Why did the last 4T have so much better music than this 4T?

[David Horn]

(03-07-2017, 09:23 PM)AarG Wrote: ... From a technology perspective, another contributor was the change in the early '30's from the 78rpm, fragile, shellac 12" single to the 33 1/3rpm (more durable) vinyl, long-playing 12" record album, and its smaller, cheaper sibling, the 45rpm vinyl single. The cost of records fell as a result. This, along with the explosion of radio after the Radio Act of 1927 (establishing the forerunner of the FCC, and setting the standards for what kinds of programming could be aired) and the Communications Act of 1934 gave the music industry something it had never had before: commercial distribution. No longer were musicians and groups constrained to the number of bodies they could draw to a theater or ballroom - there's a scene in the "The Glenn Miller Story" where Glenn (James Stewart) explains to his father in law that he makes three cents on every record sold. Pops isn't too impressed by this, at least until he does the math on how many thousands of records Glenn is talking about.

It would be interesting to see what music from our current market survives or gets revived in 40-50 years time, and which Grammy and AMA winners make that generation's ears bleed.

I think today is an embarrassment of riches.  If anything, there are too many access channels available, and the need to fill airtime, or provide online content, means that a lot of less worthy material is out there and being consumed.  Add to that, the market is now so segmented that the idea of broad appeal is much less.  The turnover in who is hot is exceedingly high as well.  I suspect that this era will be remembered for quantity more than quality, and much of the really good material will simply be lost. 

The last big era of music dominance was the 60s through the 80s.  There was a lot of schlock then too, but there was a need to fill time with better music, so the better music survived long enough to gain a audience that spanned, in some cases, generations.   I don't know if that's possible anymore.