If I'm coming off as somewhat sardonic, well... it's because I'm being sardonic. As a performer / songwriter / composer / musician / whatever you'd like to call me (asshole works just fine too) working in a modern music environment, statements like those are a tad bit... insulting. The "music is dead" argument implies that music will never be good again because, at a certain point in time, it died. As a result, everything that comes out after that vaguely-defined certain point in time is bereft of merit and depth. Essentially? Dead. So that's basically saying that art died with Van Gogh, and that all other artists are pure, undiluted shit in comparison.
That sounds kind of condescending, doesn't it? Guess what - it totally is. Does the music industry need a kick in the pants? Maybe. But that's really just on the business and behind-the-scenes side of things - the music industry is and always has been a cash cow, raking in billions upon billions each year, and yet very few artists and musical associates actually see a fair share of those insurmountable earnings. But that's another essay for another time. The point is, music is not dead, nor will it ever be dead until the sun kick-starts the apocalypse by going supernova and killing us all.
In fact, I would argue music is more alive than it ever has been. Music is more than what you hear on the radio. Just scrolling through CDBaby, Tunecore, BandCamp, YouTube, or Soundcloud will net you a wide variety of talented people representing a vast array of genres. Funk, D'n'B, IDM / EDM, R'n'B, Dancehall, Europop, Soul, Garage, even Vaporwave - there's plenty of treasure to be found out there. You just have to look. And it's not hard to look with the world at your fingertips.
Plus, it's not exactly hard to find an audience interested in those kinds of genres. People have way more diverse musical tastes than most would like to believe. Look at some of the current musical trends going on right now - the industry has been undergoing a pretty huge retro phase in addition to all the other, typically electronic / dancehall-based trends going on right now. 70's-inspired material, 80's, 90's, you name it.
Bruno Mars is a fantastic example of what I'm talking about - he draws from a huge pool of influences from 90's R'n'B to 70's disco and funk (look no further than Treasure or Uptown Funk, the latter of which won Record Of The Year at the Grammy Awards). Carly Rae Jepsen's latest albums, Emotion and extended play Emotion Side B, are absolutely laden with 80's influences, with their dance-y synths, reverb-laden drums, and bright, poppy production values. There's been an enormous demand for retro memorabilia and pastiches in the 2010's, and yet people are still excited to hear new music and new sounds. That doesn't just go to show the flexibility of the industry, it goes to show the flexibility of audiences, how diverse our taste is as a culture.
If you're a musician, and you happen to dabble in a genre you think isn't "popular", a genre that lacks a wide range of influence and appeal... you'd be surprised. There's an audience for everything just like there's a sub-Reddit for everything. All you have to do is look. Music is more than charts and figures and what crabby passersby claim it to be. Music is "vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion" (Google Definitions).
And I suspect that if we keep following this criteria, music will do more than stay alive - it'll outlive us long after we're gone. So go create!
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