I’ve discovered a new subgenre or other every few years and I still find music that’s just as good in my thirties as when I was a kid. Trick is I don’t care when it was made, I only care that it’s in the style I want. I also have never listened to what anyone would really consider radio friendly music so it helps filter out the product placements disguised as artists. Stay curious and find music yourself and you will never experience this curve.
Music just isn't good anymore
Submitted 12 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
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Comments
Leviathan@lemmy.world 20 minutes ago
chunes@lemmy.world 57 minutes ago
So what I’m getting from this is if you want success, market to 15-year-olds
emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
“How people who only ever listen to the music that’s played on the radio feel about music”
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Absolutely fucking not. I can’t stand the music I used to listen to.
TopsickPilgrim@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah. In my XXs I still love finding new music. Very exciting thing to discover a new band I vibe with.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
This may be true for casual listeners but it fails miserably for people who are “into music”.
hypna@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
No fate but what we make. You can put in the effort to keep your mind and your ears open. Absolutely worth it IMHO.
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Why should I bother when all the best music came out before I was 35?
Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours ago
Because some of that new music came came out before I was 35
Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Gosh, absolutely. I’ll go on a nostalgia trip now and again, but there are soooo many artists doing such fantastic things nowadays.
UncleArthur@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Absolutely! I’ve discovered some amazing modern artists, mostly via film and TV (streaming series) soundtracks, especially the latter.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
yep. I’ve come across some super cool young bands that sound exactly like the albums I love from 40 years ago!
Corngood@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
I try my best to do this, and find lots of great new music.
I still find a lot of new popular music just doesn’t do it for me, and I think it’s because as you’ve heard more music, the it’s harder to find something that sounds fresh.
When I was in the peak of that chart I was really into stuff like Spacehog, who seemed really cool to me at the time, but probably would have sounded a bit derivative to my parents. At the same time my dad loved Smashing Pumpkins enough to buy all their albums…
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 10 hours ago
Certainly, of course all the old stuff is good because that is the stuff that you already curated into your personal preferences. There was a LOT of shit from pretty much any era, its just that the younger version of you already pawed through all that shit. Listening to new music means having to paw through a lot of crap, which is always harder than just listening to stuff you already like.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
i keep discovering contemporanean artists whom I love. and I’m in the “back in my day” age.
Delilah Bon, Bob Vyllan, kneecap… give me more suggestions like them.
Vespair@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
I’m 41 and I think some of the best music of my life has released in the past few years, personally 🤷♂️
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
Hell yeah, and forget even just individual songs, I tend to gravitate toward whole-album bangers and continue to find thoroughly dope and delicious stuff.
Xoth - “Exogalactic” Clipse - “Let God Sort Em Out”
Two (somewhat different 😅) ones I’ve been getting just hours and hours of cover-to-cover listening mileage outta lately, for reference. Even got the Xoth one (new folks to me) from someone on Lemmy 😎
Vespair@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Sounds like we have similar taste. I really dig that Clipse album and while I haven’t listened to Xoth, I love tech death: Necrophagist, Fallujah, Archspire, Inferi, Ulcerate, Revocation, Cryptopsy, Cognitive (underrated!), Eschaton (also underrated!)
I’m also an album guy, active music nerd on rateyourmusic. 👍
So I guess I’m saying based on those two picks and your album tastes I think you sound cool, lol
stoly@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Notable that this is only popular music. You might be surprised to find you follow the same trend if asked to rate Taylor Swift compared to Modest Mouse or something.
Vespair@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
I don’t think I fully understand what you mean by this, can you clarify?
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 3 hours ago
I’m 31 and some of the best music I ever heard was made with vocaloids.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I’m a few years older. I think the best music was from before I was born 🤷
chunes@lemmy.world 55 minutes ago
Hundreds of years before I was born, yes
Vespair@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
You’ll notice I said some. I would also say some of the best was from before I was born as well. I think art is as intrinsic to humanity as breathing and it is something we will continue to do with gusto and success forever.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Same bud. There’s so, soooooo much great music being made right now. Some of it’s on the radio, some of it is obscure as fuck. Doesn’t matter. You just gotta fucking open your ears and listen.
Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
Se should arrest every regaetton singer
Sawblade02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Keep your statistics to yourself, I’m over 40 and love discovering new music.
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
“No! You’re dumb and your opinions are poorly justified! You must listen to us instead!” - billionaire media
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
Gimme one! I’m the same way!
Recently I’ve been banging
And
And
Why do I want to listen to the same shit I hear everywhere?! Give me new!
Caesium@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I’m ‘only’ 26 and I’ve been having a blast going through Groundbreaking’s collection that they’ve released over the years. I only recently realized there was this whole archive like a year and a half ago, but I’ve actually been listening to some of the songs sold on other albums for much longer than that! I’ve been discovering artists that pique my interest and I’ll definitely look into them more once I’m all caught up.
And since I’m a huge rhythm game fan, I’ll often discover new music and artists through charts on the way. The only thing more exciting than finding a new song I really enjoy is listening to one of my favorite songs
Zannsolo@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
But is any of it better than CCR?
Noggog@programming.dev 7 hours ago
Ditto
radix@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Not just music! (Though that is probably the strongest example)
It’s telling how many people are nostalgic for a society that only existed before they were born. Recent History education sucks.
timestatic@feddit.org 11 hours ago
Damn we humans are bad as shit as forming our subjective opinion that doesnt get extremely distorted by nostalgia
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I always go back to that line from Men in Black about the difference between a person and people.
In aggregate we really are the worst.
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
People often forget that nostalgia is the secret spice that makes the past great… not the actual past.
And nostalgia is nothing more than there’s shit happening in our brains at 10ish-20ish that doesn’t happen any other time. Hormones and energy and lack of responsibilty and first experience bias combine to create a dopamine cocktail we cannot recreate.
I mean, I’ll die on the hill of 90s was the best music, TV, movies, video games, and fashion. But I know that it’s not objectively true. But that’s how it feels for sure.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Other explanations could just come down to the structure of our current society.
I can see a clear and quantifiable decrease in my family support structure between childhood and now. Of course that’s mostly due death and moving away from home. But my answer would be entirely different if I lived in a multi-generational home or kinship group. Which was the default for about 99.9% of human existence.
Music, fashion, and tastes are a lot more subjective though.
taiyang@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I’m way too analytical to fall into that curve, and I’m sure most people on Lemmy are like that too. Like, we literally have data going back decades on most of these metrics, so why are people even going with their gut? Quite a few are literally numbers you can check!
But alas, your average nobody ignores data…
Thunderbird4@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I’d be very interested to see the age distribution of the people who were polled. It just says 2000 adults, but if they were all around the same age then it may not all be matters of opinion, especially for things like “political division.”
atomicorange@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
The one that surprises me is TV. It has objectively improved in quality so much, it’s basically on par with movies at this point. Writing, acting, costuming, all of it. I’d never claim that TV from the 90s was superior to now, even though I was a teen back then.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
I will absolutely argue that TV was better between 2006-2016 than 2016-2026. I think the detailed ratings (especially on streaming) ended up feeding studio decisionmaking into shallower works that their algorithms suggested audiences would like, and that we lost something in the process. The collapse of mid budget basic cable original programming also has hurt the genre as a whole.
Also, there’s nothing quite like a high budget but mediocre show, that looks visually stunning but just doesn’t resonate with you.
glimse@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I feel like it has way more to do with how knowledgeable you were at the time. Kids generally don’t have the most critical eye for any of those things and most people don’t go back to see what they missed.
I just said to a friend this morning, “every kid’s favorite movie is the last movie they saw”
morto@piefed.social 9 hours ago
It would be interesting to see that study carried out in other countries as well. In my country, for example, many older people will tell the tales from hiperinflation and how they had episodes of starvation when younger. I believe most people would agree with the best economy being post mid-90s, only varying on when, so it woud give a considerade skew to that chart.
Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
There is music from my young adulthood in the 90’s that means a great deal to me because of the memories, but I’d put say Amyl and the Sniffers up there with some of the icons of Punk.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 6 hours ago
I’m glad I still play new music and find bangers, but I’ve always done that. Dont think growing old will stop me.
mosspiglet@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I wonder if the difference is between people who like music primarily because of the memories it evokes vs people who just like music for its own sake. I’m sure this is a gradient, with most people probably falling closer to the former category and those at the other end of the scale seek out new music.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 5 hours ago
You’re probably right, my endorphin port is tuned to fire when I hear new music I think is sicc. I still get the nostalgia stuff but only when I’m feeling sentimental. Otherwise I’m looking for a fresh (to me) beat. Just got into burialgoods and the hexcore he makes.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
as if this chart had the centuries of data needed to be meaningful
protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
it also needs centuries to express my music tastes
jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I assume this refers to pop music which was mainly available after mass media became a thing. They’re probably not interviewing Edward Von Dickensachen about the Chopin concert he attended when he was 12.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Notice the graph peaks in the teens. I think our love of music has a lot to do with the fun and social life of that era. I was an introverted high school nerd and barely remember the music from that time, then in my late 20s got into doing theatre - suddenly had a thriving social life full of parties, dating etc, and the music of that era is by far my favorite.
blazeknave@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Where the Party At? was senior year anthem. Bacardi is imprinted on me as the fun era
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
I wonder how you could adjust the whole graph based on connections to friends.
When people are under 10, they don’t have that much agency in choosing music. They just listen to whatever their parents listen to, or whatever their parents put on for them. In their teens they start getting to choose music and have a lot of classmates and friends who can be sources for hearing new music. In their early 20s that continues with university and/or first jobs. But, after a while that tails off and people have smaller social circles so they are introduced to fewer new things.
That could also explain why music from before people were born is somewhat popular. It’s something you might have been introduced to by your parents, or possibly by friends in your teens or 20s, or maybe something you discovered on your own later. When you’re 40+ you still might have people introducing you to music that existed before you were born, but you’re probably not being introduced to the new music very much. And if you are, it’s the popular stuff, which often sucks in all eras. Maybe if you have teenaged kids you hear what they like at some point, but that’s a small window, and often what they like is the popular gunk.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
That’s really what I was thinking - that the graph probably wouldn’t change much if you remapped it to personal connections because the pattern of personal connections is probably what drives it in the first place. Hence my favorite musical era is when my connections peaked around age 30. Although tbh most of what I liked then and still do is what you would call “popular gunk” - never did care much for dismissing popularity as low quality. They often go together, but unpopularity and low quality also do.
moakley@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Oh shit. That explains it for me too then.
half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Bro I smashed the shit out the like button for angine de poitirne, and I don’t even think they’re human. How do I have nostalgia bias for music that isn’t from this dimension?
fossilesque@mander.xyz 11 hours ago
They are fire
SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
they’re an industry plant its the olsen twins
fossilesque@mander.xyz 10 hours ago
Investigate 311 bro
HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
I’m right there with you.
I bet it was for you what it was for me…part “this is crazy unique”, part “AI can never do this” and “that’s a musical scratch for an itch I never knew I had”.
And ADHD and a gentle kiss of the 'tism.
LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Man I must be an outlier apparently, I don’t listen to any of the music from my teens or even my twenties except in rare nostalgia trips. I’m constantly finding newly released songs that I like and even cringe at some of the music I liked as a youth. I don’t think I can even define an era of “best music” - there’re so many great songs across all music.
guerilla_ontologist@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
this is nowhere near enough data to make a real conclusion. there is no causal link explained here, merely a correlation. my anecdotal experience is that i now hate the music i listened to as a teen (RATM and SOAD mostly, with some nine inch nails etc. thrown in), my absolute favorite band was Thee Oh Sees for a while in my 20s, and now i’m almost exclusively into electronic music like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn1Br5Zf6Xs&t=1503s
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Statistically, sure, but I’m forty and I keep finding new bangers.
ReCursing@feddit.uk 11 hours ago
Pop music now is better and more diverse than it ever has been. And I say this as a 45 year old
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
I think it’s exposure, you hear about a lot more music in high school. Now I get exposed to new music mostly by the radio (you can throw Spotify algorithms in here) and it’s shitty pop/rap music that they play. Like if my 90s exposure to rap was limited to Vanilla Ice then I wouldn’t care for it either.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 6 hours ago
I still find good music, but not nearly at the same frequency I did in the late 90s to early 2010s. Absolutely none of what I find good is played on the radio (but then, it’s like 80% commercials so I doubt much of anything is heard on the radio unless used in an ad); it’s all from films, games and memes now.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
I’m in my 30s and a lot of my favourite music came out recently. My music tastes keep getting weirder and weirder.
Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Much like every YouTube comment section for an SNL skit has at least 147 “SNL hasn’t been good since…” comments.
Of course 95% of the rest of the comments are literally nothing but them typing out a funny line followed by 🤣😂
sqw@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
i find a lot of music i used to think was hot shit back in my heyday is Very Dated now, would not generally recommend
ClathrateG@hexbear.net 4 hours ago
SuspiciousCatThing@pawb.social 3 hours ago
Listen to better musicians?
MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
You just gotta know where to look. Music is an industry, so the people who view songs as products will push their favored products in front of as many of their target demographic as possible. They want those tween-to-twenties locked down. They decide what’s cool, so if they like your products then you’re cool. So if you’re 40 and only listen to top 40 pop stations, you’re probably in for a bad time since none of that shit is really trying to court you in the first place. I’m in my mid-late 30s and I’m still discovering bands and current releases that I’m into. Just gotta look a little harder.
I think that as we get older and consume more media, we experience a sort of fatigue of simple and easy structures, so we desire something more complex. But we grandfather in the stuff that we imprinted on in those formative years, and that’s why that younger demographic is targeted; they’ll keep coming back to their comfort media for their whole life.
Pop music is (usually) the middle ground between nursery rhymes and something like djent or cool jazz or math rock or whatever other more nuanced genre you’re into. “Products” in those genres just aren’t gonna sell like boy bands do. Some pop music is actually good and complex, but it’s just not my thing and mostly never has been. I’m not trying to insult people who like Bad Bunny or Kendrick or whatever, but yeah Black Eyed Peas and Kid Rock fucking suck. Don’t @ me.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
The new Boards of Canada album came out a few days ago so I have no idea what this chart is taking about.
GiorgioBoymoder@hexbear.net 8 hours ago
They grabbed 1 song from the top 10 (excluding top 3 to avoid mega-hits) for every other year. Here’s the songlist used for the study:
I went to the paper and if you’re struggling to interpret the x-axis like I was, the paper labels it “song-specific age” i.e. the age the person rating the song was when the song was released. Y axis is “standardized musical preference”.
PissingIntoTheWind@lemmy.world 23 minutes ago
Interesting. Spotify said my late 30’s ass was a 17 year old by the music I listen to and like.