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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

I think you've got that completely backwards. 2000 is about the time that the "long tail" exploded, where Youtube and Spotify made non-top 40 music a lot easier to find. In consequence there is a lot more really good music available today than there was pre-internet and it's a lot easier to find. It's not on the radio, but that's always been the case.

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> In consequence there is a lot more really good music available today than there was pre-internet and it's a lot easier to find.

Tangentially, if (like me) you find this "long tail" interesting but don't know where to start, I've enjoyed going through Ted Gioia's "100 Best Albums of [previous year]" [1] each year. It's obviously subjective and subject to whatever biases he has, but the sheer diversity of the list is quite cool. Listening to a few albums per week is a pretty easy way to sample -- most of the albums are on YouTube or Bandcamp for free.

[1] http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2020.html

Exactly. One only has to look at the myriad of tv shows, video games, movies, etc. to see that we have more quality options than ever and are seeing even more niche, but commercially successful content. There’s more static too, but there’s a lot of good out there.

Everybody thinks we are in a golden age of television series, don't they?

I don't claim that these examples have the same history as music.

I don't think so at all - there's a lot of pastiche, some of it loving, but there's only so many ways to do a pop song. It's alright for forms to die. The real "long tail" that the internet introduced is that we now had access to all of the good music we missed before the internet. There's no reason to bitch about modern music anymore because there's no reason to be exposed to it other than aggressive fandoms and marketing.

I honestly don't even understand the impulse to listen to new music. The quality of "newness" is not a desirable one for me in music; I prefer qualities relating to sound. To me it seems like a distorted version of the impulse to be cool in high school.

The real problem is that commercial, recorded music crowds out local, live music. For local music I understand wanting to know what's new - you may miss out because bands aren't live forever.

And before, soulseek.

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