The Elton/Hootie Line
March 4, 2020·39 comments·Politics
In 1995, something shifted in recorded music that nobody explicitly agreed to but everyone felt compelled to follow. The industry cranked up compression on audio recordings to make songs sound more energetic. It worked, briefly. Then every competitor had to do it too, and the range of sounds music could contain collapsed forever. The pattern wasn't unique to music. The same competitive logic that destroyed musical dynamics is now destroying everything else.
• The mechanism wasn't conspiracy, it was rational panic. When the best-selling albums started using heavy audio compression, rivals couldn't afford not to follow. Songs sounded duller by comparison. Not defecting meant commercial death. Once enough competitors switched, the old way became impossible to sustain.
• The data confirms the collapse happened fast. Between 1995 and 1997, the dynamic range of top-selling albums dropped sharply and never recovered. At almost the exact same moment, song lyrics became measurably more repetitive. The compression wasn't just technical; it changed what musicians created.
• The same pattern is now everywhere you look. Political discourse, news coverage, academic thought. When volume increases and stakes feel existential, the range of acceptable ideas compresses. Off-narrative angles disappear within a week. Nuance becomes socially impossible. Coordination breaks down.
• Loud environments are compressed environments. This isn't just about sound or emotion. When you turn up the volume on anything, you force a transition from a game where everyone can win to a game where you must compete or lose. Once that happens, creativity and optionality don't just decline. They vanish.
• The question isn't how to reverse what happened, but whether escape is still possible. We crossed the line in 1995 and we didn't look back. The compression deepened. But the existence of alternatives to the compressed mainstream suggests something unexpected: the game isn't as locked as it feels.
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Comments
on a lighter note, i suppose thats why all the music after 2000 pretty much sucks…it always amuses me that the tracks everyone gets up and dances to are from the 1970s-1990s. especially the kids today who weren’t even born then…
Great note. And aside from dealing with the here and now, and offering a prescription (the hardest part, I think) that can get people engaged - I have kind of an “academic” question: Why are we now living in the “widening gyre,” and the “long now,” or why have we fully embraced the volume/compression matrix in society and politics? If you look at all sorts of measures it looks like something “breaks” in the late 1970’s and then continues growing through the 80’s and then accelerates starting in the early 90’s. I wonder if you have a view on “why” this has happened (or an essay you could point me to). Do you think there are feedback loops to the way we measure things as well?
Just musings, I suppose (I’m not demanding explanations).
Rusty, great post. It’s hard to find people who believe in something that contains more than lots of calories and no nutrition. From “A Note On The Music Industry”: “According to Pollack, this diversion is a compositional device commonly used by Lennon and McCartney, which he says is, ‘deferred gratification.’ Pollacks’ choice of words to describe the song is an interesting counter-point to more recent generation that seems obsessed with instant gratification.” https://www.lbs.co/blog/a-note-on-the-music-industry
Thanks for sharing this. I really enjoyed that writeup.
I think you could do worse than to pin it all on the fundamental transition of social interactions from mostly bilateral to mostly crowd-watching-the-crowd over that time. That fundamental shift makes loudness - which is often explicitly but sometimes implicitly designed to exploit common knowledge - a dominant strategy that forces others to play too. Or lose.
Hah. Well, of course I agree. In honestly, I think that feeling is partially nostalgia (everyone thinks this about new music!). But I DO think it’s partially reflective of the second order effects described above: “What music would you make if music were really about this?” And if that’s “sounding good on the radio so people buy records”, you’ll do X. And if it’s “Make the most money on Spotify” you’ll do Y.
And those things are cartoons, not nearly the same as “music people will enjoy the most”, much less “the best music”, if such a thing can be argued to exist.
Worth the wait.
‘Nuff said
Ha! And there I was, convinced that my “real” guess was the correct one ? !! Very excited for the ET swag, thanks guys!
I’d love to learn more about how and why optionality disappears in the transition to Competition Games.
Noted. We can absolutely explore this specific dimension a bit more.
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