This debate about 'new' vs 'old' music can be approached through many angles, just a few on the top on my mind: * Extrisic quality: does it sound "better" as a

This debate about 'new' vs 'old' music can be approached through many angles, just a few on the top on my mind: * Extrisic quality: does it sound "better" as a production, autotune, analog vs digital recording and play-back means, etc. -- I personnaly have mixed feelings about this one, as autotune and programmable drums are probably the worst thing that happened to contemporary music by taking away their human components (but that's mostly an unsubtantiated opinion), and on the other hand, so much progress in the recording and play-back hardware/software that reduce the gap between live and recorded performances * Intrisic quality: is the music "better" in an absolute sense, covering mostly philosophical questions such as the nature of musical beauty, its objectiveness or subjectiveness, the existence of music as abstract compositions, etc. -- I'm firmly of the opinion that there are such things as 'beautiful musical compositions' and 'well-written music', and though I'm barely able to describe what that means in words, I can certainly say that I have heard less and less such pieces in mainstream music as years have passed, and that in non-mainstream music, most attempts to create original things end up in pieces that may be well thought but rarely in 'beautiful musical compositions'. * Discovery bias: a topic that is well covered by the OP * Acquired taste: despite everyone claiming that they look for something new and exciting and original, tastes do become ingrained with age, and I believe this is all the more true with music given the kind of physical feelings that it generates, which can sometimes be very powerful -- the 'feedback loop' that also ends up in the discovery bias above is probably reinforced by the fact that our tastes in music vary little after a certain age, and that we rarely seek something that is 'that much' different from what we like.