Sure, but if you had to winnow all of the world's (or just US's) best music down to only 20 CDs, do you really need to include two Beatles albums and Simon and Garfunkel ones? Is Faith Hill really the best you can do for country?

I would ditch those three and consider replacing them with:

* Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison

* Michael Jackson - Thriller

* Wu Tang Clan - Enter The Wu Tang

Some punk and metal representation would be good too. And, honestly, Play hasn't held up well over the years. If you want something more representative or influential, maybe Orbital's brown album or Underworld's dubnobywithmyheadman.

Who said that this was a list o the best 20 CDs? Those was the best CDs for demographic they was targeting. That list was both good music and a marketing tool. That’s why there is no number one pop stars of that time on this list.

Giving everyone a copy of 36 Chambers would be a very un-Jobs thing to do. Imagine, you put your product in the hands of a journalist, they put the earbuds in, and the first thing they hear is a 2 minute description of torture and testicular mutiliation

The first thing they'd hear is a contextless monologue about rival kung-fu schools.

The scroll wheel demonstration took them down to track 9

If we're going for a "best" list (rather than "most important") a cheap way to slightly improve it would be to swap Nevermind for In Utero.

Though I thought it was actually a pretty well-curated set of albums. "Best" isn't always the... well, best, thing to aim for in a collection.

I'm not a huge Nirvana fan, but I agree. The band ended before it realized its full potential and I think In Utero was a small taste of where they were headed. Heart Shaped Box is so much better than their earlier hits (which are by no means bad)that I never even bother to listen to their older music anymore.

No Sarcofago, no entry.

> Bob Dylan and The Beatles are regarded as very important and influential figures in popular music

This was the assumption through the later half of the 20th century, but I don't think it's the case at this point. I haven't even heard The Beatles in a commercial context in about a decade (something unthinkable as early as 2000). Hip hop clearly had a large influence on the pop culture of today and (totally unrepresented in this collection). Plus there's really no excuse for including The Dave Matthews Band :P

In late 90s early 2000s hip hop was still regarded are something new and a bit controversial. I think, sort of, like mumble rap this days. Of course hip hop started in 20th century but it's biggest influence we was on the beginning of 21st century.

I can’t find a non Wikipedia reference, but it did say that hip hop was the best selling genre by 1999.

Just for reference, these are the top 100 songs of 2000. The year before the iPod was introduced.

None of the hip hop songs that were popular were groundbreaking - mostly just bubble gum rap. I doubt very seriously that Apple would have been willing to put any socially conscious rap on iPods.

I think it was fairly well established at this point (Jay Z, Outkast...). My somewhat snarky point though was that the iPod was obviously a very forward thinking and revolutionary device that was the direct predecessor the iPhone. Jobs had great vision and could practically "see the future" of consumer electronics, yet this music collection is like the most generic suburban backyard bbq playlist for middle age people. If Jobs had the same insight into music as he had into tech, we'd see way more hip hop, electronic. Hell, even yacht rock has comeback in a way that The Dave Matthews Band or Faith Hill never will.

This is to be expected of course, I just think it's humorous.

>If Jobs had the same insight into music as he had into tech, we'd see way more hip hop, electronic.

You can be on the cutting edge of music without liking hip hop or electronic music. The problems wasn't the genres he picked, but the incredibly generic band choices within those genres.

I do like hip hop (and electronic is slowly growing on me), but that doesn't mean that everyone that doesn't is out of touch. There's interesting music coming out of nearly every genre in 2019. That's the way it always is.

Totally. The choices were bland within the genres they represented. Still, as a music player with, at the time, incredible storage it seems like having a bunch of genres represented would have showcased the iPod's capabilities better.

I can’t think of any good hip hop that came out before 2001 that wouldn’t have been too controversial for the sensibilities of corporate America.

That's true. I remember that there was a shitstorm of controversy over Kriss Kross' Jump when it first came out. Not saying its good, just an example of something incredibly mild that was almost too much for America's sensibilities at the time.

> In late 90s early 2000s hip hop was still regarded are something new and a bit controversial.

Not really, hip hop / rap was fairly mainstream by the late 1980s / early 1990s.

Yeah in my group age almost everybody was listening to hip hop, but we wasn't the people that could afford new and shiny iPod