Spanish music today: decline or just a business?

Has Spanish music lost its epic quality? The clash between quality and the market

Turn on the radio and the Top 40 chart sounds like the soundtrack of a fast-food chain: mass production, formulaic choruses and reggaeton that seems made by algorithm. Among music lovers, the question has resurfaced in recent years: has Spain produced anything musically comparable to the great works of the 20th century? Or, to put it bluntly, where did the epic go?

Music by the pound: the industry that manufactures hits on an assembly line

The notion of "music by the pound" has become the skeptics' favorite metaphor. Just as fast food is sold by the meter, today's pop and reggaeton seem to be served in identical portions. No trained ear is needed to notice the homogeneity: four chords, the same percussion and lyrics oscillating between heartbreak and posturing. The comparison with the restaurant world is no accident: the music is produced so as not to disturb, to accompany the shopping, to stop no one in their tracks. And that is exactly what a section of listeners denounces: the lack of songs that, like those of Mecano or Nino Bravo, can bring time to a standstill.

Rosalía, the broken mirror of Spanish modernity

No name concentrates more passions than Rosalía. For some, she represents the reinvention of flamenco with a personal and unmistakable proposal. For others, she is the paradigm of the manufactured artist: a product designed for the global market, comparable to a fast-food chain that sells luxury but tastes like cardboard. The accusation that her success owes more to marketing strategy than to talent divides analysts. At the center of the clash lies an uncomfortable question: whether the public that loathes her and the one that adores her are really talking about the same musical proposal.

The refuge of world music and the classical canon

Against the industrial assembly line, there is an alternative gaining trinc: world music, a catch-all category where the folk and artisanal music of different countries escapes the algorithms. Its defenders describe it as the last stronghold of authenticity, created by anonymous musicians for the love of the art, without digital tricks. In parallel, the classical canon of the 20th century — from Rachmaninov to Turina, Granados or Falla — remains the mirror in which those who argue that today's music neither reaches nor will reach that height see themselves. The argument is hard to refute when you compare the rosters: the 20th century offered geniuses, while the 21st, so far, has delivered great commercial strategies.

The question is not only aesthetic. It is also industrial: when platforms reward fast consumption, the song becomes just another commodity. That the latest big hit sounds like a fast-food menu is no accident; it is the logic of the market in its purest form. The question left on the table is whether the industry can once again produce songs capable of stopping time, or whether audiences have already grown used to eating the same thing every day.