What Will Music Look Like In 2021?

A lot of 2020 albums are having their release dates pushed back 2-3 months (planned May releases now coming out in July, etc.). Tours are being cancelled, obviously. But what's the ripple effect likely to be for next year, if nobody's able to get into a recording studio for most of 2020? (I'm fully expecting COVID-19 to be a danger well into the summer.) Sure, there's plenty of music that can be made by one person alone, or by file-sharing, but I gotta believe the get-the-band-in-the-room artists/genres (like jazz, the only music I write about with any regularity anymore) are gonna be hurt bad.

Thoughts? Predictions (gloomy or optimistic, all are welcome)?

Primavera Sound think they’re rescheduling their festival in Barca for August. Delusional

I've noticed something like the opposite - that a lot of music is coming out in the near future. I guess it's because I follow a lot of smaller artists who can record and release from home. Artists who have second jobs but need the cash boost from sales and touring. Now that they can't tour, I think a lot of these artists will be recording and releasing home projects. I'll buy 'em

I'm interested to see how big collaborative bands cope, though, yeah - when's the first Zoom jazz session going to be released etc etc

(obviously that can't work due to slight connection delays - everything would be slightly out of sync. but maybe that would lead to a new sort of jazz?)

Ljagz suggests laggy jazz bands, is suggest banned

Round of applause

*doff of cap*

My feeling is that pop was already heading in a bedroomish solipsistic direction anyway and that's going to be even more so now that it's being made for an audience who can't go out and fulfil its pop's primary function - ie to go out and dance.

At the same time there's going to be a surfeit of music that provides pure escapism - I'm surely not the only one who can't listen to anything too intense right now.

If this thing is under control by next year or even later this year then there's going to be a gigantic explosion in social activity that will need a soundtrack so there'll be this big sense of freedom and release and euphoria in music even though people have been through some horrific shit.

But the impact on the live music and club scene will be severe - thousands of venues will close without immediate economic aid, or people buying up bankrupt clubs on the cheap. So this explosion of activity may arrive in illegal venues.

Socialogically it'll be like the immediate aftermath of WW1, the acid house explosion, the birth of rock and roll and early 90s Berlin all rolled into one.

What it will actually sound like though is anyone's guess.

what about subject matter? assuming this is going on for a while, will there still be an appetite for songs about having party fun times in the club? Will there be a surfeit of sad songs about how much the singer misses someone to the point where it becomes clichéd?

this extends beyond music to all art I suppose. suddenly all those dystopian fiction novels and apocalyptic sci fi movies I've been meaning to get round to feel either hopelessly quaint or existentially unappealing. Will people want to be reminded of their situation or want to escape from it? and how do you escape when you're under lockdown exactly?

Maybe not songs about the club itself but people will want escapism and comfort food for a while.

There'll be a lot of really dark shit as well, but Billie Eilish as the last gigantic pre-crisis pop star feels very apposite right now.

Also lyrically there's going to be A LOT of yearning, a lot of longing. Think about all the young people forcibly separated from romantic interests right now.

It's also going to be horny as hell.

A LOT of yearning, a lot of longing.

and a lot of jogging!

Oh god not again

haven’t we yearned and longed enough

Got to figure physical media will probably become a bit less typical.

+ there's new music by richard dawson
+ and jute gyte!
- it's all ambient

actually there's one rd track i'm into (see thread for more deets)

wonder if self-released ambient is going to be everywhere now

If even Jute Gyte can't get you into ambient, you're lost for the cause forever, right?

one day

Somewhat interesting (if you’re interested) piece on artists/labels deciding whether or not to release new music during the pandemic: https://variety.com/2020/music/news/album-releases-music-biz-split-delay-bump-1203552009/

it will be made of marshmallow

Thinking positive: All this time away from the pressures of touring and the hectic lifestyle might turn into some insightful and creative songwriting. Musicians sharing files back and forth and/or sharing ideas via zoom/houseparty/other cam chat app wasn’t unusual back then but it will be the norm for the following month(s). This might lead to less “spontaneous” music, but could yield some interesting results.

I think this lack of spontaneity on social media for groups of people bigger than 2 involving a camera and mic is a glaring miss in “coronavirus world” and could be an area of opportunity... we might see the birth of the first popular social media app of the 21st century.

Thinking negative: The lack of social interaction - with all its highs and lows - and a potentially difficult access to drugs could produce some of the dullest era of music ever.

The lack of social interaction would normally result in a drastic decrease in demand for club bangers, but in this social media age I don’t think it will be much of a difference. We’ll still get our summer jams. But this time around party music will not be played in actual parties, it will just be the soundtrack to one of your tiktok videos.

It would be interesting to know the insights and strategies of music promoters/labels for the following months.

My immediate feeling is that, like with society in general, an economic collapse means that more power and attention will be given to artists who already have both of those things, making it harder than ever for newer voices to break out, as the music industry will play it safer in an uncertain economy and be less willing to invest in 'riskier' artists. Maybe we'll see a strong independent response to this, and 'indie' will stop becoming a meaningless term.

We'll see a lot of artists earnestly trying to make 'the' isolation/Coronavirus-era tune, and they'll all be bad.

Further down the track, if the economic consequences are as dire as we're all expecting, we may see some necessary/radical changes to welfare or a UBI, which could be an enormous boon for creativity and collaboration as smaller artists don't have to worry as much about soul-sucking day jobs just to stay alive.

a glut of terrible acoustic albums by singer-songwriter guys with a lot of ~feelings~ in the Lewis Capaldi/Ed Sheeran mould

It appears my dream of the triumphant return of the rap / pop group (as opposed to thousands of indistinguishable solo artists) will not be coming true anytime soon

The particular aesthetics aside of what the sound of returning to 'normalcy' will be, there's going to be a major logistical clusterfuck once (and if) everyone is just given the green light one day to get back to normal en masse. Consider September, which is usually a big month for new releases: all the scheduled releases, plus 4-6 months of backup (not to mention all the rescheduled tours). Add to this mess the fact that hardly anyone will be the position to buy any of these albums due to lost wages and lost jobs, nor anywhere to buy them (the inevitably large numbers of small record stores that will not survive this), and, well, you could say I'm not feeling too positive about things right now.

I agree with triggercut that the 1% won't be too affected by this, but smaller or independent artists are now even more fucked than they were before COVID, as I see it.

Also, punk, metal, and hardcore fans, get ready for 6-8 band bills and for shows to start at 5pm, with everyone playing for a cut of the door. Yikes.

Yeah, Paul, part of that is what I've been thinking about, specifically wrt to all these delayed and pushed back albums. I mean, I get folks like Lady Gaga or whoever wanting that huge marketing muscle behind them, but at what point is it just going to be a massive glut of product that means 90% of the albums just get absolutely buried?

For bands with fans that still want physical product, seems a better thing to release the digital now for streaming numbers and then do the big marketing roll-out later with the LP orders and whatnot. Obviously this might not work as well for pop acts that live and die by streaming numbers anyway, but I just see a massive noise of releases come fall that ends up serving no one.

I mean, hell, Phish just released their surprise new studio album on Wednesday and it's tracking to be the number one album in the country. So there is clearly attention to be grabbed right now without waiting.

Okay correction, the Phish album was #1 ahead of Dua Lipa yesterday but may now be getting crowded out with today's new releases... so nevermind that particular part.

Also, punk, metal, and hardcore fans, get ready for 6-8 band bills and for shows to start at 5pm, with everyone playing for a cut of the door. Yikes.

Well, until recently we were getting 6-band bills that started at 8 PM (the dreaded "local openers"), so...