Sat·u·ra·tion

            Over saturation, a word that seems to be popping up with more and more frequency in music blogs these days. And over saturation is a phrase that, to a degree, accurately describes today’s popular music universe. It maybe that I feel this way because I’m a Music Industry major in at university that happens located in the music capital of the world. With the amount of information on the Internet, coupled with the democratization of music production, for a music major and lover like myself it seems harder and harder to find quality music. I often find myself having to dig deeper and deeper to find quality music. From this can we conclude that technology has made the quality of music go down? I beg to differ.

            Today’s technologies have allowed musicians to be more creative than ever, with new technologies helping them explore and access new types of music and sounds from around the globe. By exploring new music and with an increased ability to record in unique studio environment, environment and culture has been allowed to become a growing creative force behind music. These new way of recording music are allowing anyone to be a musician. There is more music created than ever, which is leading to a high level of saturation in almost every genre and market. The number of individuals and labels fighting for, “seven seconds of a viewers attention,” is greater than ever before. This leaves it to music heads, like myself, having to sort thru millions of people who now can call themselves recording artists. Rapper J. Cole in a recent interview put his opinions on the subject in a very relate able way. He said, “Today’s music age is like keeping up with the ‘rat race.’” It is so tough these days to poke through the music online, with everyone now being able to record and release music himself or herself. The same goes for DJ’s. With some basic technology and a little practice everyone can DJ. But this isn’t the first time in history we’ve seen this happen.

            When recorded music was making it’s transition from analogue tape to digital people started to utilize the “abuse” in the tape machines. If you pushed the machines harder than they were supposed to go you would get “tape saturation” which was a natural warmth to the overall sound of the music. Music makers from the 60’s to now took the abuse of the recording tape machines and turned it into something good. Technology led to saturation in technique. But it is without argument it made the music better.

            Yes the Internet is over saturated with bad music. And plenty of people are claiming to be musicians, DJ’s, and producers, or whatever else they want to label themselves. But the fact of the matter is one can waste time complaining about the huge volume of low quality music, which in my opinion is a waste of their breathe. Or they can instead look at it as the tape abuse of today’s age. The over saturation is just going to continue to push creative boundaries and real artists will find a way to use the saturation to their advantage. The struggle to rise to the top, to be heard, is what makes great art. Necessity is the father of invention. And we need better music now than ever.