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Comment by kgo | Hacker News Reader

I hate to pull a [Citation Needed] especially when I won't provide my own, but I find it really hard to believe that DMB was the most consistently popular musician of any generation. He's never been Elvis big, Beatles big, or even Jay Z or Bon Jovi big. (Bon Jovi only being referenced in the original article because they took the number one slot, not because the author was a huge fan.)

He's very popular, has a pretty good niche, don't get me wrong. (Must... Resist... urge... to... crack... on... lacrosse... players...) But I think plenty of people would be surprised that he was in that top ten list, not just old timers.

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DMB may not be the "most popular" but they did sell more tickets than any other act in North America over the last 10 years

http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/flint/index.ssf/2010/01/d...

Well yeah, but that's the whole point of the original article we're linking to, right? They're not the biggest band of a generation, they're not the current KISS-FM darlings, and they're still raking in the money by touring non-stop, building a dedicated fan base, and giving a good show.

I think if you asked most people, even the ones who aren't old and 50, to make a list of the top ten tours this year... It'd be easy to guess the expensive shows for the baby boomers (Eagles, etc) and the hip acts for the kids (Lady GaGa, Black Eyed Peas). But I don't think many people would peg the Dave Matthews Band.

That's why I thought the article was interesting. Not because Bon Jovi is awesome and Dave Matthews is lame or vice versa...

"most consistently popular musician of my generation" is what GP said.

But there is a significant difference between "my generation" and "my demographic".

I can believe DMB being the biggest musician of a demographic (US, College educated, mid twenties?) -- but probably not a "generation".

Depends on how you define "generation"...consider the ticket sales referenced above and this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_arti...

Most of the other 90s/2000s artists on the list are pop/country acts like Mariah Carey and Shania Twain that I wouldn't consider to be artists "of my generation"

Is "generation" a global term or country specific? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_arti...

DMB doesn't appear (Implying that they have <50 mill sales (but they have 32 mill US Sales).

Linkin Park / Rihana / Coldplay all appear in the global list. Not to mention artists like Ayumi Hamasaki (Which from 1994-present) operated in roughly the same time span as DMB.

Maybe not country specific but at least culture specific. There has to be some sense of shared experience for a generation or else its a pointless term.

I'm assuming his generation was in the subset of all generations that I am referring to.

Then it's just bad logic. Not(Forall x : P(x)) does not contradict (Exists x : P(x)).

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