What you say is true, although it misses a larger point: that even though we CAN listen to unlimited variety, since the labels control the distribution systems (radio plays, featured music, music sold in big box stores, publicity etc etc) the music they produce becomes inevitably popular. Turn on the radio, walk into Walmart, turn on the tv, watch a movie and you’re not going to hear independent Tibetan chants. You’re going to hear what they want you to hear because they have the reach to make sure everyone listens to it. Combine that with their PR teams and you end up with a situation in which the labels have a strangle hold on what we collectively listen to. Sure it’s possible to branch out and “ignore” that stuff, but the vast majority of people don’t. They listen to and like what their friends like, which is in turn what they’ve been told is “good”.

Additionally, I find that most of pop is quite manipulative on the emotions. Rather than complexity in the music, it goes for riffs and choruses that pull precisely on some undefinable feeling but which can be broken down into categories of Power, Sexy, Nostalgia, Hypnosis/Rapture-- by which I mean, it gives a feeling of a sort of intoxication or trance. Whether it is intentional or not, that is how I've found it to be. Nostalgia in pop is also recursive.

All music can influence emotions or state-of-mind to some degree, but the lack of complexity in pop music makes it so that this influence is the only "worth" or, perhaps more accurately, purpose of the music. There is nothing wrong with this necessarily, I am just giving another reason why pop and such might be so popular.

That's like saying that people are eating bananas and oranges and apples because there is a huge PR campaign to push them, and that this is destroying the chances for less popular fruits.

Sure, there is that, but let's not kid ourselves, those fruit are popular because they are actually preferred by a vast majority.

Bananas are a created product. Made popular by banana industry. Natural bananas are nothing like the highly breed thing you eat. They are not native in northern America. The demand for them was manufactured with marketing. Until now they are "part of our life" and seem normal.

If it was not for the music industry. Pop bands would not exist. Boy bands would not exist. Etc. They are as artificil as bananas.

Sure, but what if we only prefer it because we grew up eating it? Chicken/egg/chicken.

But a lot of people now don't turn on the radio or TV; the alternate channels of music discovery are becoming primary. Once there's an initial contact — and there are plenty of opportunities that aren't controlled by labels — it's increasingly frictionless to find more of what you realize that you like.

Except that services like Spotify or Pandora still rely on the labels as well. Sure, they want to get away from the labels, but that is going to take time.

https://www.recode.net/2018/4/3/17191390/spotify-plan-big-mu...

Well, they also rely on averages, and the resulting recommendations tend to be (for me) closer to "we're certain these won't offend you." That is there's little deviation.

Yes, that works for most people. But if you're seeking new, exciting and different then those recommendations come off as dull and lifeless.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I want to add that music taste has an important social component that often seems overlooked in favour of nebulous ideas like "artistic merit" (not from you, but elsewhere on this page.) If you and your friends only listen to Top 40, that music has personal and social resonance. It probably makes you feel good about your relationships, and also fosters the strengthening of those relationships. While some people prefer the individuality of their tastes, for plenty others there's a thrill to participating in a monolithic cultural event like One Direction or Ed Sheeran etc. These metrics of "good"-ness shouldn't be dismissed simply because the subjects of them don't play crazy polyrhythms where every song has 34 chords.

Exactly. People complain about how music in the 70's or 80's or whatever was so much better than modern music.

That music never went away. It's not like you're no longer allowed to listen to Pink Floyd. Music doesn't have an expiry date.

It's not a question of availability. It's about the quality, creativity and originality of the music. The late 60s, 70s and 80s produced a stream of musical talent the likes of which we haven't seen since. Tech has played a part in that decline though the early pioneers of techno-pop, such as Gary Numan and John Foxx were genuinely creative. Ask yourself, if you think all this is merely relative, where is the David Bowie, the Bryan Ferry and the Elton John of this decade? That's just 3. I could list 100 more from those 3 decades who tower above anything coming out of the music industry today.

Those people either have very short memories or believe the hype. A lot of the stuff outside the top 40 is barely passable. Sheesh, even top 40 is full of trash, and that's picking the "best" 40 songs over a 10 year span.

The top 40 to me is a list of all the artists I should avoid.

Some music has an expiry date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_(song)

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/prince/1999_20111205.html

Prince refused to perform it after it expired.

I still live in a World where mass-media is a thing because I watch recently made TV shows, occasionally recent films (aka movies), and listen to mainstream music on the radio.

I wonder how it's going to play out because generations up to now have shared a relatively small cadre of media offerings in semi-rigid genres; that shared experience has in some ways - at least in the 20th Century - underpinned societal culture.

Shared interest in YouTube stars, amongst many other things, still keeps the thread of share cultural experience in society; but what direction are we going?

If I have a billion different media offerings I can consume the chances of meeting people and having a shared cultural experience we can link over get smaller. Whither nostalgia?

TL;DR, Nostalgia won't be what it used to be.