Trying to find new songs and bands has recently become a right pain in the arse for me, but it's for a very good reason...
I will admit that I haven't been very proactive with my music weeding skills due to being a more casual music listener. There are bands I really enjoy and have listened to for many years yes, but ask me how many albums they have out or the name of everyone in the band, and I wouldn't have a scooby. And so, I'd let my YouTube and the like play music in the genres I enjoy (metal, rock, goth, industrial, etc etc), favourite some here and there and, unless it was a band or singer with a well known controversy, and so would stop listening to them, on the whole it wasn't something I really thought about.
That was until I stumbled across this Youtube video, and I realised the era of enjoying music in a vacuum had to end...
As you might expect, this has made my music listening experience a tad harder, as when I do discover a song I like I have to try and remember to do a quick background check of some sort to make sure the lead singer isn't a creep, or that the band isn't associated with having terrible views. It's sad that I can't just assume that those behind the music I enjoy are generally good people.
But that's my fault for not being more active in making sure bands I listen to aren't terrible humans until recently. After all, it's not as if this is a new issue. If you look back at bands and musicians in every era, there have always been terrible people in music, plus I do already have a bunch of bands and singers that I've either never listened to, or stopped listen to because of the things they've done. But on those occasions I didn't seek out the information, but instead either came by it accidently, someone I knew told me about it, or it made headlines. So why didn't I look into the music I enjoyed further until this most recent accidental discovery?
One of the big reason for me was my focus on other media. While I enjoy music a lot, I've always been more of a movie, TV, and Youtube person, enjoying visual entertainment over music when given the choice. As you may be aware, there have been many, many, many controversies that have happened with actors and Youtubers being outed as weirdo perverts or horribly abusive, and because I was so focused on trying not to support them to the best of my ability, doing the same with the music I listen to kinda fell by the wayside.
Finding out that stuff about a band I previously enjoyed made me realise that I could no longer just casually enjoy music, because you're either supporting who they are, or you're not, and I want to try my best not to anymore.
I still have many bands and singers that I need to sift through on YouTube music and the like, and I know I'm not going to be perfect and will probably miss things as new controversies pop up constantly, but I'm going to try my best. I want to support bands and singers who deserve it, and try to not give my time or money to those that don't, even if that means that I might be giving up music that I've been listening to for over half my life...
There's also the more recent issue of AI music and the pain trying to avoid accidentally listening to that, as well as the broader topic of how far can you go in trying to cut out every controversial thing from your life (in the world of music, film, actors, authors, companies, ingredients, ways to travel etc) before you have to put a line in the sand and say that you've done the best you can, otherwise you'll become overwhelmed trying to keep up with what feels like a daily deluge of new ones...but those are lengthy subject for another time.
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