A sobering thought occurred to me today: I may have reached a musical tipping point in my life.
In my teen years, I was very much an advocate of various forms of mainstream contemporary music. Pop, Rock, Dance, Indie, Hip-Hop...
I began to diversify as I hit my twenties and I started to explore all sorts of genres and sub-genres. Classical, Jazz, Rock N' Roll, Country, Blues...
Then, into my mid-twenties, I ransacked history. A hundred or so years of it, the classical standards aside; initially for the best, then its rare gems.
I tried pretty much everything.
But even though I still stumble across the odd treasure, things have changed. I've exhausted my supply and I'm now reliant on either new material or a significant swing in taste.
And it occurs to me that, on balance, it's likely that I've now heard the majority of good music I'm going to hear in my lifetime. I'm on the downward slope. There's less good music to come than that which lies behind me.
I've reached my Musical Tipping Point. It's a sobering thought.
And it's a situation which is only going to begin affecting more with the proliferation of P2P networks. Music has become too accessible. We can now exhaust an entire history of music in 15-20 years. And what do we listen to then?
2008-07-17 @ 01:03