Exactly. The songs we remember from a long time ago are the absolute best of the best because anything that wasn't absolutely outstanding has been forgotten where as current_year top 100 has a lot of stuff that is ok and only made it there because of its newness.

It just means they’re memorable — being the “best” is more questionable — a lot of good things never see high popularity outside of niche groups, and might be remembered in that niche but forgotten by the public at large; a lot of bad things are remembered, sometimes because they were bad, sometimes because they coincided with other events.

But in general, time is a pretty good filter for quality (you’ll miss some good stuff, but if you only look at the culturally remembered stuff, you’ve still probably got a lifetime of good media)

The other reason is that music has actually, fundamentally changed in so many ways - there are actually fewer hits for people to remember.

So many reasons. Pre 2000, music was tightly controlled, the bar was quite high, and though there was still crap, there was good stuff, and it was backed hard by the industry. Everyone knew what the 'top 10' was at the time and everyone was on the same page.

Now with so much diversity, it's hard for something to really break through.

There are countless other reasons as well we could go into, but we truly live in a different kind of era.

What actually survived the 90s and what was actually considered hits in the 90s are actually really different. The Billboard #1 song in 1992 Boyz 2 Men - End of the Road which is less culturally relevant today than "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (which came in at 32)

Take a look at Billboards Top 100 for the 80s and 90s and see how much you recognize. The bar wasn't very high at all.

And Smells Like Teen Spirit is a lot less relevant today than it was even 10 years ago while lots of bands from the 70s and 80s seem to have an increasing relevance (c.f. people in this thread talking about kids listening to Steely Dan and Duran Duran).

It's been years since I've heard anyone listen to or talk about Nirvana, Pearl Jam...

Boys 2 Men were a very talented acapela group and 'End of the Road' might very well be recognized today.

There's a few other things to this. One is that the music that's still recognized today is the best music of the era, but recent songs are merely average. Some amount of music knowledge is handed down from parents, so while the article calls it the "golden era" of music, it could just be that millennials picked leaned whatever their parents listened to. I have a feeling that interest tails off over time, and the Lindy effect just extends the tail of song recognition. How many classical composers can you name? And they span how many centuries?

The irony is that Lindy's itself dosen't follow Lindy's Law (am aware that the actual effect is about comedians bookings).