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Comment by scarface_74 | Hacker News Reader

There has always been a lot of crap. The reason people think it was better in the old days because most of the crap was forgotten and is not played on the oldies station.

I read somewhere that the typical “classics” station whether it be RnB, Motown, Rock, etc has a playlist of 300 songs. There were many more songs produced during the covered era

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This is such a tired argument. Even the "crap" back then had professional songwriters and musicians playing actual instruments with some semblance of artistry. Go listen to the global top 50 on Spotify and it's hard to even call it music. It's generally the same trap/reggaeton beat with some autogenerated ambient sounds and someone mumbling in triplets over it. Almost none of it is memorable or original, and has very little artistic merit IMO. It's basically AI generated emotionless bytes.

Old people have always complained about music of this generation being crap. Even in my lifetime, people complained about rap music of the early 80s and the 90s that are now considered classics.

Tipper Gore was up in arms about NWA (Dr. Dre is now considered a legend and Ice Cube is making family movies) and Ice T.

And even in the modern area as hip hop has become mainstream I remember people complaining that the pop charts had too many rappers.

People complained about Elvis and the Beatles when they were first coming out.

Do you think your parents wouldn’t say the same about the music you listened to growing up?

I know my parents thought the rap music I listened to were crap.

> Even the "crap" back then had professional songwriters and musicians playing actual instruments

Ah, you mean the same four chords in succession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

There are only so many chords, this means nothing. Songs can use the same chords and be totally unique.

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