Over the last decade, one of the most vital elements of youth culture has begun to fade. The garage band was once a common artistic outlet for teenage boys. Garages were thriving spaces where they dreamed of stardom and hammered out Slayer tunes on borrowed amps and drums patched up with gaffer tape. Today, that motivation and shared rite of passage is vanishing.

MIDiA Research, an organization that analyzes the music industry, indicates a concerning trend: Young men are disengaging from music. Attendance at live music events males aged 16 to 34 has plummeted by roughly half in the last year.

Music created by bands no longer dominates the charts. Last year, a Billboard magazine analysis found that bands have almost entirely vanished from the Hot 100 chart, with solo artists replacing them. In the previous decade, only a few new bands cracked the top 100. Since 2018, groups have accounted for less than 8 percent of all top 10 singles.

It appears that the fame incentive structure has shifted marketing strategy: the industry now creates brands rather than bands. Record labels are no longer interested in managing the complex human dynamics, creative tensions, conflicts, and disagreements associated with groups of musicians. Solo artists have the flexibility to record their music in any location they choose. Anyone with seed capital and internet access can set up a recording studio in their bedroom and create content without the old limitations or logistical complexity associated with groups.

Until the internet era, bands had to tour to gain an audience. They learned what made 30 people stop and listen in Milwaukee on a Tuesday night. In today’s world, however, viral success can come to a performer before he ever gives a single live performance.

Labels now favor artists who have built an online following. Eight of the 10 best-selling albums in 2025—nine of which are performed by solo artists—belong to artists who began their careers as solo acts on digital platforms, frequently posting music to social media. There is a simple economic logic for record labels: a fanbase is preloaded into the contract from the start. Why waste money on costly travel and promotion when your superstar can reach millions of people from their bedroom on TikTok? Thus, online launches are becoming more the rule than the exception.  

My generation discovered new music through word of mouth. Kids reviewed records and interviewed bands in fanzines. The first piece of writing I ever got published was in a hardcore punk fanzine in the early 1990s. Interacting with bands meant personally speaking with them or writing to them—I still have a handwritten note from the drummer of Black Flag tucked inside my “Milo Goes To College” record. Music discovery used to be about social connections; now it’s about social media algorithms.

The home studio has replaced the rehearsal room. What once required instruments, hours of practice, and social interaction now requires nothing more than a keyboard prompt.

An artist who uses the online handle “Breaking Rust” is a rapidly rising star who has set the internet ablaze with his new country hit, “Walk My Walk.” The track has amassed over 7 million streams on Spotify has reached number one on the U.S Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart. The artist sounds like Sam Elliott with his whisky-soaked baritone, but his online image looks like a Levi’s model. You could strike a match with his sculpted, stubbled jaw. Unfortunately, wine moms will not be allowed to faint in the aisles during his next U.S tour. In fact, nobody will. “He” does not exist; the synthetic singing cowboy is nothing but an artificial intelligence program.

A.I. is not only starting to dominate art but it is also destroying the incentive for humans to produce art, depriving us of a vital part of our humanity. For millions of years, our ancestors used tools to paint images, tell stories, and express themselves. Art was created for the purpose of outlasting our finite existence—a cultural legacy to be passed on to future generations.

We live in an era described by Neil Postman as a “technopoly”—a culturally sterile world that has capitulated to the sovereignty of technology. This “totalitarian technocracy,” as Postman calls it, has changed the world into one where technology is our culture—eliminating meaning and undermining tradition. In a technopoly, technology ceases to operate as a tool for society; instead, culture seeks gratification from technology itself.

The music produced during the decades between 1960 and 2000 formed the foundations of modern culture. Songs and records became shared cultural events. Back then, record executives were a different type of capitalist; they were risk takers. As Frank Zappa famously stated of the old CEOs, “Record it, stick it out. If it sells, alright!”  In an interview with the Telegraph, Blur bassist Alex James compared the era to the Medici period, calling it a “brief, glorious, unique, explosion of creativity.”

Our current period is one of cultural stagnation, engulfed in the fetid sewage of identity politics and historical revisionism. The rise of generative A.I. proves that we live in a philistine world in which reality is no longer required for enjoyment. It is time for a rebellion against this inhuman state of affairs and a genuine cultural renaissance.