Music has become more stratified. The 90s through the present have been an ongoing escalation of music being democratized more and more, from the rise of the DAW in the late 90s to iTunes and P2P sharing to YouTube and music streaming. So there is vastly more music now, and people have more opportunity to find things that suit their tastes.

People listen to a wider variety of music and the same Billboard notion of popularity doesn't really paint a useful picture anymore. What plays on the radio or in TV ads is the lowest common denominator corporate waffle, and is played heavily, but it doesn't represent what people listen to overall.

I have personal playlists of everything from House music and 90s Eurodance to all kinds of J-Pop to 19th century folk music to early 2000s rock to 80s synth pop to orchestral music. I couldn't name a single Taylor Swift song offhand, but apparently she's pretty big.

This seems like a really good take on the situation. I usually disagree that discoverability as a problem. Discoverability could be why my tastes have stagnated.

Care to share a playlist?

Try anything with a cover photo https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0KIAnFKMUOzSahATUBlR5f?si=...

Lots of good stuff in there!

I enjoy music but its not a hobby or anything for me.

There's tons of music out there and I find the plethora of niche subgenres now fairly overwhelming and don't even know how to classify the stuff I enjoy listening to.

Recommendation engine feedback loops do not aid in discovery, just repetition.

On that note, to me, the current year has been the best year for music for a long time. Simply because of volume and variety.

> Look at Hollywood now too: everything is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or adaptation. There’s hardly anything original anymore.

Vs:

> This may surprise some, but since 2000, just over half of all movies released have been original screenplays.

https://stephenfollows.com/are-movies-becoming-more-derivati...

The problem is they aren't blockbusters, so you don't remember them. From the same link:

> While the number of movies based on original screenplays has been increasing since the late 2000s, their box office share has continued to fall. In 1984, 73% of the box office were original screenplays, whereas forty years later in 2023, that figure was just 30.6%. And that’s despite their production share being similar (i.e. 60.4% vs 55.9%).

And from a separate post:

> Sequels were twice as frequent in the late 1980s than in the 2010s, if we use production figures as our measure

https://stephenfollows.com/are-there-more-movie-sequels-than...

I wonder who's producing those movies though. My comment did specify Hollywood. The indie film scene, most of which consists of original screenplays, is very active, and now it's easier than ever both to shoot a film—on a smartphone!—and to distribute a film—over the internet. (Likewise, it's easier than ever to record and distribute a music album.) However, those films aren't getting mass marketed, getting seen by the majority of people, or making a ton of money. Unfortunately, the linked articles didn't specify the producers, or even the absolute number of movies produced each year, which is also relevant. Whatever the cause, the public's appetite for sequels, as reflected in box office proceeds, has indisputably increased. Those are the movies getting seen the most. Is that a "natural" desire of consumers? Is it a result of marketing? Something else?

Here's an older post (2015) by the same guy about Hollywood films:

https://stephenfollows.com/how-original-are-hollywood-movies...

> 39% of top movies released 2005-14 were truly original, i.e. not an adaptation, sequel, spin-off, remake, or other such derivative work.

I don't know, I watch most of my movies at home (I have a nice setup) and watch as many old movies as new. I never feel like I have any trouble finding an original film. The blockbusters may soak up all the ticket sales, but there's just no shortage of original films to me.

That is indeed right. People confuse their own perception of their surroundings with actual changes in the world. We're human beings, with a rich inner world, which always evolves as we age and there is a lot going on in there, both on a chemical / biological level, and spiritually. We are not really built to be objective observers.

> The blockbusters may soak up all the ticket sales, but there's just no shortage of original films to me.

But my comment was not about you. ;-) My original point was "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music." And if you "watch as many old movies as new", that's certainly not a ringing endorsement of new movies.

I'm GenX and a movie buff, but not much of a music listener, so I replied to the Hollywood part of your comment. There's always going to be more old movies than new and I watch enough movies that I run out of the new ones.

I certainly have plenty of biased but late 70s early 80s seems like a really good era. Especially because it was so diverse and not dominated by a single sound.

> Corporatized, consolidated, computerized. wtf, pick a word and say it. Stop spewing nonsense

I am not sure about the whole thing. When I was a teenager (so roughly the decade from 2000 to 2009) I hated my guts of any contemporary music, most of what I liked was from the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s etc.

Nowadays I have quite some things in my record collection from my teenage decade, some of which I discovered only a few years ago, some of which I knew and liked back then, but it wasn't popular music back then.

I always liked to think of this as some kind of survivor bias. There is trash music in everybtime period, but the good music will be listend to more often and thus shape the collective musical memory of a decade. The time we're in hasn't had the chance for that to happen yet, so it seems arbitrary and random as it happens and more defined in hindsight.

It also matters where you look. The 80s have a very recognizable pop music, but it also has Punk and multiple other things.

In my case, I'm from 1987 and pop music from the early 90's was as bad as the one from 2000's, because I remember it well from my parents (and, well, by age 9-10 I was more than aware of the Spice Girls, as every girl in my Elementary school was into dances).

Later, in 2000's, with P2P and streaming radios, I was astounded by some music genres. And, a bit further, with Jamendo and Magnatune, I found incredible gems not found anywhere.

As someone constantly seeking out new music (recently for example, I've been working backwards through the 1001 albums you must listen to book), I inherited some of my family's old vinyl collections including stuff that was like 60 years old.

So so much of it is awful. It's interesting granted, but people ignore that the charts were filled with bland covers of other popular songs even in the 60's.

Hip Hop is a great showing of survivor bias. Sure, Tupac, Biggie, Beastie Boys etc are classic but people are rarely listening to the bland safe music from that era. So so many songs where the rapper couldn't think of anything more inventive than "oh you're having FUN well wait till I go and get my GUN I'll shoot you dead and you'll be DONE"

In 30 years, people will hear Kendrick's discography and think "god no one makes meaningful hip hop anymore" while forgetting about the "pop music but instead of a guitar solo, it's a bad rap verse" or the vast amount of emo/trap/SoundCloud stuff where the good stuff is rare.

The exciting thing about living now is the ease that someone can send a link to me. Constantly my friends and I are finding recently released or decade old music that we can simply message the other and say "you'll love the production on this" - whereas for years, you saved up your pocket money and bought one album and that's all you had until you could afford another.

People who say modern music is rubbish rarely make any effort to actually find any. You've kids now talking about bands like Arctic Monkeys but they don't realise the indie landfill of shite guitar bands that all had the same look, same twangy sound, same trajectory. For every Panda Bear/Animal Collective - there was 100 bland animal based bands all copying the same formula in the hope of being as big as Pigeon Detectives lmao

When Kendrick released Section 80, I tweeted that Kdot will be one of the, if not the best rapper of his generation. Can’t believe it became true.

Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there. Even then it's highly subjective and behind almost every one of those songs or albums is a handful of brilliant writers, producers and session musicians you probably never heard of.

I'd say it's never been better. Music is more accessible which means more folks get exposed to it earlier and in more variety and in turn we get more musicians.

It's only going to get better.

FWIW most of the top charting music of the 90s, 80s and so on were also "worse" and have mostly been forgotten. Few songs remain popular or regain popularity. A lot of chart hits are really just springboarding off "you had to be there" cultural moments or experiences or simply a general "vibe" that are fleeting and trivial enough not to stick around even in nostalgia.

As an extreme example, I'd argue the popularity of David Hasselhoff's I've been looking for freedom in Germany is almost entirely a result of "retconning" (if not fabricating) its supposed popularity at the time of its original release. It would have probably been forgotten entirely if it hadn't been rediscovered "ironically" in the context of ridiculous claims about its influence on the fall of the Berlin Wall. Heck, I remember owning a casette of the album as a kid only because "it's the guy from Knight Rider". For adult women his claim to fame was co-starring alongside Pamela Anderson in Baywatch as one of the few men regularly appearing bare-chested on daytime television - I'd say his musical talents played a very small role in his original popularity and it's telling nobody remembers any other songs than the one he performed on a TV show. He was never considered good, he was just a familiar face (and body) and made a catchy tune.

I recently encountered the term 'Tempoflavanoids' - the flavour of a particular moment in time. I love the concept, it speaks to the artist in me.

Though I thought David Hasslehoff's 'True Survivor' music video for the Kung Fury kickstarter was a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY

I agree with this take.

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.” comes to mind

Of course, it's extremely subjective, but how about naming a few artists who have appeared in the last few years that you think make better music and are more talented musicians than those who came before?

I could spend hours writing a response to this. I am mid 30 and my style of music changes with every season I am not within trends but most songs I enjoy most are not older than 3 or 4 years. Not all of them are well known.

Even something established like Punk reached new heights with more modern approaches (ex. Sleaford mods, Team Scheisse in German)

I think music is very subjective still but new music never stopped to impress me.

I just discovered Team Scheisse a week ago (they are from city!) and now I come across them on HN, what a coincidence (obviously this might be the Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon at play but since they are a comparatively small band I would say the effect is rather small)!

Team Scheisse, new heights? What exactly brings punk to new heights with this band?

There's no hiding the "influence" of Sex Pistols, and I'd much rather listen to Sex Pistols, Ramones, and also Rancid than this band.

Do not see the appeal.

At the risk of just mouthing off my favorites, there are a lot of genres today are the best they've ever been. The post-punk revival out of the UK is great. The "chambery" Black Country, New Road and the "mathy" Black Midi are some of the best we've seen and there are other exceptional talents in that scene. Noisy-shoegazy-indie rock is also a great scene right now with artists like Jane Remover and Mitski releasing what will be important albums for ages to come.

Note, Mitski debuted in 2013 but most of the strongest records over the past few years, from hip-hop, pop to experimental rock to metal, seems to be by artists or individual who've been making music for around a decade-ish roughly. Maybe this disqualifies the whole lot and you're trying to highlight some weakness in the debuts of the past few years. If so, maybe you should wait a decade? If not, I can assert that some of the most talented artists of history are making music today. By any metric.

There's a tremendous amount of talent in contemporary music. Comparing musician against musician is silly.

Some of these have been around longer than others.

Jacob Collier, Vulfpeck, Cool Sounds, Sylvie, Bobbing, Abigail Lapell, Big Theif, Tank and the Bangas, Richard Houghten, Kurt Vile, Thundercat, Little Simz, Nora Brown, Barrie, Dominique Dumont, Lusine, Cory Wong, Billy Strings, DoomCannon, Cory Henry, Mark Lettieri, Nate Smith, Yussef Dayes, Yumi Zouma, limperatrice, Slow Pulp, Vetiver, Bibio, Altin Gun, King Gizzard, Julian Lage.

I could go on.. give me an artist you like or a genre and I could likely find you new music.

Yam Yam and Karina Rykman would fit in your list. Thanks for it.

Rykman is awesome. I'll check out Yam Yam, thanks!

Let me preface by saying I listen to a lot of genres, but that jazz & funk is not my "main expertise".

Of course there's no denying we have lots of creative and talented new musicians, but very seldom do I think they beat "the greats", or are even on par. Usually they feel more like knockoffs, and I find I'd rather go back and listen to the original instead.

I'm not familiar with these artists, but I had a listen to about 20 of them, and I will say that I can hear where a lot of them got their inspiration from, but they (not all of them) feel lightweight compared to artists from back in the day.

In these genres I'd much rather listen to the following artists than any of the ones you mentioned:

Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Johnny Cash, Coltrane, Gillespie, Miles Davis.

"Nate Smith" in particular sounds so much like your stereotypical modern artist. Everything from the production, melodies, his voice and vocal chain sounds like at least 20 other artists. Very uninspired in my humble opinion. This is what we can expect AI to produce.

I think you may have found a different Nate Smith than the one goosejuice was referencing. They were likely referring to the drummer named Nate Smith (he's collaborated with at least one of the groups mentioned).

The guy has a lot of interesting work, but I think the thing that blew me away the most is the composition 'Warble'. If memory serves, that's the piece where he explored 64th note and dotted 32nd note displacements in order to mimic J Dilla's 'wonky' swing. I've tried capturing the Dilla swing; it's nearly impossible to do on the drums without sounding like you don't know how to play the instrument. Nate Smith, on the other hand, makes it sound fantastic.

The guy is a wizard.

You're right, stumbled upon the wrong Nate.

Of course they were inspired by existing artists and by a greater set of them! This is central to my argument that music is only going to get better with greater exposure.

Those are all great artists you listed but to attempt to quantify that they are any more talented or creative than contemporaries is a silly exercise. It's art.

This is a small list of random artists that I've listened to over the past few years. Jacob Collier is a perfect example of exceptional generational talent who not only is technically mind blowing but also incredibly original. I bet every one of those artists you listed would say the same about him (if they haven't passed of course).

Nate Smith likewise would be welcomed as the drummer in any one of those bands. Did you listen to the right Nate Smith?

> Of course they were inspired by existing artists and by a greater set of them!

Inspiration is a given, and nothing wrong with that. But I often feel like instead of inspiring to new heights we get a watered down version.

I don't know, maybe you're just not hearing what I'm hearing. Watch Cory Henry on Snarky's Lingus. Jacob Collier do his recent crowd work with the NSO. Cory Wong talk about Vulfpeck and their MSG show and never rehearsing. Hiromi and Tank and the Bangas on NPR's tiny desks. I'd say Abigail Lapell adds tremendously to the folk of the era you are referencing.

Watered down is just not how I'd describe any of the musicians I listed

I come back to that keyboard solo on Lingus every couple of months and it never fails to make my hairs stand on edge. Absolutely legendary.

Larnell Lewis also delivered a world-class performance on that entire album.

You seem hyper focused on comparing all that you hear to what you already know you like. If you really want to appreciate new music, cut it out. You're introducing bias at the outset. If you approach a new artist as if their work is isolated, and give it some time to settle in, I think you'll be surprised.

Show me someone great who when you go to their inspiration you can't find they themselves very much creating watered down versions of their inspirations.

> Music is absolutely not getting worse unless you're only considering top charting music which is such a small fraction of what's out there.

But there's a crucial difference between what's out there and what people are listening to. There's a lot of obscure stuff that not many people are listening to. Whereas the top charting music is what millions of people are listening to. It matters a lot what's getting marketed, what the majority of people are exposed to.

Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."

> Unfortunately, very few repliers are addressing the first point that I made in my comment: "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."

Seems very hard to accurately measure, could be that people don't know what was released in their decade but the stuff from the 80s is easy to pinpoint.

> could be that people don't know what was released in their decade

It seems implausible that young people don't know that new music is new.

Why would the 80s be easy to pinpoint for people who weren't even alive in the 80s?

Define obscure.

Musicians are more discoverable than ever. Unlike in the past it doesn't matter nearly as much what's getting marketing/ gets air play at the top of the charts, because if you have a desire to find music that you like you just have to try and it's all there for free with an Internet connection.

If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.

> it's all there for free with an Internet connection

The "Internet" is just hand waving. The internet is massive. Almost everything is available on the internet, but that's a problem, not a solution. Sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

> If one can't find new music to ones taste it's not because of what's being produced.

So what is the explanation for "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music", which again, you haven't addressed.

You shared a single infographic without a source, but taking it as fact I would take a guess that it's easier to discover old music now and there's more music to listen to thus flattening the curve.

I'm sorry that it's difficult for you to find what you like. My tastes are very broad and I find new artists every week just listening to Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube while working. My wife and I and our friends share music that we like with each other. We see live music and get exposed to openers we've never heard of.

That said music is a big part of our lives.

> You shared a single infographic without a source

The source was the submitted article under discussion in these comments!

> I'm sorry that it's difficult for you to find what you like.

I never said that. I'm not even discussing me, or you for that matter. I'm discussing the aggregate differences between the generations.

Indeed it is! Shameful of me.

Apologizes, when you referred to it being a needle in a haystack I thought you were referring to your own experiences.

If you consider the top charting music and the typical fart noises uploaded to soundcloud which have 3 listens, yes it is worse.

If you're only considering your 25 favorite new songs out of tens of millions then sure, it's better. But also there is recency/novelty bias which counteracts and may overcome any past/nostalgia bias

In conclusion, if all you're doing is listening to music alone in your apartment then it's never been better. Until you step out into the real world and realize that, best-case scenario, everyone hates your music and everything that it represents. More likely they will be completely bored and indifferent.

Music only matters to the producer and the listener. It's deeply personal.

I think you're missing the point.

This sounds like a parody of Western individualism

Why exactly do you care if music you enjoy listening to is also enjoyed by others? If you enjoy it and the musicians are making it what else is there?

Plenty of artists are just making art for themselves.

Plenty of people live in the woods. If we all lived in the woods everything would be fine! I'm sure our GDP wouldn't fall and no one would starve to death at all. Nope; Not a bit.

Why don't we all just wear VR headsets all day?

LOL enjoy your atomized Balkanized tower of Babel existence. If it has to be explained then you're consitutionally incapable of understanding it anyway.

I think you're thinking way to hard about this my friend. What part of seeing a local band at a bar or listening to family members make music leads you to bring up GDP and VR? Either you're completely misunderstanding this discussion or you're extremely out of touch.

LOL the classic "if I play dumb long enough he'll call me dumb and get banned"

You're disgusting.

Either that or you actually spit on the very idea of community and shared culture in which case you are yet more disgusting and are my enemy.

What gave you the idea that I'm not interested in community and shared culture? That's precisely what I'm promoting. My point was that it doesn't matter what's popular in the mainstream.

This is no place for personal insults, so I'll call it here as this clearly isn't a genuine exchange.

What gave me the idea?

>If you enjoy it and the musicians are making it what else is there?

LOL.

Also, a kiwi, a german, and an uzbek in a discord channel does not a community make. I'm talking about people playing banjo on their porch because that is what people do in their community and their region

The world's been hating my music tastes and telling me to turn stuff off since the 1980s. And then, ten years later they love it, and 10 years after that my ex-is bragging how she used to listen to it decades ago.

And definitely don't like things based on the real world, the real world is shit.

The return of the 80s is, or rather was, just a current trend. Next up will be the 90s/00s, which can already be seen in make up and fashion, and I'm sure media will follow soon as well.

Wrt/ Hollywood: I think they are not the monopoly they used to be, because the powers are shifting by streaming, and short video services. Similar to how AAA games are more stagnant than the indie gaming scene.

"Music" is too broad to "get worse". There are trends in music that can be considered bad, such as the lessening dynamic range of the recordings - the Loudness War[0]. But there is more music than ever, computerized or not, so if you find that some source of music is bad, you just need to look elsewhere. Music production is easier than ever, so even very niche sounds are kept alive, like the lofi sound of post-punk decades ago[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[1] https://desmonddoom.bandcamp.com/album/doom-and-bloom

> The return of the 80s is, or rather was, just a current trend. Next up will be the 90s/00s, which can already be seen in make up and fashion, and I'm sure media will follow soon as well.

Is it a "return of the 80s", or is it a rejection of newer music? Again, "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music." This is a difference from previous generations, which tend to hold on stronger to the music of their times. The current trends of current pop culture have always had a much stronger influence on young people than any "nostalgic" trends. When I was young, nostalgia from earlier decades had almost no influence on myself or my peers.

I believe that music's role changed a lot first with the wide spread of the internet and then smartphones and streaming. The internet gave rise to a global culture, and a new channel where culture can form, and then streaming completely changed how people consume music.

I see rejection, disappointment and disillusion as a general theme that's going on in culture, but I can't say that these weren't present in the past cultures as well - going back some decades, the popularity of punk and its offshoots show just how much these feelings resonated with the audience back then.

I think that with the widespread access and nonexistent barrier to entry to past cultures via streaming, attention just spread over the existing cultural palette, resulting in lower average consumption of the new and current. It's not that the new and current is rejected - it's rather that long tail is longer and taller.

The return of the 90s is not next up, it's right now.

For the past 2 years, mainstream chart-toppers like David Guetta or Calvin Harris have been (respectively) covering 90s eurodance songs or making new ones in the same style.

Music is certainly getting worse.

I think it's the opposite of corporatization and consolidation. Computerization? Yes, of course, but it gave everyone the possibility to make music at a very affordable cost. A $100 MIDI controller comes with a license for a full blown music production software and literally anyone can record, mix, master and release an album. I know several people who are not professional musicians, not even formally trained - just happen to like making sounds - who have their albums on Spotify and/or Soundcloud.

Nirvana and early Linkin Park seem to be much more popular among GenZ and Millenials than their own music, and lasting, not just trending or being a fad.

Be aware that grouping things by the respondents "generation" is actually meaningless[1] and likely to make you combine several real processes into random "effects".

Trying to explain these arbitrary aggregations with a single story is obviously fruitless and mostly a good way to make up nonsense arguments.

[1] https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/open-lette...

Music was always like this. It used to be even more like this 100 years ago. How many twelve bar blues songs use the exact same chord progression? Maybe thousands if you managed to catalog them all. Maybe hundreds with the same lick between verses. As music started being recorded you had people writing dozens and dozens of songs a day to be owned by a label. They’d find some starlet with a voice and give her a book of these songs from the basement to record on the album and market her for a few years. If anything we are reverting to this model more today, as bands are no longer in vogue as much as individual artists whose material they perform has probably 20 writers credited.

> Music was always like this.

This is not an informative response to the observation that "GenZ and Millennials show a much smaller preference for their own decade's music."

I was born in 1980, so it would be before my musical "peak" so to speak, but I dislike pretty much anything from the 80s popular enough to have been on the radio in the 80s. Right now the 80s style is so popular, I find myself even disliking a lot of modern music that has that "80s retro feel"

I was in the car with an older Gen-Z'er last year and they expressed jealousy at me having grown up in the 80s because they "like the music so much" and were shocked to find out I didn't.

It's the opposite - we're way less centralized now. No one cares about what's on the radio or MTV anymore. We have infinite access to every song ever* for $11 a month, and the recommendation algorithms will happily show you music outside the mainstream and outside the current decade if that's what keeps you listening.

*yes this is hyperbole

> No one cares about what's on the radio or MTV anymore.

Why not?

> if that's what keeps you listening.

That's the key, though. Kids are generally biased toward new music. This phenomenon is perfectly natural and consistent over the generations, as shown in the article. In the 1980s, it wasn't particularly hard to "discover" 70s or 60s music, and indeed parents might want their kids to listen to their music, but that's not necessarily what the kids want to listen to, because it's not cool. Parents are uncool. Kids want their own music.

What's interesting, though, is that GenZ and Millennials appear to be less biased toward the new music and less biased against the old. The fact that every song ever is available for streaming doesn't mean that people want to listen to every song ever. My understanding is the streaming plays are very top-heavy toward the top artists, and smaller artists are struggling mightily under the streaming payout system.