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Comment by spunker540 | Hacker News Reader

I still like exploring “new” music, but new music that I’ve fallen in love with over the past year is Elvis, Judy Collins, James Taylor, and Curtis Mayfield/The Impressions. It’s hard for me to justify giving modern music a chance when I haven’t even given the established greats a chance. The modern music will still be around in 10 years. Hopefully by then it will be more clear what’s standing the test of time, at which point I’ll give it a listen.

Same thing happened with Kanye by the way. In the 00s I (mostly) wouldn’t touch it, but it’s now clear it was highly influential, important music and I’ve begun to revisit it.

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Music is culturally contextual and temporal in many ways. Think of Floyd's The Division Bell, an album which tries to capture the feelings and emotions that resulted from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or think of RATM's self-titled album, which was a reaction to the police brutality and race tensions that were churning in the late 80s/early 90s. Or even MGMT's Little Dark Age, which is filled with opinions surrounding our modern affection of social media and smartphones.

You're living in today, and there's music being released that touches on the common struggles we're all going through as human beings in today's world. If you wait 10 or 20 years to listen to modern music, you're purposely removing yourself from this conversation.

If music is just nice sounds to you, then that's totally fine, but for a lot us it's much, much more than that.

I think you’re being uncharitable by saying anyone who prefers older music only likes music for the “nice sounds”. It may also be I have more interest in music history than most.

But even if I want to watch a tv show or read a book, I similarly want it to be something that is more important than just “well it came out yesterday so must be relevant”. If something can still be relevant a decade after it came out, that’s when you know it’s really good.

And for the record I love music. I’m a multi-instrumentalist, I’ve played professionally in weddings, bars, played buckets in a street performing band, and continue to study music, actively taking classical piano lessons, composing songs. I play every day.

I'm not sure why you're presenting this dichotomy that you can only listen to old music or new music. I listen to and love both, I'm surprised that someone like you who clearly has a deep interest in music would rule one out.

> And for the record I love music. I’m a multi-instrumentalist, I’ve played professionally in weddings, bars, played buckets in a street performing band, and continue to study music, actively taking classical piano lessons, composing songs. I play every day.

This comment makes your perspective particularly strange. Do you only play covers? Have you ever tried writing your own music? If so, does that mean that you wouldn't listen to your own music until a decade after you wrote it? Because it's a bit hypocritical to only listen to music that is more than a decade old, and still expect people to give your new music a chance considering it hasn't stood the test of time.

Do you think Elvis would have ever had a chance to make a living off of his music if everyone was like you?

> anyone who prefers older music

You're not just saying you prefer older music though, you're saying you're not even giving new music a chance:

> It’s hard for me to justify giving modern music a chance when I haven’t even given the established greats a chance.

That's pretty absurd in my opinion.

it’s not like I have some hard line policy. If it makes you feel better I actually have listened to some music that came out post-2010. For example they released some remastered Beatles tracks last year and I didn’t wait 10 years to listen.

So you're saying people shouldn't listen to the music you've composed until 10 years after you release it. Good idea, I was going to ask for your soundcloud link, but now I'm thinking I won't bother until 10 years from now when you've proven that you're good enough to grace these ears!

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