Best Year For Music- Round 1-Part 1: 1959-1969 - Music

RoundTheBend

I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

rkm wrote:

Also, the years from 2013 to the present decline pretty badly. Is music that bad, or is it simply more diverse? There's 2000+ albums in each of those years. The love is spread around more? The 50's years only have a couple of hundred albums listed in each year.

My guess is more diverse and maybe more mature? I feel like the great music post 2009 or so is missing the pop aesthetic (imo), which allows more people to like it. So you have a bunch of solid artists with less popular music, so you have less people agreeing with what's best... that probably doesn't make any sense but it does to me. Build a bridge.

But I really don't know - just conjecture.

rkm

Album artists rather than singles artists, combined with the fact that people could care less about albums.

I was talking to a new friend a while ago. He's in his late 30's. He said to me, completely seriously, "do people even make albums anymore"?

PurpleHazel

rkm wrote:

Also, the years from 2013 to the present decline pretty badly. Is music that bad, or is it simply more diverse? There's 2000+ albums in each of those years. The love is spread around more?

There are more albums, but the overall level of quality's lower than in rock's peak decades (60's and 70's). Same issue with film. More films being made than ever -- at least as of the 2000s -- but film's peak artistic period ended in the 80s IMHO.

Quote:

The 50's years only have a couple of hundred albums listed in each year.

There were less albums released in the 50s than in the 70s forward, but another major reason there's less is that this site's rock-oriented, so far less of the members adding albums know 50s pop and R&B as well. Also many lesser-known 50s jazz albums were never rereleased on CD. Some big bands and obscure white jazz artists of the 50s are forgotten today.

I bet that if someone pored through all the record company catalogues from the 50s, they could reach 1000 albums per year.

bobbyb5

Gender: Male

Location: New York

sethmadsen wrote:

My guess is more diverse and maybe more mature? I feel like the great music post 2009 or so is missing the pop aesthetic (imo), which allows more people to like it. So you have a bunch of solid artists with less popular music, so you have less people agreeing with what's best... that probably doesn't make any sense but it does to me. Build a bridge.

But I really don't know - just conjecture.

More diverse? I think in the past the general public was exposed to a much more diverse range of music than now. This was because until the 2000s, the main way that the wider public was exposed to music was via the radio. And the radio of the past was much more diverse. The fact that music is more readily accessible today has the reverse effect of exposing people to less variety of music. It's the opposite of what you would expect. There's still a diversity of music today, but masses of people aren't exposed to it like in the past. The only music that gets mass exposure and mass saturation is hip hop, modern country, and today's dance pop, none of which is as good or as varied today as it was back then. From the 60s through the 80s, you never knew what you were going to hear if you listened to the radio. But today you know exactly what you're going to hear.

rkm

Just wondering, are the 2017 albums overall ranks accurate as of now, or does anything happen going into a new year to calculate/adjust them? (I'm putting a new graph together).

PurpleHazel

bobbyb5 wrote:

More diverse? I think in the past the general public was exposed to a much more diverse range of music than now. This was because until the 2000s, the main way that the wider public was exposed to music was via the radio. And the radio of the past was much more diverse. The fact that music is more readily accessible today has the reverse effect of exposing people to less variety of music. It's the opposite of what you would expect. There's still a diversity of music today, but masses of people aren't exposed to it like in the past.

You can make a broad analogy with politics. When there were far less news outlets, everyone consumed the same news, news that attempted to be balanced. Now with the internet, 1000 cable channels and streaming, too many people just consume media that reinforces what they already believe -- it's become an echo chamber.

bobbyb5

Gender: Male

Location: New York

PurpleHazel wrote:

bobbyb5 wrote:

More diverse? I think in the past the general public was exposed to a much more diverse range of music than now. This was because until the 2000s, the main way that the wider public was exposed to music was via the radio. And the radio of the past was much more diverse. The fact that music is more readily accessible today has the reverse effect of exposing people to less variety of music. It's the opposite of what you would expect. There's still a diversity of music today, but masses of people aren't exposed to it like in the past.

You can make a broad analogy with politics. When there were far less news outlets, everyone consumed the same news, news that attempted to be balanced. Now with the internet, 1000 cable channels and streaming, too many people just consume media that reinforces what they already believe -- it's become an echo chamber.

I know, right? It seems like the more choices people have, the more they stick to what they already like. We have all the music in the world available at our fingertips at any time, yet most people gravitate to the same music you can hear anywhere. Only a very small percentage of people actually seek out music that's unfamiliar to them.

Tap

to resume download

Gender: Female

Age: 40

rkm wrote:

Just wondering, are the 2017 albums overall ranks accurate as of now, or does anything happen going into a new year to calculate/adjust them? (I'm putting a new graph together).

you're going to want to wait a bit. 2017 albums don't get credit on decade and overall charts until those charts are updated in 2018, I believe. I'd say give it at least 3 months tho there will still be more gains for it by the end of 2018, I'd bet.

also I listened to radio in the 90s and kids these days are getting exposed to way more diverse things now. and because of that diversity, it is more difficult to achieve consensus. the past is on equal footing with the present and mort garson - plantasia is blowing up in popularity, even tho it's some fun synth thing from 76. shit is crazy

RoundTheBend

I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Tap wrote:

you're going to want to wait a bit. 2017 albums don't get credit on decade and overall charts until those charts are updated in 2018, I believe. I'd say give it at least 3 months tho there will still be more gains for it by the end of 2018, I'd bet.

also I listened to radio in the 90s and kids these days are getting exposed to way more diverse things now. and because of that diversity, it is more difficult to achieve consensus. the past is on equal footing with the present and mort garson - plantasia is blowing up in popularity, even tho it's some fun synth thing from 76. shit is crazy

Tap, you sum things up beautifully.

Also, I 100% agree.

I have a feeling a great reason why the past few years isn't ranking well has more to do with time and diversity.

Time because that's how music works with a lot of people. They hear it the first time or so and like it enough to not change it. Then they hear it 205973497543 more times, and it just becomes a staple to their music vocabulary and we really can only say what's in the vocabulary - long story short, ain't nobody going to put an obscure album on their chart unless they are actively searching for it or it falls in their laps- so furthermore, having a 2014 album beat statistics on something by Radiohead or The Beatles is just not going to happen very soon for all the reasons explained before. It takes time and notoriety - heck the music business sometimes even has a "new release" for 2 or 3 years after it was actually released. Or you'll hear on the radio - and their new hit single blah blah... it was released 2 years ago, but sure, it can be their hit new single (sometimes singles are released after the album and sometimes they just say that cause "new" music means something more to some people).

Diversity... eh, I don't need to say anything that hasn't been said (I didn't really need to for time either... ahahaha).