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Comment by cameronh90 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the premise, and the article author’s attempt to convince me of it is weak.

I can equally claim we’re living in a golden age of music, both in terms of accessibility and of the diversity of music being made.

There’s likely some truth in the idea of mindless consumption, but I’m not sure that’s any different now than it was in the past. There have always been people who didn’t explore much beyond listening to the top singles chart in the car. That’s fine, not everyone has to have some abstract notion of good musical taste. Meanwhile, there are still vast communities of highly motivated music appreciators willing to travel the world to seek out the best music experiences. Too many, arguably, based on how expensive and crowded festivals and gigs have become.

Personally, I think the 90s-00s were the weakest decades in pop, but taste is subjective.

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Absolutely correct. It starts kinda hilariously;

  The convergence of computers and music production is now complete, making any sound theoretically possible at virtually no cost. But

I mean… lol. Cmon. Let’s run through the facts:

1. More music is being made now than ever before, both in terms of genre diversity and absolute amount.

2. The average consumer can access an effectively infinite range of that music, which is up from “a few records a year and whatever’s on the radio”, which in turn is up from “whatever’s on the radio”, which in turn is up from “whatever live music might be played at the local pub on Saturdays, plus church hymns.”

3. Across cultures, people think that the music that they listened to in their formative years — say, 15-25 - is the best music. The mechanisms are fairly obvious to back that up: emotional vulnerability, novelty, and number+quality of peer relationships are at life-long highs. In short, nostalgia.

I would happen to agree re:pop (other than em!) but I think the scientific facts are all we need here. The article (and, presumably, the original video) is well written and in good faith, but I think they’re lacking some serious self-awareness.

As the optimists always say regarding macro timelines: the world is much better than it was, the world is gradually getting better, and the world can be much better. This article would be covered under the first clause!

> in terms of accessibility and of the diversity of music being made.

neither of those addresses music being "worse." There's no "objective" measurement of quality. If you have bad taste, you have bad taste, and you can always find someone to say you don't.

> I’m not sure that’s any different now than it was in the past

Beato explains how it's different. Look at some Top 100 song lists from 50 or so years ago. Here are a couple:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_sin...

Could you clarify…? I’m not seeing anything jump out to me, but it’s very possibly I’m missing something basic comparing it to, say, 2023: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_s...

My only real takeaway is “more women and people of color”, and “more genre diversity”. Seems like an ok thing?

The points I got from the article were, roughly, “music was rarer so we liked it more” and “music was harder to make so only good artists survived”, neither of which I find very convincing. I suppose I could watch the video, but clickbait titles are a pretty hard negative signal, lol

OK, name me 40 great songs from your 2023 list.

where "great" is something more than "got a lot of plays on Spotify."

This is some kind of a bit, right? You can't be seriously demanding that kind of effort from others, when your own contribution was to just link to a list from 1974 as if that list somehow speaks for itself.

Because it doesn't. Your list has no intrinsic value that's making those songs obviously superior to modern ones. So how about you name the 40 great songs on that list, explain why they're great that's some other reason than being on the list. No?

There aren't 40 great songs on either of the lists he linked... there's maybe 18 on the first and maybe 15 on the second.

On the 2023 list I'd put about 10-11 songs as "great", but that's without the benefit of hindsight of which songs are still played and remembered decades later. And there's going to be songs on the 2023 list (like a lot of the Morgan Wallen stuff) that I don't particularly like but will be heard many times in the future... Personally I hate "Last Night" but it's going to be around for a while.

I realized afterwards that 40 is too high and I was considering lowering it to 20.

But even by your standards, "it was always exactly like this" is clearly wrong.

that's what I thought you'd say: you'd be embarrassed to pick even 15 songs from your list and call them "great."

And then demand that I do some work for YOU.

You appear to be very confused. That was my first and only message to this thread, so it seems extremely unlikely you had any kind of expectation on me posting anything here let alone what I'd say.

Anyway, since you're not only confusing names but forgetting what you wrote, here's a reminder:

> OK, name me 40 great songs from your 2023 list. where "great" is something more than "got a lot of plays on Spotify."

Do you seriously not see that this is you demanding work?

And just to be clear: I'm not demanding that level work from you. I don't actually care about what music you like on a individual song level. I was echoing your request to show how unreasonable it was. You appear to agree it's unreasonable. So why did you make that demand? Why are you pretending that you didn't?

But I am genuinely intrested in why you think these lists are such obvious demonstrations of the superiority of the music you like that just linking to the list should be treated as a mic drop.

"Great" is way too subjective, but I'll say this: I'd much rather listen to the 2023 list than either of the others you shared.

Life is a lot easier when you stop trying to insist that the subjective is objective.

How do you define great? What should I be looking for?

Personally, I wouldn’t listen to most of those.

There’s plenty of good stuff on those lists, but also a fair amount of trash and quite a lot I’ve never heard of - bearing in mind I’m not American, and also not really much of a 70s fan. I had a listen to Joy to the World by Three Dog Night, and all I can say is I hope it didn’t mess up my recommendation algorithm.

I’m also not sure what playing chart top trumps would prove anyway. It’s conceivable that the charts can be worse by some objective metric, even if the average of the same metric in the overall music scene is higher, if the diversity and discovery of music is wider. In essence the chart just becomes the lowest common denominator, rather than critically acclaimed music, as it may have been when what we listened to was driven mainly by a cabal of professional radio DJs.

The subjectivity of musical taste is something I mentioned twice, but intentionally tried to avoid passing judgement on because it’s essentially impossible. If a boomer wants to come along and tell an entire generation that his taste in music is superior to theirs, well that’s up to him, but it seems very old man yells at cloud to me.

The reason I mention diversity and discovery is because I figure the closest thing to an objective measurement of how good the overall music ecosystem is, is how satisfied people are with the music they’re listening to. It stands to reason that diversity and discovery is a key part of that. I’m not convinced any attempt to define an objective ordering of musical taste would be anything other than an exercise in nostalgia and elitism.

lots of verbiage and demand for definitions here, not much content. Always a good sign that it's time to end the conversation.

> all I can say is I hope it didn’t mess up my recommendation algorithm.

I can't help but interpret that as meaning you are hesitant about trying out new music because of a cabal of professional programmers.

Ask yourself this, if you walked into a record store to buy a vinyl. Are you walking out with a BTS record?

There's tons of great indie music out there atm, but the radio 'mainstream' has turned to trash.

But it was probably always like this. Old man yells at cloud etc.

Personally, not BTS.

But even just looking at the current charts for this week, Brat by Charli XCX, Romance by Fontaines DC and Woof by Fat Dog are all fantastic albums. Surprisingly, David Gilmour has a new album that’s at #1.

BTS is a bad example. K-Pop (and also J-Pop) are about as painfully mainstream as you can get (in those respective countries). However, Anglosphere countries rarely import their music, so it loops back into being non-mainstream anyway.

That nitpick aside, while Rick Beato's extremely Boomer, he's vaguely grasping at actual problems. My take on it is that streaming platforms are built to do what the labels want them to do - sell music as a commodity. In the terrestrial radio era, labels would pay radio stations to put specific songs they wanted to push in heavy rotation. This is called payola[0]. It's illegal, but everyone did it anyway.

[0] The term was coined in an era where anything to do with music ended in "ola". Victrola was a brand of record player, Motorola was a brand of car radio, etc.

No. No, it wasn't always like this.

I mean, i don't like pop music, i dislike disco, and while some rock/rap song have value, i'm not a fan either. To me, since the Big band era (which i doubt anybody here know), music on the main radio stations were always commercial shit (unless you live in Louisiana). At least nowadays i can tune in and listen to Wooz (or other) from anywhere.

> since the Big band era (which i doubt anybody here know)

I "know" it through my parents. Although I don't know how much radio time they logged. They heard big bands live, for dancing.

I could be wrong, but I have the impression that radio stations would have "programs" of music, along with news and entertainment. It wouldn't be music all the time. There weren't portable radios, either -- you'd gather around the radio set.

Must have been good times.

it is a mixed bag. I think distribution for new artists is easier today with social media etc. Go on Spotify, there is such a huge spectrum of music available. There is literally something for everyone.

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