No new music after 30.

If you've never heard Bach's Harpsichord Co. in D Minor, then that is new music to you. (A comment not directed to any specific person.)

I have, there's at least one version of it in my Wife's Classical CD collection. I only have a few classical recordings, she's the one that is a retired Piano Teacher and is far more in tune with that Genre. If she recommends something it is usually worth your time to listen.

Mark Gosdin
 
If you've never heard Bach's Harpsichord Co. in D Minor, then that is new music to you. (A comment not directed to any specific person.)
Exactly. Sometimes it's obvious that a new to me piece has been around for quite a while. Other times, not so much. Either way the first question is did I like it or not. If I like it the search for who performed it and when, as well as who created it begins. It doesn't really matter to me if it was created last week or early last century.
 
I'm well over twice the cutoff listed in the original article, and if I can't find something new to listen to every month or so, I feel like I'm wasting my listening time. It always amuses me to run across someone who says things like "Oh, the music from the (pick one: 60s/70s/80s/90s) was the best; I can't listen to the other stuff." IMHO, 90% of the popular music from every era is junk; only that top 10% or so exhibits the innovation and talent which allows it to stay around long enough to be appreciated. And they're not always the names which come up in the music polls, either. I have music on my server from each decade going back to the 40s-50s, and featuring a growing amount from the 2000s. Last I checked, I have almost 1100 artists comprising 3000+ albums in my collection, and probably some more I haven't loaded to the server yet. A growing percentage is classical or jazz, which are much easier to find and listen to than they were when I was growing up; some artists I'm hearing for the first time because of improved availability / accessibility of their music.

There is still a ton of great stuff out there today, but the problem is that the music labels have no interest in something new and perhaps challenging to listen to; they only want a guaranteed or low risk sale and an easily captured audience. I get a lot of music at local shows, and through Kickstarter, PledgeMusic, etc. Many modern artists have taken the reins of their own career and depend on the fans to support them, so they're eager to share their music around. I recently backed a small tour of a Canadian rock band so they could come to my town and play a show; they would probably be sneered at as "millennials" by many, and yet their grasp of what makes music appealing is much better than the majority of classic artists still wheezing along - and certainly better than the recycled pop/rap/country mush which is all you hear locally these days.

I also volunteer for a youth sports team, and being around young people has increased opportunities to absorb not only music, but art from the younger generation. Many of them are receptive to good music from decades before they were born, as well, which sparks some positive communication. These people are our future, and if we don't encourage them, music will decay and become only the province of big corporations who are happy to sell the same thing re-packaged again and again. I'm reminded of the parable of the species of shark which has to constantly keep moving forward or it will die.
 
i guess i must be the exception. as i have gotten older, i need a wider variety of music to hold my interest. sure, i have faves but how many times can you listen to rumours or teaser and the firecat. i really burned myself out on the ventures' walk don't run so i couldn't listen to it for about 10-15 YEARS.

for a real look into the different music all the time is to listen online to eclectic24, a kcrw product. all music, all kinds, all the time. and i am fortunate to live in LA where i can tune in on my HD radio as eclectic24 is kcrw's HD2 station. i also listen to a lot of jazz because it's all about improvisation which leads to new sounds. duke ellington encouraged his bandmembers to make their instruments sound 'not like their instruments' hence the wonderful panoply of sounds from the ellington orchestra.
 
I'm well over twice the cutoff listed in the original article, and if I can't find something new to listen to every month or so, I feel like I'm wasting my listening time. It always amuses me to run across someone who says things like "Oh, the music from the (pick one: 60s/70s/80s/90s) was the best; I can't listen to the other stuff." IMHO, 90% of the popular music from every era is junk; only that top 10% or so exhibits the innovation and talent which allows it to stay around long enough to be appreciated. And they're not always the names which come up in the music polls, either. I have music on my server from each decade going back to the 40s-50s, and featuring a growing amount from the 2000s. Last I checked, I have almost 1100 artists comprising 3000+ albums in my collection, and probably some more I haven't loaded to the server yet. A growing percentage is classical or jazz, which are much easier to find and listen to than they were when I was growing up; some artists I'm hearing for the first time because of improved availability / accessibility of their music.

There is still a ton of great stuff out there today, but the problem is that the music labels have no interest in something new and perhaps challenging to listen to; they only want a guaranteed or low risk sale and an easily captured audience. I get a lot of music at local shows, and through Kickstarter, PledgeMusic, etc. Many modern artists have taken the reins of their own career and depend on the fans to support them, so they're eager to share their music around. I recently backed a small tour of a Canadian rock band so they could come to my town and play a show; they would probably be sneered at as "millennials" by many, and yet their grasp of what makes music appealing is much better than the majority of classic artists still wheezing along - and certainly better than the recycled pop/rap/country mush which is all you hear locally these days.

I also volunteer for a youth sports team, and being around young people has increased opportunities to absorb not only music, but art from the younger generation. Many of them are receptive to good music from decades before they were born, as well, which sparks some positive communication. These people are our future, and if we don't encourage them, music will decay and become only the province of big corporations who are happy to sell the same thing re-packaged again and again. I'm reminded of the parable of the species of shark which has to constantly keep moving forward or it will die.
Give us some examples of that 10% knock your socks off current offerings then. Better yet, just give us the 'best' one iyo.

If there's too many to choose from, give us a short list
 
Give us some examples of that 10% knock your socks off current offerings then. Better yet, just give us the 'best' one iyo.
Perhaps not quite what you're asking, and I'm not who you addressed the question to, but in the future classic category and easily the equal in popularity to any hit of past decades (#1 song across much of the Western world in 2011), Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know":


It's not really to my taste, but it certainly was to much of the Western world.
 
Perhaps not quite what you're asking, and I'm not who you addressed the question to, but in the future classic category and easily the equal in popularity to any hit of past decades (#1 song across much of the Western world in 2011), Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know":


It's not really to my taste, but it certainly was to much of the Western world.
Okay, before I listen to it, give us a brief comparison to 3 past classic hits it is the equal of.:)
 
Actually I find the idea of if your over a certain age you don't listen to new music. It is a bit ironic that the younger generation have found a new music source, the record. All the while here on AK I am constantly seeing older members using the latest in hardware and software to upload new music or stream new music, while the under 30 crowd is buying the reissues of old music that we have long graduated from.

The under 30 crowd's top 10 pick of new music if you go by the music racks, are a bunch of sound tracks to the movies they watch. Add to that, not even very good movies at that.
 
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In term of "new" music I think it would be fair to say the artist I am most inspired to listen to, and enjoy when I do, is Perturbator

I absolutely love tracks like this, and the video gives a demo-scene vibe to it as well.
He consistently puts out good albums

 
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Okay, before I listen to it, give us a brief comparison to 3 past classic hits it is the equal of.:)
What does it mean for a past classic hit to be "the equal of" a recent hit?

What should the "brief comparison" compare?

Anyway, it doesn't matter whether you listen to it and like it or not. Much of the Western world liked it, ranking it #1 in about 25 countries and certified multi-Platinum sales in 10, and sold 13,000,000 copies worldwide. It's still in semi-regular airplay.
 
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I won't ever discount someone subjective experience with regards to what they like. But I also have a pet peeve about when people try to defend something with sales numbers, etc.

I mean look at the movie industry. Successful movies are almost always garbage. Just because its popular/makes money doesn't mean its actually any good, subjectively at least.
I actually avoid modern cinema for this reason. With music at least there is a vast library of new and old artists to discover, unlike a niche arthouse/indie scene etc with movies.

With music at least you can walk into a used shop and pick up a record or CD or whatever, or go on soundcloud or bandcamp and find something new. The selection of possibilities is endlessly greater in that regard.

kind of a tangent I guess, sorry. I just hate the old "this sold a ton of units its clearly popular / liked therefore it is good" line of reasoning :dunno:
 
Successful movies are almost always garbage. Just because its popular/makes money doesn't mean its actually any good, subjectively at least.
You're making a statement about personal preference -- clearly, you don't like mainstream "blockbuster" movies, which is fine, but "almost always garbage" doesn't tell us anything about the movies themselves; it doesn't identify any objective qualities. It only highlights your personal preference.

In short, how do you define "garbage"?
I just hate the old "this sold a ton of units its clearly popular / liked therefore it is good" line of reasoning
There's a whiff in this thread of a starting "old music is good, new music is bad" theme. How do you keep it from turning into nothing more than expressions of personal opinion -- akin to "I like broccoli, therefore broccoli is great!" vs "I hate broccoli, therefore broccoli is evil!" -- without some objective measures?
 
You're making a statement about personal preference -- clearly, you don't like mainstream "blockbuster" movies, which is fine, but "almost always garbage" doesn't tell us anything about the movies themselves; it doesn't identify any objective qualities. It only highlights your personal preference.

In short, how do you define "garbage"?

For arguments sake I'll stick with the movie thing. I wouldn't go so far as to say I hate mainstream blockbuster movies as a whole. But I'm not gonna lie and say anything recent has interested me. How do I define garbage? The quality of the writing, the quality of the acting, and directing/editing. On the whole my biggest problem with modern movies is piss poor writing, over-reliance on unconvincing CGI for large portions of the film (why build it if we can do it in post), and especially the recent trend of rebooting everything. There is 0 originality. I saw the beginning of this trend in the 90s with a lot of movies, some which I do like. But frankly I was turned off to hollywood movies years ago due to what I perceive as just plain shotty writing, and in some cases blatant attempts to insert political commentary into movies where it doesn't belong. It's a constant dumbing down I see in which I can look back at much older movies, a lot of them from a time before I was even born and go "hey, that's some thought provoking stuff, there is intelligent writing here between the lines" and that kind of thing..

I would say musical artists get a little more leeway in that department, for whatever reason. Its that old saying I guess, you like a band/artist/whatever until they open their mouth. But as far as music goes, I don't process it on a higher level like a lot of people do. So I tend to be less subjective about my likes and dislikes with regards to it. I prefer mostly non-vocal, electronic or chiptune style music, or orchestrated music along the lines of video game soundtracks. I rarely sit and listen music "for the experience" to immerse myself in it, like I would a book or movie. I do have lots of favorites but mostly its background noise. Like I'm just listening to FM Radio while I type this whole post out, etc.... This is not a perfect answer, but its the best I can come up with.

Garbage, to me, is just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Riding trends into the ground and not stopping when they should have been long buried.

There's a whiff in this thread of a starting "old music is good, new music is bad" theme. How do you keep it from turning into nothing more than expressions of personal opinion -- akin to "I like broccoli, therefore broccoli is great!" vs "I hate broccoli, therefore broccoli is evil!" -- without some objective measures?

I'm not going to stray into "X decade was better" territory. I just don't put much stock in commercial sales as an objective quantifier of quality, because I have 0 faith in the public consumer consciousness to provide any sort of useful reflection. The public has proven time and time again they will buy substandard quality of works, no matter what it is. Music, cars, literature, movies, tools, etc. If its cheap, and it lets them keep up with the joneses, be part of the "in" crowd and like what everyone else likes, they'll do it. I used to do this all the time; and then I matured a bit and thought "well this is dumb behavior".

On the other hand, I realize that I don't really like The Beatles but a LOT of people do. I can't name any of their songs, and I only know partial lyrics to some of them. I think they're overrated and boomers fawn over them because that was their thing, that's their nostalgia. It's like me and video game music. I get it. If 99% of the world thinks The Beatles were the greatest band ever, well fine. That's a few billion people versus my opinion.

I don't think its possible to truly objectively quantify something like "great". Emotional experiences are a very personal thing after all. But at the same time, I just look around me and you got mostly, people just doing the same old thing. There is still that distinction of works of arts that truly are great for their societal impact. The Beatles, no matter what I think of them, clearly falls into such a category.

I'm more interested in, "hey, what's different over here". I don't really care about "metal" for instance. But I like BabyMetal. A lot of people like them; a lot of established metal bands have come out in support of them; even though what they do is more of a pop-fusion of different styles of metal with a hint of j-pop. I mean, you go on twitter and you see people like Rob Zombie telling his fans to STFU they don't know what they're talking about re: hating on BabyMetal.. They are a very different, and very energetic entertaining group when they do their live shows. It's just. Different. Maybe decades from now people will be arguing over how great a band they were ??

I don't know. I wasn't really intending to be contentious in my original post, because I don't pretend to have any real interest in debating or winning debates about music.

I do have a habit of thinking out loud though.:blah:
or more to the point, I love to give opinions but I am far too lazy to defend my positions
 
I'm still discovering new music I like and I'm 65. Do prefer my vinyl collection from 70's and 80's the most though.
 
Same as it ever was. My parents (and their age group) liked the music of their day with some occasional new artists .. who just happened to sound similar (style wise) to the artists of their day (prior to 30). My Dad never got my like of 3 Dog Night or Rod Stewart when I was a child. He did end up saying that Rod Stewart was a good singer … "caveat" .. when Rod did the American Songbook albums.

Do I continue to find "new music" /new artists? .. kind of sort of … yes, but it's usually in the tradition or style of music of my era or prior. Like Popeye "I likes what I likes" .. Never really put that much thought into it … guess I'm turning into my father like the insurance commercial.. Same as it ever was

IMHO .. what's different today .. with streaming technology .. it's possible to know specifically how old someone is and what specific type of music they consume on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly etc basis (data is readily available). What you can expect going forward is more music tailored to mass market taste.
 
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What does it mean for a past classic hit to be "the equal of" a recent hit?

What should the "brief comparison" compare?

Anyway, it doesn't matter whether you listen to it and like it or not. Much of the Western world liked it, ranking it #1 in about 25 countries and certified multi-Platinum sales in 10, and sold 13,000,000 copies worldwide. It's still in semi-regular airplay.
I used your verbatim terminology which is a comparative. What is the difficulty? You made the statement so is it not up to you to follow up on it? I can't read your mind and I'm not a dentist. You're clearly not confident enough to put this song up against something with true merit for fear of the obvious.

If it doesn't matter whether I listen to it, why did you respond to a question I posed to someone else?
 
I used your verbatim terminology which is a comparative. What is the difficulty? You made the statement so is it not up to you to follow up on it? I can't read your mind and I'm not a dentist. You're clearly not confident enough to put this song up against something with true merit for fear of the obvious.
No, nothing to do with something that you think is obvious. What do you think is obvious, and how do you objectively (i.e., without reference to your personal taste) define "true merit"?

It has everything to do with lack of clarity on what it means for a classic hit to be "the equal of" (I'm using your words here) a recent hit, and everything to do with what we use as an agreed basis for a musical comparison. E.g., do we compare albums sold? Do we compare only similar songs for some agreed value of "similar" -- e.g., only mid-tempo ballads? Do we compare only male vocalists to male vocalists? Or male/female duets to male/female duets? Or singer/songwriter efforts only to singer/songwriter efforts? Etc.

Your original challenge was "knock your socks off current offerings". I don't know what "knocks your socks off" means in any objectively comparable sense, so I took it to mean popularity and ongoing re-playability, coverage by bar bands and the like, and thus clearly in the (to use my words and my emphasis) "future classic category and easily the equal in popularity to any hit of past decades."

If it doesn't matter whether I listen to it, why did you respond to a question I posed to someone else?
Answer: Because I have something to contribute.

No individual is the arbiter of musical taste. Whether any of us like a piece of music or no indication of its quality, and there aren't any objective measures of musical quality aside from basic notions of instrumental (or vocal) technical competence, and even those don't confer "quality" in certain genres, e.g., punk. Thus, how can we say any piece of music is better than another, other than to use crude popularity measures like album sales and national rankings?
 
No, nothing to do with something that you think is obvious. What do you think is obvious, and how do you objectively (i.e., without reference to your personal taste) define "true merit"?

It has everything to do with lack of clarity on what it means for a classic hit to be "the equal of" (I'm using your words here) a recent hit, and everything to do with what we use as an agreed basis for a musical comparison. E.g., do we compare albums sold? Do we compare only similar songs for some agreed value of "similar" -- e.g., only mid-tempo ballads? Do we compare only male vocalists to male vocalists? Or male/female duets to male/female duets? Or singer/songwriter efforts only to singer/songwriter efforts? Etc.

Your original challenge was "knock your socks off current offerings". I don't know what "knocks your socks off" means in any objectively comparable sense, so I took it to mean popularity and ongoing re-playability, coverage by bar bands and the like, and thus clearly in the (to use my words and my emphasis) "future classic category and easily the equal in popularity to any hit of past decades."


Answer: Because I have something to contribute.

No individual is the arbiter of musical taste. Whether any of us like a piece of music or no indication of its quality, and there aren't any objective measures of musical quality aside from basic notions of instrumental (or vocal) technical competence, and even those don't confer "quality" in certain genres, e.g., punk. Thus, how can we say any piece of music is better than another, other than to use crude popularity measures like album sales and national rankings?
This is pure obfuscation. We're all adults here, don't be shy. Give us an example hit from the past "you" consider being it's equal in "quality". Don't worry, we can't see your face.
 
This is pure obfuscation. We're all adults here, don't be shy. Give us an example hit from the past "you" consider being it's equal in "quality". Don't worry, we can't see your face.
I was intending to clarify, not obfuscate, and why the attitude?

But let's do this the easy way and use the Billboard Year-End charts, for which the song I suggested -- Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know -- won in 2012. Head back to the AK's favourite era, roughly late 1960s to early 1970s, and we get:

1967 - Lulu To Sir With Love
1968 - Beatles Hey Jude
1969 - Archies Sugar Sugar
1970 - Simon & Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water
1971 - Three Dog Night Joy To The World
1972 - Roberta Flack The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
1973 - Tony Orlando & Dawn Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree

(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Year-End_number-one_singles_and_albums)
 
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