What has changed is the music industry no long controls the media so they cannot ram music fads down our throats and make us think ‘this’ is the next big thing. The only thing that’s changed is that we know more now and are better connected.

Born at the beginning of the 70′s, I lived through the very tail-end of punk, plus all the great music that came with the 80′s and 90′s. I also immersed myself in stuff from the 60′s and 50′s, and am self-taught in popular music history.

Living in the UK throughout, British (and American) music was one of the things that kept me going in a country that I otherwise despaired of. Like so, so many others, I spent most of my youth obsessively following and absorbing all I could of the greats – be it The Beatles, Miles, Bowie, Ella Fitzgerald, Massive Attack or Sonic Youth – along with all the other great tunes that ended up under the radar too, the sounds of the Great Unheard that would jump out like diamonds from a moment on the John Peel show or in some obscure magazine review.

A few years on from Napster, I finally made a clean break from my past and roots, and moved to Tokyo. This had a number of effects on the music that had always mattered so much to me. Firstly, I started listening to non-Western music to a much greater degree than I ever had, resulting in the borders between musics breaking down rapidly. Secondly, I bought my first iPod, which arguably had as much or more impact on the issues discussed above than did Napster. If P2P slayed the distribution model, storage space and playlist creation did pretty much the same for the format model. Both of these things were general cultural shifts anyway, and may well have affected me whether I’d been living in Japan or not

We are living through (mostly peaceful) revolutionary times on a global scale, for the first time in the history of our species, where all that once was certain and immovable is now swept away or on very shaky ground. Music and the industry that developed over the twentieth century around it is just one of the many aspects of our lives where all the certainties of the past are now being totally redefined.

To add a couple of points that tie in with Refe’s post above, I think that there have been several great songs in the post 9/11 era that relate to the issues, but they’ve appeared in a time where we don’t all just listen to one radio station or read one newspaper any more. They’re spread all over the place. Have a listen to the online jukebox at http://peace.fm/music/peace-jukebox for a handful of post-9/11 ‘protest music’ tracks.

Finally, as the decade draws to a close, I’d agree with the above that there are no decade-defining music acts for the 00′s as there were for the previous four. However, there’s also more great music (including that of the past and the present) than there ever has been before and an infinite variety of ways to get it past your ears. The global adoption of the internet has been such a game-changer in every aspect of our lives that no-one’s really sure what it all means yet.

Sites like this, with the search for new ways forward for musicians, listeners and the business around it all, are a great start for trying to figure out what to make of it all and how to build for music in this new world.

Keep up the good work, Refe!

With this in mind, the comment about “Teach Your Children” and the Muse/Queen connection are telling.

As mentioned previously, the past is being plundered and in some cases rewritten. For example, Amy Winehouse rewrote the words to Ray Charles’ music and made a bundle doing so.

It’s not a leap to say that when history is erased, progression will likely stall, or die.

And music isn’t the only industry where this is happening. The advertising agency business is suffering the same fate.