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I don't know that I buy the headphones/computer speakers/quality streaming thing... but maybe I'm just not following the logic.
Have to think more, but off the top:
a) Especially in terms of popular music, one of the easiest ways to
differentiate yourself right now is probably to turn down/off the drums
as a means toward turning down the volume in general. Contemporary
popular music (across genres) tends to be very loud and flat, much of it
being dominated by drums/beats (and blaring synths, I suppose). Turn
down/off the drums, you're already very far along to sounding different.
(I don't mean this as an aim to get radio play, because I don't think
that's the goal --- to be ultra-cynical, cutting the drums and going for
ambience = artsy/alternative/indie/whatever.)
b) I think an argument could be made that we're seeing a new interest in
the lineage of musical styles that tend to give less emphasis the traditional pop modes of drum and bass. I'm thinking here especially of mid-20th c.
minimalists and the more avant-garde composers, but also strains of jazz and electronic/ambient music. It's been a long time
coming and it isn't unprecedented: one of the strange twists in popular
music is how you have this major push toward the avant garde and sound
experimentation in the late '60s and very early '70s (think the Beatles,
Velvet Underground, so on), and that very quickly gets marginalized
(though none of it disappears, of course, staying alive in its own
corridors of electronic music, strains of jazz, and many other spaces).
Anyhow, I'm already writing too much, but there's definitely been a lot
of new interest in a lot of this work. In the last, say, five years, I can think of numerous albums across numerous genres that pretty explicitly nod to, say, the dissonance experiments of 20th c. classical (Of Montreal, The Roots) --- and a lot of folks today explicitly work in those domains (Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, Glenn Kotche of Wilco). But my main point here is that, with the internet, I think a lot of older stuff that previously sat at the far margins of pop are filtering in: you have Pfork reviewing Reich or Glass albums (or Reich/Glass *remix* albums), you have nu-classical folks working a lot of with popular artists (not to mention the increasing mix of nu-classicalish and jazz-ish folks: see Ambrose Akinmusire), and you have a new interest in "high" performance and visual arts that have a natural connection to "high" musical arts of the past century. So there are a lot of ways that older (quieter? lol) traditions are getting closer to the mainstream than they have in a long time. (I mean --- Kanye.)
The natural genre-busting that has arrived via the internet is critical here, too: you look at the credits and whatnot on Ocean's album, and it's reminiscent of Yeezus in its unpredictability, its many connections to pretty much any plane of music you want to touch. And I think that has helped to facilitate the interest above, whether conscious or unconscious.
Maybe another way to say this is that a lot of younger folks today are clearly trying to make art pieces, and they're consciously or unconsciously reaching back to a wider range of genres to do so? They're interested in atmosphere and aesthetic as much as content. I don't know, maybe this doesn't get at what you're getting at... but I've rambled long enough so I'm post this thing, lol, even though I'll probably disagree with everything I wrote in about 5 minutes.
-thebigfunk
~ i could still snort you under the table ~
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