Music expert Rick Beato recently posted a video, “Why Gen Z Doesn’t Care About Music,” offering his opinion on young people’s relative disinterest in music compared to previous generations. He cautions that his view is a generalization. Many young people still care about music, of course. But he cites a preoccupation with video games as the main culprit in the demise of musical perception. With its focus on visuals and its addictive quality, he believes it leaves little room for other pursuits. He formed this opinion after talking to plenty of Gen Z youth and observing their habits. I don’t know whether this is accurate or not, but I do know there has been a qualitative shift. The most interesting facet is the comments that viewers have posted.

Musical Perception Has Atrophied

Commenter Patrick Ryan offers the best summary of what’s going on culturally. Ryan sees a gradual deadening of musical experience over the years. Pianos were once commonplace in homes. Parents supported music lessons for their kids. People experienced live music through dances and concerts. The rapid rate of technological change has altered how people experience and interact with music. Shorter attention spans, instant gratification, the ubiquity of music 24/7, music as pure commodity—all have contributed to this shift.

The minimization of music and the related plague of musical illiteracy in recent generations has given us people whose “sensing abilities” (re: musical perception) have atrophied, like an organ that once served a function, or a muscle that’s no longer used.

The various comments, both agreeing and disagreeing, provide a fascinating read. One commenter notes that Gen Z-ers still listen to music all the time, but thinks the main difference is that it is no longer a communal thing. This is likely true, but I’ll wager that most of these younger people don’t hear music in the same way. They’re used to music as a background presence, not something important in its own right, or expressive of what it means to be human. To this I would add that modern music production has degraded quality: the over-use of AutoTune, extreme compression, sloppy mixing techniques, etc. (see my post on “Three music technology tools that drive me crazy”).

If music is not yet dead, it certainly seems to be dying. Yes, plenty of music still fills the world around us. But as Ryan says, “the discipline which leads to understanding and valuing music as contributing to a healthy, vibrant culture, is lost.”