The year goes, the music stays

Gone is a year of worldwide flare-ups of protests. Images of revolutionary-spirited street battles in the midst of illiberal regimes represented—and continue to represent—a major world political turning point. In the history of great conflicts of capitalist democracies, music too always posed contemporary questions and demanded timeless answers. In turbulent times like these, how progressive can music still be? Gen Z's approach to a musical concept, coupled with these revolting questions, show that it can still be revolutionary.

The achievements of our digitalized everyday life fundamentally transformed the distribution channels of the global music industry. How we come into contact with artists, albums, or songs today has completely changed our entire concrete experience of music. The almost limitless possibilities to react to and interact with new musical creations, such as a new, emerging all-encompassing songwriting culture, triggered by the logics of local online platforms, resulted in a post-album era: the age of the song. The music-industrial epochal shift through four-digitization shifted the balance of power from a few gatekeepers to the consumers themselves. Gen Z artists can be democratically inspirational, being dependent on nobody, and creating like never before.

With global social rumblings on one hand, and new tech disruptions on the other, the spheres of influence for music are changing worldwide. The overall musical social influence will increase and the search for answers to questions in music will rise. Granted: World events are so fast and unpredictable, but paradigm shifts like these have always proven transformative in the past and offered ways out of cultural sullenness. Musicians will be able to respond even more freely to an ever-widening demand of musical expression.

Gen Z is self-confident, knowledgeable, extremely socially aware, and has access to a body of knowledge unlike any generation before it. These availabilities and almost limitless possibilities of a whole age group, are the instrument for an atomization of influences, a mixing of the obvious, unique and peculiar, for the emergence of innovation. Even if it’s unclear exactly when, we know that songs and albums with lyrical and musical precision will emerge, which will confront us with a promising future of modern humanity, at least musically.