How would you describe music in the 2010s?

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For me personally, it seems like the 2010s started out with two seperate music scenes that didn't really merge until the second half of the decade. One was the corporate and mainstream music industry that gave you artists like Young Thug, Cardi B, Rihanna, ect. The style was often centered around partying, romance, and hype culture. The other scene was the indie/experimental scene where a lot of the electronic music was coming out of; artists like Flying Lotus, Ariel Pink, Yves Tumor, Oneohtrix Point Never, ect- this strain of music was often more moody, trippy, dark, and cerebral. Eventually these two scenes merged into "Cloud Rap" and the more experimental stuff became more mainstream; a common theme of this music was to be very druggy and slow, kind of like chopped and screwed music in the 2000s. But also note that people like Kanye West were incorporating experimental elements in a more mainstream package all along with all of his 2010s albums.

What do you think?

I just realized that I posted this in the wrong forum. Feel free to move it.

I mostly like retro music, but some 2010's music is good. Most of it is just not my thing.

Too much pop, not enough metal.

Like anything else the 2010s had to offer: Garbage.

My attitude is; I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't play a musical instrument and I would, with the help of autotune, go straight to number one.

Most "music" made by big artists is....awful with the odd good track thrown in. There are hundreds of small bands that get very little coverage and some of these have made multiple tracks I like while others just the one.

psychedelic grunge

I don't do the dance music stuff

Probably the strongest decade in music history.

I don’t think you can pick out too many musical trends, certainly not ones that defined the decade or a portion of the decade the way that some previous decades have been. There were some trends like cloud rap, Australian psychedelia, or the emo/garage/lo-fi explosion, but none of these trends defined the decade the way that punk defined the late 70s, grunge defined the early 90s, Britpop defined the mid 90s, etc.

Instead I think a few “music industry” trends played a bigger role:

- As technology advances, it has become easier and easier to make good music without the support of a record label. Artists like Chance The Rapper and Car Seat Headrest achieved international acclaim by releasing self-produced music for free online.

- The move to streaming led to pop albums adding extra tracks in order to maximise stream revenue.

- Most artists saw a decline in revenue from music sales, continuing the trend of tours becoming more important. Some of the decade’s premier artists only released two or three albums as they focused on touring.

- Similarly, I think knowing that you’re going to have to tour with an album for three years led to an increase in perfectionism by artists. This of course doesn’t apply to the artists with 19 track albums who could still get money from streaming; they would have short but expensive tours to promote annual or biannual albums of questionable quality.

- There broadly became greater acceptance of collaboration in music, with indie rockers publicly writing songs with bubblegum pop stars and being praised for the results. Featured artists became more common. A single producer handling a whole album became less common.

- The rise of YouTube made music videos more important.

- Globalisation made it easier to enjoy music from around the world. K-Pop and J-Pop both found bigger audiences in the West. Latin music and Caribbean music were both incorporated into mainstream music at a much greater rate, often with more authenticity such as a featured artist. Several of the biggest songs did not use the English language. Australia and Canada both produced a large share of the decade’s most acclaimed music as opposed to previous decades being dominated by the US and U.K.

At the midpoint I thought we would see more genuinely good fusions of rap and indie rock or chamberpop sounds along the lines of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Modern Vampires of the City. That didn’t happen. Several of the artists I expected to lead that charge (Chance, Vic Mensa, Kid Cudi) absolutely whiffed, and Kanye himself got sick.

A lot of pop music that started to invariably revolve around sex, partying, and/or being sad about breaking up with someone...

There were still some good mainstream artists: Imagine Dragons, Ed Sheeran, Adele. But for the most part "popular, famous" artists (ie, Rihanna, Katy Perry, 1D, Justin Timberlake etc) tended to be the kind of stuff you won't mind listening to on the radio, but you're not going to buy an album either.

(I don't know anyone who actually lists many "popular" artists when you ask them about their favorite music. Most people I knew in high school were fans of The Killers and Beyonce though.)

Soulless

There’s a lot of songs from 2010-2014 that I feel nostalgic about. There’s some songs from 2013-2017 that strike an emotional nerve with me because it reminds me of past events that I don’t feel good about. In 2015 and after, there were a few songs here and there that I liked, but a lot of it is annoying hip hop music.

Like in other decades, it depends on the artist

I don’t listen to much music from after the 80s.

My wife is 71, and likes modern music better.