Ask Lemmy

RTJ is so fucking good at bringing that class conscious fire in the belly that RATM did. To be honest though, I think acts like Brass Against are keeping the music and the message alive and deserve a lot more visibility.

They're basically the Pink Floyd of our generation. Too bad they'll never have the same reach as PF or older bands due to the heavy current cultural fragmentation.

The "algorithm" is not some conspiranoic mastermind, it just serves whatever retains the most attention and generates clicks for advertisers. It's users who don't want to listen to because they prefer bland pop or whatever kids listen to these days.

Jesus Christ you people will bitch about anything.

Please explain to me how an algorithm is worse than having to bribe execs to get on the radio and wait for the song to be played. And then if lucky it'll get played 40 times in repeat.

I'm sure this will be a coherent answer 🙄.

So you're saying that no one listens to music that isn't spoon-fed to them?

My friend, algos won't show me Swedish power metal, I gotta go find it. No one waited for Rage to come on the radio, you sought it out at the record store or from friends that had copied demo tapes and mix tapes.

Lolwut.

Artists like Bob Vylan, Lambrini Girls, Narcissist Cookbook, Cheap Perfume, The Oozes, Problem Patterns and even Lil Darkie and many more are ones I'd never have found without Spotify suggestions. That and discovering some classics like Anti-Flag, Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, Against Me!, Crass, ZSK would never have happened without algo suggestions.

Generic bullshit doesn't even get clicks, the most outraging things get clicks, protest songs and politically charged shit does, just like the above, it just happens to be leftist music. Also check out Refused.

It's crazy we live in a time where there is music that isn't some poetic wishy washy love song top 40 studio bullshit which is all you would've known about before, but there's music that actually references material current events that happen, and then there's old classics that are so much easier to find thanks to discoverability via streaming.

There's obviously a problem with the inherent wealth transfer where both indie musicians and listeners pay Spotify, and now they want to cut out the middleman (the musician) entirely, but we absolutely must not go back to monoculture offline bs mandated by some fat cat studio exec Epstein list member looking ass.

Edit: I posted in another comment, but if anyone is interested in leftist, political, anti-capitalist and progressive music more generally I maintain a playlist here and I'd love suggestions: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rYZABdJf5H8XmliZ9ZTIW?pi=KIskSDh8T--mY

👉🤛

Check out Jesse Welles for more folky protest music.

He also has non-protest music too, but some good recent protest and political songs include:

The Ballad of Big Balls

Join Ice

Starve Away

The List

Sometimes You Bomb Iran

The Great Caucasian God

My Billionaire Daddies Are Fighting

I’ve had this conversation with one of my older friends. We used to have a lot more of a monoculture when it came to media. You could joke about last night’s popular TV shows because nearly everyone you knew was watching them.

There just wasn’t as much stuff being produced at the time. Now, you can always be listening to something new, 24/7, and you still won’t even begin to tap the potential of “what’s popular”. And once you step outside the US, that blows up to a whole new proportion.

casual Muse fan and listened to a few RATM songs, I guess? Muse still do political songs but even their old songs isn't as charged as RATM old songs. That's the era where when they were smaller they'd be more daring is my reasoning for that comparison.

When Muse returned to perform in Malaysia on the WOTP tour, heard rumors that they took out We Are Fucking Fucked upon request. But even when I fainted for the last 4 songs listening back to the setlist that song doesn't seem to fit IMO

edit: I'd l0ve to explore TikTok musicians but the problem is they're on TikTok. still holding on not making an account there

I AIN'T JUST A VILLIAN I'M THE MOTHERFUCKEN MAN

RTJ4 coming out right when the pandemic and George Floyd being murdered was magical. That album is straight gas. Saying this as a 48 year old white dude.

I have never even read those names before, and I think this illustrates the issue.

Protest songs used to reach world wide top charts because that's what people bought. This was ruined by commercialization, so that charts now only show what labels want to sell. People who actually choose what music to consume will scatter out into online bubbles that are completely detached from the mainstream and public view.

This makes it almost impossible to reach as big an audience as done by RATM and others did in previous decades.

Perhaps young people ought to do protest TikToks instead of protest songs.

Hell yeah! The whole "For the People" album just released is fantastic and just what op is looking for I bet. I was just at a show with them, Bad Religion, and the Mainliners, all three kicked ass