I'd expect a Polish guy to cite something like Chopin's Polonaise-fantaisie in defense of the "complexity hypothesis", after all everything over there is named after him, including the airport. But no, the Beach Boys... Globalization really doing a number on all of us.

Mad Chopin Butcher Shoppe

the fact that the Beatles and Beach Boys aren't complex compared to lots of other music only goes to show that it's impossible to capture quality in a few concepts like complexity.

Anyway, of course quality isn't objective. But the opinions people have about quality are universal enough for us to effectively consider it more or less objective (if not across the entire world, at least within smaller, culturally similar communities). So shutting down a discussion like this because quality is subjective may be technically correct, but I think it's not as interesting and not as true to how we experience culture. My biggest objection to 'music from a certain era was better' is that it's such a big statement that, even if it would be semi-objectively true, it's virtually impossible to make an intelligent argument for it. And the people who make the claim never do. And that's the thing: I think many music snobs react strongly against that opinion partly because they sense someone with musical opinions they look down upon (and as a minor music snob I'm guilty of this too, to some extent).

Opinions like that come from a place of ignorance, pure and simple.
Certainly ignorance about more modern music but people like that also usually aren't particularly knowledgeable about the older music as well. They just like what was easily available to them back then (so basically the mainstream of the day) due to nostalgia.
I mean, people who are truly curious about music and like to explore all kinds of different stuff wouldn't usually just stop at some point in time, they'd know about all the cool **** being done in all subsequent decades.
(There are of course also the Le Wrong Generation types but most aspects of what I'm talking about apply to them as well.)
Obviously there's nothing wrong with liking mainstream music but there's also the fact that the mainstream of the seventies was very different from the mainstream nowadays due to today's music being so incredibly diverse and there being so many niches and the main stream being more of a very narrow trickle (doesn't mean there's no great mainstream pop today, of course) because of that.
Not being able to acknowledge that, as well as not acknowledging their own biases (nostalgia, survivorship bias etc.) is silly as ****. Nothing wrong with liking a particular era more than another but coming somewhere where people really know and care about music and proclaiming those silly absolute statements makes them deserving of all the flak they get.

You can definitely note trends (and have an incredibly interesting conversation in the process; elph makes a good albeit americocentric point on funding for example), but that's not quite an objective measure of quality, it's a reflection of communal preferences. Breaking those "objective" parameters of quality implies that the result would be poor quality music when in reality it can go either way. Plus with art being more or less created by individuals, communal preferences don't have a 1:1 influence on the standards by which artists operate (though there's obviously a component of social influence on the artist; they are a part of the community after all).

As far as the music objectivity caricature goes, I tend to think those making that case are insecure about their taste in music clashing with others', so they point to critic consensus and notions of objectivity to validate the thing they enjoy in the face of "teh beatles sux lol".

^I realise that, I think you take what I said too seriously, partly due to the way in which I phrased it. All I meant is: you think Captain Beefheart is better than Imagine Dragons. And even if someone disagrees, they're not objectively wrong, but most people here would feel like they are wrong to an extent that we can approximate it as kind of an objective truth. Or maybe more like an established opinion. Just for the sake of argument, as in: 'music used to be better' -> 'there is no objective standard for good music so you can't say it used to be better' -> 'but even if there were, the claim that music used to be better is still dumb'
Yeah I completely agree with all of that. Backlash against it is much more justified than my monologue implied

idunno, Imagine Dragons uses far more equal temperament. Sounds like the objectively better band to me.

:laughing:

There is a certain objectivity in effectiveness though. I don't think there are many people who don't dislike Slayer entirely or in part who would say they were worse than some third rate thrash band like, I don't know, Gamma Bomb or something.

It's not objectivity because there's no fact being violated if someone felt otherwise.