Let’s face it:  No matter how much we love music and the industry, there are music trends that we’d like to see go away.  Hopefully quickly and permanently.  The industry is changing quickly, and there’s no reason those changes can’t include a few issues that are starting to hold music back.

Here are a few of our picks…

Music Trends We’d Like To End ASAP

1 – Auto-tuning.

Anyone who needs auto-tuning to be a successful singer is setting themselves up for a brief and ultimately embarrassing career.  There are certainly times that autotuning can be used for artistic value (see: Daft Punk, Lady Gaga) but 90+% of the time, it’s just disguising bad singing. 

And Lady Gaga just did a jazz album with Tony Bennet specifically to prove she really can sing.

Auto-tuning also tends to turn artists who overuse it into disposable singers, since it makes their voices almost indistinguishable.   It’s a one-way ticket to career oblivion, unless the artist can learn to sing well while they’re still popular.

2 – Withholding online royalty payments.

Pretty much everyone in music from current Queen-Of-Pop Taylor Swift on down have complained about the deplorable state of online royalty payments.  In many cases, artists are getting mere pennies per thousands of plays, if they’re getting paid for their online play at all.  

The labels and the websites are endangering online music as a whole by refusing to fairly share the profits.  If artists can no longer afford to live on their work, why would they keep putting out more music?

3 – Unpaid Gigs

There’s been a rise recently in bands doing free shows at good venues, simply for the exposure.   The problem is,  it’s so easy for promoters to promise paid gigs later in exchange for a free gig now, and then never deliver.  They just want something for nothing.

Musicians need to hold the line here.  Live performances are something that no recording can truly recreate.  It’s your best bargaining chip, and your most precious commodity.  Don’t give it away for free. 

So, which music trends do you want eliminated?