One tantalizing thing I thought was how as the prominance of video games by kids/teens/young adults over the past few decades gradually may have taken the spirits of good pop music with it. For instance, from the mid-50s until the mid-70s, without video games and just TV, most of the youth at home would just listen to records. Since they cared about good music (rather than good, fun games), having great music was a necessity. Then sometime in the mid-70s, we can notice the first bit of a drop off in music in the form of some disco with the parallel development of Pong. Then came Atari for a few years in the early '80s and the music was rather drab and conservative, followed by a recession after the overproduction failure of games such as ET. 1983-early 1986 had lots of arcades at the malls, but at home, there we'rent as many good video games, so for this relatively short period launched by Michael Jackson's Thriller, we have another period of good music and many multi-platinum albums were issued in this timeframe. But sometime later in 1986, the NES really had surged in popularity and console gaming was back in vogue again; plus the 8-bit games lasted longer and more fun to play; as a result, kids may have spent a bit less time playing the cassettes/watching MTV and the quality of music starts to drop again. The 16-bit era paralles the grunge/gangsta rap era, with the thirty-andfortysomethings prefering adult contemporary/diva type pop, so rock/fun pop starts to distintegrates itself. Each successive era has only gotten worse:
The Playstation 1/Nintendo 64/Saturn era with it's Post Grunge/Alternative/Nu Metal/Teen Pop/R&B merging with Rap era, followed by the 128-bit (Dreamcast/Playstation 2/XBOX) era where in the middle of this era, music basically becomes more of a torture element with Glam Rap and Emo becoming big, finally with the Ipod/Ringtone Rap/Autotune of the last few years of the current generation of video games. The addition of classic rock games during this era actually shows even the young people that the oldies are really the goodies and that current pop music is "dead".

I find this a bit of an interesting relationship.

I echo Echo Nomad's ;) sentiment in another thread - I think it's because the labels want to put out a product fast and cheap so that's why today's pop seems to be a bunch of garbage. :D

Good post, I think you might be onto something. :) I sometimes forget the mid 80s had sort of a drop in video games, after Atari faded but before the NES came out (although I bet kids still went to public arcades, I can vaguely rememer those years and I can recall playing Pac Man and stuff too).

I think there was always SOME good music and a good variety all through the 80s/90s though, even if some were a little better than others. It didn't imo start sucking until about 1999 when Britney came out. It's not that there haven't been any good songs since then that I've liked, it's just more scattered. I do think the fact that video games are the most prominent pop culture might have a little bit to do with that, but it's other things too (i.e. mass downloading, or just I don't think any entirely new style of music could come out by this point).

...The addition of classic rock games during this era actually shows even the young people that the oldies are really the goodies and that current pop music is "dead".

Yeah, from what I can tell kids like classic rock and older music alot more than they used to. I bet that has something to do with it, like with GTA Vice City having tons of 80s songs in it.

I think you're absolutely spot-on. Check out this fascinating Guardian article. The graph is particularly illuminating; it shows what types of entertainment people bought from 1999 to 2008, and you can see video game purchases growing and slowly squeezing out music purchases. (It only applies to people in the UK, but there's no reason to assume the same pattern isn't happening in other Western countries.) Music no longer holds as much importance to young people as it did in previous generations. It's not the dominant art form that speaks to us and for us. Video games seem to be slowly taking music's place, and music is seen more and more as pleasant mood-setters for games, movies, commercials, and TV shows.

As for why that is, I think it's a chicken-and-egg thing. The more people consume music indirectly, through soundtracks, the more pressure there is to create soulless pabulum. And the more soulless and corporate the music becomes, the less likely people are to listen to it in other forms than soundtracks.

I think music still had a somewhat moderate audience until late 2005. I mean album sales have dropped big time since mid 2005. I think even though like Marty was saying music didn;t start sucking until 1999 it still had a big audience with teen-pop and a decent amount of people following music from 2003-mid 2005 with the glam rap trend.

I remember the change of in the late spring/summer of 2005 of the music industry. I mean Chris Brown, Rihanna, The Pussycatt Dolls and Ne-Yo all became big and the invention of ring-tone rap in late 2005. I mean Chris Brown, Rihanna, and the Pussycatt Dolls I mean their audience is like really young people and not people over the age of 16. I mean compare that to the 1982-1996 era I think was targeted to the age 14-35 age group. I mean say what you want about the 1992-1996 era(mostly the Breakfast Club early Gen Xers don;t like that era) but I think the baby boomers did like artists like Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Sara McLaughlin, Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, TLC, Mariah Carey, Babyface, Toni Braxton. My uncle liked the band "Collective Soul" or at least a song by them and he's a baby boomer. My mom sometimes talk about how good "Hootie and The Blowfish" were the past few months.

1997-1998 which was in between 1999 and 1996 musical years obviously I think the target age was like ages 15-25 for those 2 years(1997-1998.) I remember R&B and rap being big in early to mid 1998.

About video games you know and late gen Xer(I'm 29) I was never that crazy about video games after I was 15 years old. I had a game boy and the first nintendo but I wasn't crazy about video games  in the house after age 15. I did like to go the Jersey Shore and play games on the boardwalk from 2004-2008 but I haven;t even played any games on the boardwalk barely this year.