Unpopular opinions

[Katsching]

I agree with you guys. I felt similar about 6-8 years ago. Those horrendously sounding raw style kicks appeared and were everywhere (I still remember ceero's description "it sounds exactly like when you throw rocks into a washing machine") and these dull kicks we have to hear in pretty much every hardstlye track nowadays took over the euphoric scene 2-3 years later. The first two or three tracks that featured a psy-like tripled baseline or a thin reverse bass sparked some interest but then everyone just copied it.
I've totally lost touch with hardstyle in general because there is basically ZERO innovation and originality.
The only guys I occasionally listen to are Vazard, Thera and Geck-o (his hardstyle, I'm talking about here)

Linked to all this is my frustration that I wish many more members would be even more active in other sub-thread here like "other music" and "subground" (which is basically techno). There is so much more and so much more better electronic music out there.

[Emre]

I think they're making tracks more chaotic nowadays (fake drops, multiple kickswitches etc) because people's attention span at live events is much lower for some reason. This results in tracks consisting of multiple wow-moments, surprise factors and them being less focused on 'flow'. And of course, we're now in the Spotify generation, shorter tracks = more streams. I personally don't dislike it, I like the more chaotic, extreme, ADHD direction the genre went in nowadays. As a listener since 2006-ish.. while I love the nostalgia, the 6-minute long simple tracks from 10-15 years ago with 1 kick and more predictability kinda bore me nowadays. Which is probably a result of getting used to the 'new hardstyle', but yeah.. I can, on the other hand, understand that a lot of people don't like it.

I've totally lost touch with hardstyle in general because there is basically ZERO innovation and originality

There are plenty of producers in 2022 that are innovative and creative, I think taste plays a big role here.

[DjThera]

There are plenty of producers in 2022 that are innovative and creative, I think taste plays a big role here.

This. Search for the right artists. If you already disliked certain artists, just avoid them and search for others. There are so many great artists out there, but too much people are focused on what they dislike and then when they finally found something they do like, its all about "ohh this is underrated".. Well of course its underrated because you gave way too much attention to stuff you dislike and not to stuff you actually do like. I've seen this happen so many times

[Soundphase]

There are plenty of producers in 2022 that are innovative and creative, I think taste plays a big role here.

This is very true. There has been a lot of creativity in recent times. But I think it's also true to say that the "flavour" of hardstyle has changed quite drastically overall if you compare it to how it was before. But that's what happens in this genre, most fastest evolving hard music genre. It seems to change sound entirely every few years. Maybe tragic to some, and not to others. And then there are also some (but few) artists doing whatever and producing earlier styles.

[Gommes_]

There are plenty of producers in 2022 that are innovative and creative, I think taste plays a big role here.

This. Search for the right artists. If you already disliked certain artists, just avoid them and search for others. There are so many great artists out there, but too much people are focused on what they dislike and then when they finally found something they do like, its all about "ohh this is underrated".. Well of course its underrated because you gave way too much attention to stuff you dislike and not to stuff you actually do like. I've seen this happen so many times

No, this does not apply if the bigger picture aka the scene is changing. It's like saying people who adored 90s Hip Hop should just look for Hip Hop which sounds like that style while in reality the majority is doing mumble rap right now but you crave for something new which barely exists.

If you feel that the mainstream of the Hardstyle scene (which is already small) is changing for the worse you are also not happy with only 2 artistst you like and who release like 5 tracks in 6 months. How is that supposed to fill that void? You want the mainstream to be your style and not looking for a niche within a niche. This automatically applies for bookings, playlists, charts, festivals etc.

[Soundphase]

A track like So High by Noisecontrollers would be unimaginable today.
Only one kick throughout the whole climax, one melody which lasts 2 minutes! and and intro and outro which only present the kick? No way!

I feel it has a lot to do with a generational barrier. The millennial generation do think differently to the younger generation of hardstyle producers today. I could be generalizing a little bit, but I think there's a degree of truth in this.

[Reverse Ghost]

A track like So High by Noisecontrollers would be unimaginable today.
Only one kick throughout the whole climax, one melody which lasts 2 minutes! and and intro and outro which only present the kick? No way!

I feel it has a lot to do with a generational barrier. The millennial generation do think differently to the younger generation of hardstyle producers today. I could be generalizing a little bit, but I think there's a degree of truth in this.

This is just my hypothesis but I feel that your statement is 100% true. Obviously there are outliers and this isn't some majority fact I feel... But this may be true for many people, myself included, because we spent our formative years (and early adulthood) listening to Hardstyle. We were already used to the "early" sound having just happened a few years ago, and experiencing the natural progression into nustyle where the format largely stayed the same. This all happened in real time for us, and of course it's a huge legacy to have left behind in sound. Kids getting into Hardstyle now may see all of that past music as a relic of its time, or possibly are overwhelmed and instead are focusing on the current music. tl;dr, if you weren't around for the roots of a musical genre, the identity of and relation to that sound will be lost since you weren't there to experience the growth firsthand.
Just a reminder that 2007-2010, which I saw as the "golden years" for melodic Hardstyle/nustyle, had started 15 years ago, and the days of Early Hardstyle were 20 years ago. Many of us probably remember listening to an Early track and thinking "Damn that was just 5 or 6 years ago, we came a long way!" If Hardstyle was a person, they would be old enough to vote, drink, smoke, and drive a car by now. We're just getting old

Spoiler

There's also the growing evidence that consumption of rapid-fire media like TikTok, Instagram, and algorithm fed content like Twitter are re-wiring the minds of some younger people to rely on quick shots of content for dopamine rather than experiencing things within a longer time frame. This is still kind of psuedo-science at the moment, though the observed behaviors of the youth are pretty evident of this issue. My point being that this can also be feeding into the huge love for uptempo/new raw styles where tracks are 3 minutes long with nearly a dozen kicks to keep people on their toes.

[Regain]

I feel it has a lot to do with a generational barrier. The millennial generation do think differently to the younger generation of hardstyle producers today. I could be generalizing a little bit, but I think there's a degree of truth in this.

Not sure. Actually even young producers were listening Hardstyle like 10 years ago and we all experienced tracks with one kick, long mid intro, 1.5 minutes of break, 2x melodic drop and long outro. But you - as a listener - aren't forced to follow the scene. You listen what you like, you love what you love, you hate what's bad for your taste. But producers are still searching for new possibilities, new perspectives, new ideas. That's why it all changes so fast. Even "millennial generation" jumped into the "modern wagon" instead of keeping their own style from the past (probably because they would be skipped by the crowd if they would still produce 5:30 minutes tracks).
If we musically stay in 2010 level, this genre wouldn't exist anymore. Everything has to evolve on its own way.

But every genre changes, every person changes, every taste changes, also producer's taste and we have to simply deal with it

[ceero]

If we musically stay in 2010 level, this genre wouldn't exist anymore. Everything has to evolve on its own way.

Can't be sure of that I think. Look at uplifting trance for example. It hasn't really changed much/came up with anything revolutionary since like 2007 and it still exists, still has a solid fanbase, still have new talents rising (Ciaran McAuley for example), still have the hot shots of the genre like Aly & Fila getting highlight bookings on fancy festivals. Yeah, the genre is not as big as it was 15 years ago. But it still exists, still has a solid fanbase going on, still have parties with it.

Hardstyle is a bit of the opposite extreme imo. It's like every couple of years the genre turns into something COMPLETELY different then it was before. First the nu-style shift in late 00s which basically came up with a completely new genre bearing the same name as, now the xtreme raw shift doing basically the same thing.

[Regain]

Can't really discuss with you about it because the only Trance track I know is Adagio For Strings
But you're right of course. Nothing is only black and white and saying that "Hardstyle wouldn't exist anymore if we stay on the same level" was way too much.
But we need to look at it from the other perspective.
Hardstyle is an energetic genre, people want to dance to it and go totally crazy. And it was cool to see that guys like Zatox, Solutio & The I's, Titan, Jack of Sound, later E-Force, Radical were bringing a heavyness to this genre instead of happiness and same boring structure of the tracks (which was pushed everywhere on a big events).
What was the scene answer? Crowd was the answer. They wanted it heavier and heavier, I remember
E-Force at Q-Base (2014 or 2015) while playing Seven. Jesus, that was an experience...
So producers started to produce heavier tracks because it was needed by the crowd (they accepted it rougher). Crowd wanted to be shocked, they wanted to be surprised, they wanted different elements in the music instead of the same happy "melody - kick" structure heard 2689357894 times before (of course I generalize it but you get what I mean). Euphoric produces stopped shocking, that's why Hardstyle evolved into rougher direction where newcomes were breaking bareers of sounds and arrangements.

That's my perspective of Hardstyle evoluation. Crowd gets what it needs. It was the same with Uptempo. Typical Hardcore stopped being interesting, it was repetitive so people wanted to hear something crazier, faster, sometimes ridiculous.