4 ms·

I'm not sure how big a factor it is, but I have for a long time wondered if music produced in the 70s (perhaps late 60s) and later would have more staying power

I'm not sure how big a factor it is, but I have for a long time wondered if music produced in the 70s (perhaps late 60s) and later would have more staying power than earlier music. That was about the time that really high quality masters could be made which sound good even today. Used to be that old music sounded as old as it was, but now you can listen to music from the 70s with the same quality as if it were recorded today.

vzidex 5y ago
Anecdotally, recently my dad got me a Tidal subscription (which has masters at supposedly higher quality than CDs) and an entry-level DAC. The two put together have blown me away and I've been having a blast the last couple of weeks re-listening to all my favourite records from as far back as the 70s. I think the 70s are also around the same time that a lot of familiar genres started to emerge, while music from before then is often dismissed as "oldies" or saved for special occasions - e.g. old crunchy recordings of Christmas songs.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > a Tidal subscription (which has masters at supposedly higher quality than CDs) Alas, this is BS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkqWZ9jzA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkqWZ9jzA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-UGPXpqJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-UGPXpqJ4
  - vzidex 5y ago
    It might very well be the DAC doing the work then, or maybe the placebo effect is just making me pay more attention to music I first heard years ago and I'm picking up more :) Thanks for the information though, I'll do some A/B testing to see if it makes any difference to me.
    - redisman 5y ago
      Just the Hifi level is probably enough for almost any system. I also noticed a huge difference coming from YouTube and Spotify on the Hifi setting in Tidal. I didn’t bother with Master as my ears aren’t that magical
    - dehrmann 5y ago
      Placebo effect disproves Nyquist–Shannon Theorem.
- redisman 5y ago
  There are some genres - Jazz, Classical as the most prominent that have aged better than most 60s-80s music
- djxfade 5y ago
  Nah that's just Tidals marketing talking. "Anyone" can submit music to Tidal through services like DistroKid etc. However, to get the Tidal "MASTER" badge on your song, you basically just have to pay them extra. I don't need to submit another file to them, so it's the same master. It might be that they do some post-processing on it, but it's not the revolutionary thing they make it out to be.
Barrin92 5y ago
it's not only technical. the 60s-80s were also hugely innovative and maybe people are just rediscovering just how good older music is now that's trivial to stream it. Personally I think the 2000s onward, with exceptions of course have just not been great for music.
nerdponx 5y ago
This is how I feel about it too. I like old music because old music really is better. Most of the (non-"alt") music that I listen to was written and recorded before I was born. It's not that old music is "killing" new music. It's that new music has been slowly killing itself since the 2000s. Even the Backstreet Boys and Three 6 Mafia seem fresh and interesting compared to the stuff I've been hearing on the radio over the last decade. Even probably the best (IMO) pop artist of the current era, Stromae, writes songs that are mostly the same hooks and background elements repeated over and over for 4 minutes, with no change in dynamics or structure. I'm honestly pretty sick of all the 60s-80s stuff I've been listening to, but what else is there? Don't get me wrong: there was plenty of stupid garbage in those decades too. But the great stuff truly is great beyond most of what we get today, at least when it comes to stuff that's considered "mainstream". But if the record industry wants to destroy itself, who am I to stop them? Keep listening to (and paying for!!) alt stuff, that's where the personality and creativity is.
- bsder 5y ago
  > I'm honestly pretty sick of all the 60s-80s stuff I've been listening to, but what else is there? Listen to a whole album. This is THE fundamental problem with streaming. Any band that produced one good song probably produced quite a few other good ones. Bands that got pigeonholed into a "sound" probably produced other songs on their albums that weren't in that sound. Even for mega-popular bands like "Journey", for example, 3/4 of the songs on their albums never get played anywhere. You'll probably find something you really like in that set. Sadly, this seems to break down starting in the late 1990s.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Bands that got pigeonholed into a "sound" probably produced other songs on their albums that weren't in that sound. The best place too look for these (since the pigeonholing is often at the very start of their commercial recording, with the label pushing them into a particular niche) is stuff later than their most popular works (which are often what fuels their ability to ditch the narrow commercial optimization strategy that the label would impose for riskier, more diverse approaches.)
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Alternative explanation: 60s-80s is when the boomers were making music. Population boom led to production boom which led to a greater number of iconic works. Larger consumer population led to continued playing of said iconic works leading to more people growing up listening to them and perpetuating the cycle. Just a thought.
- yobbo 5y ago
  Or it could be that the boomer generations are moving in to streaming and listening to all the songs of their youth. The proportion of people younger than 30 is shrinking everywhere there is 4G and more.
yobbo 5y ago
> high quality masters could be made which sound good even today Those mixes and masters were optimized in a world where everyone listened to vinyl, radio, home hifi, and crappy car stereos. This biases the whole production in certain ways, which together with fashions of those time colour the sound and dates it. Remasters (I think) remove some these biases. The new targets are headphones and streaming. New recordings can and should sound very differently unless they are pastiches. Some people like the old sound because it's already etched in their brains, and they want to hear it again. They've associated it with "genuine" and "honest" and whatever.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  I think there is a similar thing in modern music - lots of people listen on tiny little phone or laptop speakers, and the sound often has a lot more 'information' in the treble range. The sound is designed such that it's listenable with the bass portions basically inaudible.
dogma1138 5y ago
There is also huge selection bias, when people are listening to 60’s, 70’s 80’s w/e music they are listening to 1% or even less of the music that was recorded.
- Aaargh20318 5y ago
  Exactly. And that also explains the difference in quantity: the author is comparing the best 1% of songs from a catalog spanning several decades, to the best 1% of songs from the last year or so. No, music back then wasn’t better in general, we’re just not listening to the shit songs from that time. In 20 years time we’ll still be listening to all the good music from today, have forgotten about all the crap, and then decide that music from the 20’s really was better that whatever we’re producing in the 40’s.
  - ohthehugemanate 5y ago
    this is so important to bear in mind. How many artists, songs do we remember and frequently play from a given decade? Be generous and say it's 500, and that's still a drop from the bucket of music that was released and popular in its time. Compare to today, when it's easier than ever to record and release new music, and it's a drop in the ocean.
nfw2 5y ago
Agreed. The latest remaster of Let It Be ALMOST sounds like it could have been recorded today. Conversely, I think a lot Adele's ALMOST sounds like it could be from the 70's
- asdff 5y ago
  Speaking of the Beatles, compare their first albums production even remastered and it definitely feels like an old record compared to Let it Be.
  - mgkimsal 5y ago
    Taking an even wider swerve... Listen to "One After 909" from Anthology (or the 1963 'bootleg' release). Then listen to the version from Let It Be. "Production" such as it is is, I'd think, 'minimal' in most senses - there's some mics in front of singers and amps. One was outside, one inside. But the sound is different. The performance is definitely different in 1969 - so much looser, relaxed, and more accomplished. In some ways it's hard to think it's the exact same band a mere 6 years apart (yes, excepting Billy Preston added keys in 1969). I'd always wished they'd have re-visited a few more of those early ones (originals or covers), just to get that sense of development, progress and transformation in such a short time. It's interesting that we ended up getting at least one song captured so 'far apart' from itself.
- conradfr 5y ago
  Back then they were looking for any new technology that would help make clean recordings. Nowadays audio professionals are looking for any new technology that will help imprint the analog artifacts of these years on the clean digital recordings.

vzidex 5y ago

Anecdotally, recently my dad got me a Tidal subscription (which has masters at supposedly higher quality than CDs) and an entry-level DAC. The two put together have blown me away and I've been having a blast the last couple of weeks re-listening to all my favourite records from as far back as the 70s. I think the 70s are also around the same time that a lot of familiar genres started to emerge, while music from before then is often dismissed as "oldies" or saved for special occasions - e.g. old crunchy recordings of Christmas songs.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> a Tidal subscription (which has masters at supposedly higher quality than CDs) Alas, this is BS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkqWZ9jzA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkqWZ9jzA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-UGPXpqJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-UGPXpqJ4
- vzidex 5y ago
  It might very well be the DAC doing the work then, or maybe the placebo effect is just making me pay more attention to music I first heard years ago and I'm picking up more :) Thanks for the information though, I'll do some A/B testing to see if it makes any difference to me.
  - redisman 5y ago
    Just the Hifi level is probably enough for almost any system. I also noticed a huge difference coming from YouTube and Spotify on the Hifi setting in Tidal. I didn’t bother with Master as my ears aren’t that magical
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    Placebo effect disproves Nyquist–Shannon Theorem.
redisman 5y ago
There are some genres - Jazz, Classical as the most prominent that have aged better than most 60s-80s music
djxfade 5y ago
Nah that's just Tidals marketing talking. "Anyone" can submit music to Tidal through services like DistroKid etc. However, to get the Tidal "MASTER" badge on your song, you basically just have to pay them extra. I don't need to submit another file to them, so it's the same master. It might be that they do some post-processing on it, but it's not the revolutionary thing they make it out to be.

Barrin92 5y ago

it's not only technical. the 60s-80s were also hugely innovative and maybe people are just rediscovering just how good older music is now that's trivial to stream it. Personally I think the 2000s onward, with exceptions of course have just not been great for music.

nerdponx 5y ago

This is how I feel about it too. I like old music because old music really is better. Most of the (non-"alt") music that I listen to was written and recorded before I was born. It's not that old music is "killing" new music. It's that new music has been slowly killing itself since the 2000s. Even the Backstreet Boys and Three 6 Mafia seem fresh and interesting compared to the stuff I've been hearing on the radio over the last decade. Even probably the best (IMO) pop artist of the current era, Stromae, writes songs that are mostly the same hooks and background elements repeated over and over for 4 minutes, with no change in dynamics or structure. I'm honestly pretty sick of all the 60s-80s stuff I've been listening to, but what else is there? Don't get me wrong: there was plenty of stupid garbage in those decades too. But the great stuff truly is great beyond most of what we get today, at least when it comes to stuff that's considered "mainstream". But if the record industry wants to destroy itself, who am I to stop them? Keep listening to (and paying for!!) alt stuff, that's where the personality and creativity is.

bsder 5y ago
> I'm honestly pretty sick of all the 60s-80s stuff I've been listening to, but what else is there? Listen to a whole album. This is THE fundamental problem with streaming. Any band that produced one good song probably produced quite a few other good ones. Bands that got pigeonholed into a "sound" probably produced other songs on their albums that weren't in that sound. Even for mega-popular bands like "Journey", for example, 3/4 of the songs on their albums never get played anywhere. You'll probably find something you really like in that set. Sadly, this seems to break down starting in the late 1990s.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Bands that got pigeonholed into a "sound" probably produced other songs on their albums that weren't in that sound. The best place too look for these (since the pigeonholing is often at the very start of their commercial recording, with the label pushing them into a particular niche) is stuff later than their most popular works (which are often what fuels their ability to ditch the narrow commercial optimization strategy that the label would impose for riskier, more diverse approaches.)

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Alternative explanation: 60s-80s is when the boomers were making music. Population boom led to production boom which led to a greater number of iconic works. Larger consumer population led to continued playing of said iconic works leading to more people growing up listening to them and perpetuating the cycle. Just a thought.

yobbo 5y ago
Or it could be that the boomer generations are moving in to streaming and listening to all the songs of their youth. The proportion of people younger than 30 is shrinking everywhere there is 4G and more.

yobbo 5y ago

> high quality masters could be made which sound good even today Those mixes and masters were optimized in a world where everyone listened to vinyl, radio, home hifi, and crappy car stereos. This biases the whole production in certain ways, which together with fashions of those time colour the sound and dates it. Remasters (I think) remove some these biases. The new targets are headphones and streaming. New recordings can and should sound very differently unless they are pastiches. Some people like the old sound because it's already etched in their brains, and they want to hear it again. They've associated it with "genuine" and "honest" and whatever.

HPsquared 5y ago
I think there is a similar thing in modern music - lots of people listen on tiny little phone or laptop speakers, and the sound often has a lot more 'information' in the treble range. The sound is designed such that it's listenable with the bass portions basically inaudible.

dogma1138 5y ago

There is also huge selection bias, when people are listening to 60’s, 70’s 80’s w/e music they are listening to 1% or even less of the music that was recorded.

Aaargh20318 5y ago
Exactly. And that also explains the difference in quantity: the author is comparing the best 1% of songs from a catalog spanning several decades, to the best 1% of songs from the last year or so. No, music back then wasn’t better in general, we’re just not listening to the shit songs from that time. In 20 years time we’ll still be listening to all the good music from today, have forgotten about all the crap, and then decide that music from the 20’s really was better that whatever we’re producing in the 40’s.
- ohthehugemanate 5y ago
  this is so important to bear in mind. How many artists, songs do we remember and frequently play from a given decade? Be generous and say it's 500, and that's still a drop from the bucket of music that was released and popular in its time. Compare to today, when it's easier than ever to record and release new music, and it's a drop in the ocean.

nfw2 5y ago

Agreed. The latest remaster of Let It Be ALMOST sounds like it could have been recorded today. Conversely, I think a lot Adele's ALMOST sounds like it could be from the 70's

asdff 5y ago
Speaking of the Beatles, compare their first albums production even remastered and it definitely feels like an old record compared to Let it Be.
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  Taking an even wider swerve... Listen to "One After 909" from Anthology (or the 1963 'bootleg' release). Then listen to the version from Let It Be. "Production" such as it is is, I'd think, 'minimal' in most senses - there's some mics in front of singers and amps. One was outside, one inside. But the sound is different. The performance is definitely different in 1969 - so much looser, relaxed, and more accomplished. In some ways it's hard to think it's the exact same band a mere 6 years apart (yes, excepting Billy Preston added keys in 1969). I'd always wished they'd have re-visited a few more of those early ones (originals or covers), just to get that sense of development, progress and transformation in such a short time. It's interesting that we ended up getting at least one song captured so 'far apart' from itself.
conradfr 5y ago
Back then they were looking for any new technology that would help make clean recordings. Nowadays audio professionals are looking for any new technology that will help imprint the analog artifacts of these years on the clean digital recordings.