The Music Industry is Tired, So Am I

The music industry today feels exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’re paying close attention. Not because there’s too much music (there’s always been too much music), but because so little of it feels alive. Everyone is focused on being polished, their need to appear intentional, branded, and finished before it even gets a chance to fail. Without failure, the lessons that are crucial to becoming an artist are hidden.

Somewhere along the way, being weird stopped being a risk worth taking. Now, everyone is too focused on being cool or being “a complete idea.”

Artists don’t just release songs anymore, they release concepts. Carefully color-graded visuals, airtight aesthetics, social media personas that never crack. Every project arrives fully explained, pre-approved, and optimized for algorithms that reward familiarity over curiosity. Nothing is allowed to stumble. Nothing is allowed to be confusing. Nothing is allowed to exist halfway, and that’s my problem. I think with this increased supply of polished ideas/concepts, the demand for relatability is at an all time high.

Music used to be messy. It used to come from people trying things they weren’t good at yet. Bands made ugly first records. Singers leaned into voices they didn’t know how to control. Producers broke rules because they didn’t know them. A lot of it didn’t work, but when it did, it changed everything.

Now, failure feels embarrassing instead of necessary.

The pressure to appear “finished” is everywhere. If an artist doesn’t arrive with a fully formed identity, a marketable sound, and a clean narrative, they’re treated like they don’t belong. There’s no room to grow in public anymore. Growth has to happen offstage, behind closed doors, until it’s presentable enough to be consumed. That erases something essential: the human part.

Being weird isn’t just about aesthetics or genre-bending. It’s about letting yourself be uncomfortable. Letting a song be too long, too quiet, too loud, too sincere. Letting a project feel unsure of itself. Letting an artist contradict themselves from one release to the next. Weirdness comes from not knowing who you are yet — and that’s exactly what the industry doesn’t want to see.

Instead, we get music designed to signal taste rather than express anything. Songs that sound like references to other songs. Artists chasing the idea of “cool” so hard that nothing sticks, because cool is empty when everyone’s doing it. It’s all posture, no pulse.

And the audience isn’t innocent either. We scroll faster than ever, decide quicker than ever, move on without listening twice or sometimes we move on before listening for more than a few seconds of the projects. We reward familiarity and punish risk. We say we want something new, but we flinch the second something makes us uncomfortable or bored or confused. The world is in a bubble and it's exhausting to witness, let alone explain.

But confusion used to be an invitation.

Some of the most important music ever made didn’t make sense at first. It needed time. It needed repeat listens. It needed space to exist without explanation. Today, that kind of patience feels incompatible with the system.

The result is an industry that’s loud, crowded, and strangely lifeless. Everyone is performing certainty. No one wants to look lost. No one wants to fail. But failure is where the cracks are, and the cracks are where things grow.

If music is going to feel exciting again, it won’t come from better branding or tighter rollouts. It’ll come from artists willing to look uncool, unfinished, and a little embarrassing. From people choosing curiosity over control. From letting songs exist before they’re perfect.

We don’t need more complete ideas.

We need more honest attempts.