Pitch shifting happens on a lot of vocal tracks, even some of the great vocalists. Where it's used for people who actually can sing, it's as minor correction here and there. Usually, once the music is recorded, they'll run through the vocal tracks maybe four or five times in a row, or a bunch, or I remember hearing about Aretha Franklin's recording sessions when I was in school. The Queen of Soul was a very powerful personality, and in her sessions, they did the vocal tracks until she put her hands on her hips and said: "We gonna do the next song now?!" That meant you were doing the next song.
After they were done, the producers all sat down and went through the tracks and it would be like, okay,*this* note in *this* word here, in *this* track here, is just a few cents sharp...so they put that note through and diminish it to put it in tune. Your ear doesn't pick up a difference on a change that small. When you get into moving it up and down whole notes or more, the whole thing gets chipmunked out really fast and hey, this thing doesn't autocorrect chipmunked. Huh.
I mean, I don't hate autotune per se, it's more that anything I've ever heard with autotune in it, I've hated it. Its proper use is fixing vocal tracks not creating them. If I'm listening to you and I can hear autotune, chances are you suck.
When I was young I seemed to care a whole lot more about listening to music. Now it seems I can't relate to most of it. I still hear lots of interesting stuff but can't find myself really adding anything new my library, or at least throwing it on once and a while.
It might have to do with Albums not being pushed as heavily as songs are.
"Kids don't buy albums anymore they rent songs" - Me
When I was a kid, I lived and breathed music for years but everyone has to grow up eventually. I don't know that I don't care about music anymore...I do know that it's been a long time since I cared or followed pop music trends generally. I have my thing that I do, and I'm still finding weird subgenres to explore, and new artists to fill the time. Lots of Van Halen lately (see av)...in terms of new things, a lot of Baltic folk metal bands, this one band Heilung (go check them out on youtube) that plays traditional Norse/Germanic music including a psycho battle chant...I dunno, do I put much effort into exploring new musical things? Not really a lot these days I guess. You grow up, have kids of your own, pop culture mutates and moves on without you, and you have bigger things occupying your time than compiling compiling lists of your favourite 500 albums of the last six months, like parenting and balancing your budget or getting the stain out of the curtains or all the other stuff you have to do once you're the mom or dad.
I still love music, I still listen to it every day, minimum the drive to and from work, sometimes the radio or other tunes at work, pretty much every time I go for a walk longer than five minutes, but am I really an avid consumer of new product? No. I wouldn't really say that I am. I mean, I'm long behind the curve now with whatever the hizzles and shnizzles the kids are listening to these days, but then of course my age group is supposed to hate it anyway.
Oh yeah, someone back there said something about there aren't new musical genres being created in pop music anymore because the internet and file sharing basically wiped out the market for prerecorded music. No one wants to pay for it anymore, so there's no longer money to be made sending people out to beat the bushes finding new bands and creating new genres.