I've definitely discovered less new artists as I've aged. I'm near 50 now and last year only added Röyksopp, and Sleaford Mods, to my regular listening playlist. But I'm also still listening to new stuff by many artists like Aesop Rock, Orbital, and The Chemical Brothers.

I don't follow radio or popular music at all. However if I hear something I like, the supercomputer in my pocket tells me just what it is so I can discover new music that way.

Last study I've seen, that stopped being... I won't say true, but I'd say that it stopped being a valid counterargument to that particular complaint. Now that young people can access music from any time in YouTube, their choices are more atemporal and certain remote decades keep getting much love.

If you combine that fact with current music being more marketed and aired, there's seem to be something at play here. I don't think new music is crap, but it's less catchy.

There has always been a lot of marketing an airing to make music catchy. The entire “Motown machine” wasn’t about the artists, it was about the writers, producers, choreographers etc and making sure music was “acceptable” to a wider audience.

I meant that the music that's publicized today is the music that's made today. So if even with this handicap, older music is as popular as the new, one explanation could be that it was intrinsically catchier.

The graphic that I saw:

https://x.com/antonello/status/1781197022910947492

To be clear: I'm not arguing that it was better, just more memorable, uplifting or touching. Actually, in ye olden times, "commercial music" was a synonym of bad and "quality music" was expected to be minoritary.