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 1 month ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/451e6834-0d8f-4aeb-bda5-a021456c673a.jpeg
Comments
Leviathan@lemmy.world 1 month ago
timestatic@feddit.org 1 month ago
I wonder if there is any noticeable difference between different generations to this graph. Like if there is a specific time-frame, that if we account for nostalgia and calculate out this bias/distribute different generations evenly performs higher than other time frames
reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
I was curious too so I pulled up the study.
First off, this is a marketing paper aimed at companies trying inform the industry about taste demographics.
Secondly, I think it’s relevant to note they selected sample songs from billboard top ten (excluding the top 3) so the data is definitely only speaking to ‘an average of average taste in billboard pop music’ and not to musical taste overall.
This is the bit that I think gets at our question:
Peak Preference in SSA indicates the peak preference of each respondent based on their birth year, so if you were born in 1970 and the testing showed you favoring the 1990 song Vogue- Madonna as your peak preference, your SSA would be 20 (you favor music from when you were 20).
My impression from this scatter chart is that a lot of people liked 80s music regardless of when they were born haha.
Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world 1 month 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 🤣😂
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 month 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.
GiorgioBoymoder@hexbear.net 1 month 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”.
Hiro8811@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think this only applies to some generations, almost all the music I like has been made before I was born
Etterra@discuss.online 1 month ago
I didn’t discover music I liked until I was 21. I got raised on church garbage and the oldies channel.
PissingIntoTheWind@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Interesting. Spotify said my late 30’s ass was a 17 year old by the music I listen to and like.
Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world 1 month 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.
sqw@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month 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
Michal@programming.dev 1 month ago
I tend to listen to music from before i was born, but then again that’s the music I listened to in my formative years.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
When I was a kid I only listened to music from the 80s and prior.
As an adult I started finding other genres of more contemporary stuff that I actually liked, but as a kid my only exposure to “modern music” was the bullshit top 40s pop music radio stations that they would play on the school bus, and I hated that stuff with a burning passion.
Even when there was an occasional song that I found catchy, I felt very conflicted inside and would never admit to liking it…
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The music industry, such as it is today, is nothing. It was getting super fucked in the 80s, had a last gasp in the 90s and now it’s nothing.
The former pipeline of label to radio to charts is dead. Whats left is a necrotic accounting and marketing mechanism driven by algorithms and viral splashes.
glimse@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Things have changed but the music industry is very much alive. The barrier to entry dropped significantly with the advent of the internet which definitely affected the established companies but they don’t represent the industry. The artists do.
There’s more independent labels than ever and live music hasn’t changed significantly (minus the feed for “major” venues). I’d even go as far as to say the music industry is better than it’s ever been.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m sure that’s true in many respects, but from the standpoint of putting content in front of . . uh . . earballs, that pipeline that used to exist for almost every adult person (in the US anyway) is dead.
Spotify and Youtube are two possibilities, both pay almost nothing and require lots of sandbagging to get a foothold.
Any new music I accidentally come across is more often than not a style I’m not into, and/or it sounds like everything else.
snoons@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Obviously biased data, I’m not in it. >:(
gegil@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
My favourite music is indeed released when i was in teens. However, i did not listen to that music when i was in teens.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The only music that was released in my teens that I like is stuff I never heard until I was maybe 30. I look back and think it was such a shame that I missed that era when it was current/new.
turtlesareneat@piefed.ca 1 month ago
I never listen to old music, nothing from my teen 90s especially. I’ve heard those three million times each. Give me some new artists producing shimmering, sparkly electronic-indie and I am happy to keep eating it up. Other genres too but there’s so much in just this one, it’s immersive, and I absolutely think it keeps my brain sharper.
froggycar360@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Honestly I don’t like the music I listened to in my teens anymore, but also rarely hear new music I really like. I’m usually listening to older stuff.
Njos2SQEZtPVRhH@piefed.social 1 month ago
Iḿ from 90s and like mostly 60s/70s. psychedelic & prog rock
Auli@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
But then why are gen alpha and gen z listening to music I grew up with. It is so weird. I know its tiktok but still weird that they listen to the same music.
RBWells@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yes, it’s Tik Tok. And it’s music older than I am sometimes. But mine listen to everything, like I do. I took the youngest to see Inhaler and also to see Young the Giant. Taking my husband to see Cannons, and also got him into country music, he used to hate it but if you turn off the commercial radio and just find the good stuff it is still being made.
The 2 bands both my older set of kids (millennials) and my younger set (GenZ) wanted to see when they were middle school age were Panic at the Disco and the My Chemical Romance, I always thought that was funny. Like it’s middle schooler music, I think I would have loved it too.
Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Se should arrest every regaetton singer
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I thought about trying this, but thinking about how to execute it already sounds painful enough.
For input data, I could use my existing library of mostly individually-selected songs, currently at size 1,662. Since I mostly listen to everything, this spans a rather large range of dates.
Then start taking random songs, and rating them on 1 - 10 scale in relation to entire library, enter ratings into 10 year buckets, and use mean of those ratings.
Probably 5 ratings per bucket to keep it short.
Unfortunately, I most likely can’t fill every bucket, hell, some would remain empty. After all, classical music makes my library likely start in late 1600s, and end in 2025.
I didn’t think about that. Perhaps I could leave it out, and start at, say 1920s, but that would make the data incomplete.Problem is, I don’t have the years for most of them, so that would mean looking up release dates for those individually.
Huh, what if everyone would absolutely love (old) classical music, but we don’t see a spike as the graph starts at age of -40?
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well there have been scientific studies showing music became more shitty.
SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Post your finds so that this graph may die
Rat Heart outta Manchester has been my repeat lately. Whole album Dancin’ In The Streets is great if you’re after something down tempo and not super up beat.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I’m going to attack the other side of the graph.
- 1973: Stevie Wonder, Higher Ground Catchy lyrics, very funky, heavy use of the Wah pedal
- 1977: Fela Kuti, Opposite People Africa’s tank on funk music. Screw western norms of 5 minute songs. Have 10 minutes of jamming before the vocals even come in.
- 1967: James Brown, Cold Sweat One of the first funk songs, downbeat on the 1s, one chord groove, lots of improvisation, bass forward, lots of focus on the groove and not the lyrics, etc.
- 1967: Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Ain’t no Mountain High Enough Delicious Motown, but in particular focus in James Jamerson’s incredible bass line
- 1959: Take Five, Dave Brubeck 1960s jazz with a 5/4 beat
- 1965: Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash, Streets of Laredo A “modern” cowboy remake of a folk song that goes back centuries
YetAnotherNerd@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
2026: Elder - Through Zero. Heavy Stoner/Psych/Metal 2025: Totorro - Sofa So Good. Upbeat Math Rock. 2024: Alcest - Les Chants de l’Aurore. Shoegaze meets black metal. Minimal screaming.
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
This is pretty spot on for me. I don’t even know who the latest artists are, I just listen to the same old stuff over and over.
I have moods for genres though. Currently going through a chiptune phase again (YM2612 specifically, so give recommendations).
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 1 month ago
oh yeah, chiptunes are the best.
i remember a song called “cydonian skies” (part 1 & 2). i played it a million times while playing minecraft.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 1 month ago
hint: your emotions are s function of hormonal activity. music feeds your emotions in such a way that your hormones are run in a feedback loop that tweaks your emotions to higher levels. as you age, your hormonal activity lessens, so thoe feedback loops are less effective and you lose interest
VirtigoMommy@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Do you have a source on this? Music playing a role in hormonal feedback loops sounds sus to me and if it’s not I’d love to read more into this.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 1 month ago
not really. i just go by personal, i.e., anecdotal experience.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Rick Sanchez type beat
diabetic_porcupine@lemmy.world 1 month ago
So basically we all realize that music is a pointless waste of time once we get a job but sunk cost fallacy keeps us “enjoying” the same shit for a while
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That is so far from the point of this graph it’s in another universe.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’a not only a bad take but an incorrect reading of the graph lol
SuspiciousCatThing@pawb.social 1 month ago
Listen to better musicians?
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Don’t understand graph. is dark line what people think of songs released 11 years ago? WTH is graph before age 0? Oh ok, maybe. A song released when you were 40 is rated the same as one released 45-80 years earlier.
There is huge bias in “popular music” category. Can get very sick of old songs, or just stop listening to contemporary pop after a while. I’m surprised old people would still like pop songs of their youth, after being overplayed over the years.
stoly@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They did the survey repeatedly over 11 years and the line spores the average across all years.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
My music taste is like the inverse of this graph.