Why does most new music suck?

Hearing crap 'back in the day' and hearing it now brings you to the same conclusions. There's no mystery. We have plenty of examples from way back when too.

Agree! There was tons of crap back then as well. Always has been loads of crap, always will be. But also will there continue to be plenty of great stuff IF you know where to find it. (Clue: it likely will not be on your car's FM radio dial or played at your local Kohl's store.) IMO, it is not that today's music sucks (any more than yesterday's or tomorrow's), but more an issue of accessibility - are you looking in the right places for it?

And back then, what made it worse than today for consumers (yes, it was far worse back then), was not so much the amount of crap, but that there was no youtube, samples, internet, podcasts, self-produced releases, etc. where you could research and/or listen to weed it out from the good stuff BEFORE you plunked your $3.99 down for an album. Nor were there self-produced releases so much great music went unrecorded, or at least poorly distributed, due to record company twits who were unable to categorize the music or recognize great talent. FM radio was better back then, depending on your city, but most of the time you had to just take a chance on a musician's reputation or album cover art to try to predict whether you were buying crap or gem.

+++Rockadanny

No doubt there has never been a better time to be a music lover than today and a big part of it is the variety of and accessibility to new music.

No. Don't know where you were during the vinyl days but the record store, A.K.A., Sam The Record Man let you either play albums already open, or open and play on a pair of probably 6 or 8 available ear phone sets. Mind you, you had to be an established customer to open one up. And there was always scuttlebutt about the non-worthwhile crap. So still no comparison to today, I'm truly sorry to say.

Well, I do miss being able to go into a record store like that and look at records, but once CDs did records in, there was really not much to look at much anymore. Now the Internet has put those days to rest for good, for the most part, FBOFW. THough it does seem that most metro areas still have a couple of specialty record/music shops around, so not totally extinct quite yet. There are a few near me, but gotta admit I only get there once in a blue moon these days and buy most of my new music via internet.

There's a music store I frequent up here with both loads of vinyl and cds. They'll play a cd or album for you but they won't open a new re-issue vinyl which stands to reason. I really don't see how choice has been compromised at all in any way, shape, or form as it relates to any era.