political. With us, I think music is more of an individual experience because there is so much out there,” said junior Anthony Lutz. “Today we can find anything to fit our mood or emotion.”
With such a staggering amount of music for us to explore in 2007, there really aren’t any bands that define our generation like those of our parents.
The more time passes, the more there won’t be another Dylan or Hendrix, for the simple reason that our generation, the ones who are supposed to rebel against our parents tastes, are the people re-embracing their music.
The motivations of such revival are vague. They range from people who think music today is terrible, nostalgia, the vintage t-shirt movement, and Hollywood (think Johnny Cash re-emerging without “Walk the Line”).
Sophomore Michelle Wargo says it is more simple than that.
“We don’t have a movement of our own.”
In reaction to this, she feels young people have gone back to classic rock because of what it stood for and its rebellious nature.
“Music today just isn’t as influential as it once was,” Wargo said.
But what makes Y different from our parents is that we completely redefined the way music is approached and listened to, with no discrimination toward age or style.
The cornerstone to this redefinition has been the upsurge in digital media, which has only been popular for less than a decade. First with Napster, then iTunes and the iPod, then MySpace, music collections of youth everywhere exploded. Access to this music expanded, uncontrolled by record companies and the radio dial, exposing us to new genres and new artists.
Napster, began the file-sharing change with its inception in 1999. Suddenly, music on people’s computers were being shared with others, creating a gigantic peer-to-peer network, which, at the height was used by more than 40 million people.
MySpace has also radically changed our perceptions of music. It has enabled all musicians, from artists as big as John Mayer to anyone with an Internet connection and even the crudest of recording equipment to get their music out there for people all over the world to listen to for free. Rock, only one of the 44 genres listed, has a staggering 425,000 bands listed.
Perhaps the most iconic and influential player in today’s music industry is Apple, whose iPod has grabbed the corporation 70 percent of sales in digital media players. The revolutionary device, which has also been used to define the generation, has been purchased by more than 88 million people worldwide.
As if that wasn’t enough, the iPod, iTunes program and music store work together seamlessly, enabling an iPod user to download an album with a click of the mouse and be listening to that album minutes later.
It has become apparent with such a library of music at our fingertips, Generation Y digs variety. Emerging trends in radio here in Southern California might be a good indicator as to our generation’s preference for variety when we listen to music.
Los Angeles & Orange County’s Indie 103.1 and San Diego’s FM 94.9 have been experimenting with a more free-form, college radio format over the past couple years, breaking with nearly all other stations considered “commercial” and “corporate” and reverting back to the glory days of radio 30 years prior. But whether this is a reaction of a generation to the status quo might be pushing it.
Alan Sartirana, publisher of Los Angeles based Filter Magazine, thinks of stations like Indie not so much a movement but simply filling a niche; of what younger people want to hear.
“People in L.A. who are dying to hear new music could only do it early in the morning or late at night on KCRW before, now they can hear it all day long,” Saritrana said.
The main attributes of free-form radio include giving disk jockeys near total control of the airwaves and lack of restriction on what can and cannot be played. The college radio feel to their programming encourages diversity by willing to broadcast music not considered commercial hits by other stations’ standards. Mostly, these stations have associated themselves with emerging musical trends.
And with genre specific programming and effective use of technology (having guests come in and play selections from their iPod’s and involvement with MySpace), these are two examples of harnessing what appeals to our generation and growing ratings have shown people are taking a listen to it.
03-01-2007