The Problem with Rick Beato

A lot of people don’t know this, but Rick Beato invented music.

A lot of Beato's hot takes can be dismissed as 'Old man shakes fist at cloud', but if his main point is that there's a crisis in the music industry, he's right. He might not be adept at explaining the causes (it's all basically due to the progress of technology), but at least he gets people thinking and talking about music, which I guess is a good thing.

95% of us are like Beato, at least some of the time: We like to justify our own tastes, sometimes by condemning what we don't like. Not many of us are secure enough to simply like what we like, and do what we do, without passing judgment on the rest of the world.

Just came across this and 100% agree. Most of the time, it Rick demonstrating his blind spots and narrow idea of what music is/can be. Everything relates to music of the 60s to the 80s.

The thing is, Rick Beato's correct, most of the time. The man knows what he's talking about. He understands music. He doesn't always understand generations, but he does most of the time.

GTA has introduced so many people to artists they would have never heard our wise and thats just GTA.

I'm 66 years old and used to play in bands. I haven't gigged since 2000. For a number of reasons, band gigs dried up starting around the mid to late 80's. Rick was a band guy who transitioned very well into other things and I like his videos. Naturally bands still exist but it's nothing like it was in the 60's, 70's and part of the 80's.

I love a lot of Rick videos and can relate to his desire to return to the glory days of rock, and we all get a little grumpy when we see the world we grew up in fading away. I was told to listen to KEXP when I wanted to hear new rock bands, and can say the current generation still makes incredible guitar based music, rooted in the old values while still taking it to new places.

I have an 11 year old son that listens to music all the time and a 97 year old grandfather that couldn't care less about music. Generational gaps mean nothing.

There's not a problem with Rick Beato. There's a problem with the lack of musicality in music, and young people either not knowing the difference or not caring.

When I started to care about music around age 11 my level of love and caring for music has not wavered higher or lower in many decades😊

Common now… haven’t you heard your father tell you to turn off your music? That it is just noise?

Rick might be wrong about Gen Zs relationship with music, but you seem to be attributing a much greater attitude of criticism to the video than there actually was. He was just looking at differences in the generations without making value judgements.

What's also good about Rick is while he exchanges his ideas and opinions, he doesn't insult those opinions which oppose him.

Video games introduced me to so many new artists. I remember playing need for speed games and learning a ton about new music. Hot Pursuit 2 had me jamming to Rush for the first time. Then need for speed underground came out and introduced me to Lil Jon, Snoop Dogg, and a bunch of other rappers. Of course these artists are huge and I probably would have discovered them anyways, but as a 10 year old kid, these artists were mind blowing. I had never heard anything like it. Still a huge rock and hip hop fan many years later.

The biggest difference BY FAR in my opinion is less of a focus on listening to full albums, or even learning artists names for that matter. I know this is anecdotal, but I worked with multiple people who were millennials (as am I) and couldn't even tell me a single artist they liked.The reasoning was all they listened to was Spotify EDM playlists while they played Rocket League. I still have plenty of friends and acquaintances who love music of all kinds and know tons of albums, but these are all musicians. The appreciation for music doesn't seem to be there for the general public as much as it used to, like if you look back music used to be everything to most of the youth, probably cause there was so much incredible music coming out in the 60s and 70s. I've even been told that being into music is considered cringy now by people from Gen Z. Video games definitely have replaced a lot of interest that used to be put into music, whether you want to admit it or not. It just is what it is, not shitting on the younger generation cause there's still fantastic music out there, as well as video game music (Celeste B-sides is one of my favorite soundtracks ever) and also a lot of the bands you mentioned are very artistic and fresh, like BCNR, Squid, FIDLAR, MGMT, Black Midi, Thee Oh Sees, Nolan Potter Nightmare Band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (specifically polygondwanaland one of the best albums of the decade), just to name a few. It just feels like music has become a lot more niche, but I still love finding new masterpiece albums. sorry i got a little carried away.. i'm very passionate about music

Rick has already forgotten more about music than most Youtubers will ever learn.

"I was playing games with my kids and they asked me if I liked the music, but I didn't even notice the music, I just cared about winning! And that's when I realized, these video games are so addictive and the kids don't care about music." Soooooo, the kids like the music, but Rick didn't even notice the music, but the kids did, and thus this proves kids don't care about music? I am so confused...

"Gen Z doesn't care about music" Most users on AOTY that I know are Gen Z's who are passionate and capable of being critical about music. They even enjoy the most experimental type shit and I discovered a bunch of fascinating artists and genre from them. Gen Z is probably the only generation who can passionately talk about artists like Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Swans, BCNR, JPEGMAFIA, Model/Actriz, to classics like King Crimson, Charles Mingus, Chick Corea, Frank Zappa, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Black Sabbath, Velvet Underground, etc. I even learned about genres like Musique Concrète and Onkyo from these kids!

Rick is pretty much spot on. Most of the music made today will not be listened to by future generations. While so much of the music made during Rick's generation is still the mainstay for good music.