Many people argue that times have changed and the former times were far better. If we were to travel in time however, exactly the same arguments would arise in any time period. Are they better? Doesn't the knowledge, the science of computer technology for example, given to people let them imagine about times that had passed and are gone forever?
As our consumerist world became more and more connected, popular music became a product for a much wider audience. Music has been a product for a long time, from the first steps of the species we belong to, in fact, and to deny this is denying reality. My opinion is that all art works far better as merchandise than as something hazy. I will explain this further;
Production of merchandise, as opposed to lonesome "poetic“ pleasure involves planing, preconception, reason, and (by all means) competition — all of which better the product or in the opposite make it cheaper. It is however important to realize who is the buyer of the merchandise.
In music, most of the classical compositions we know have been thoroughly planned ahead and for a certain purpose. Usually, through the 1700s and 1800s investors would commission musicians to make new popular works for plays, operas, ballets, or other occasions such as state hymns. Examples of these are Mozart, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Rimsky Korsakov, Vatroslav Lisinski, Guissepe Verdi etc. When music became a free artistic product, the popular genre switched from classically trained musicians to those who worked for America's musical theatres and European operettas. Some classical musicians were to pursue their own ideals. But are these ideals really possible? I doubt that it is possible to truly work outside of the zeitgeist except in a few cases where an artist creates his own zeitgeist, because without the consumer there is no product, and does in this way the value of the product increase as the audience does?
Now for one thing, there are always exceptions. There have been popular composers since and there have been popular performers at that time, yet something crucially changed at the beginning of the 20th century and that was the invention of radio. Radio opened the door for performers and singer songwriters with no particular musical knowledge except the subconscious knowledge of their own ethnic music. Early blues became popular, jazz and later country music followed. Jazz later became more complex by such artists as Ellington and Strayhorn who were borrowing more musical elements from European classical music than from jazz music itself. Otherwise, simple music was to become more and more popular.
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