who are you to judge the effort though? sure as a listener, you can choose not to listen to certain artists because you feel they don't put forth enough effort but you aren't in their shoes and know exactly what effort is being put forth.

You can get a vague idea by listening. I mean, obviously Bela Bartok put more effort into his pieces than Britney Spears. Not to say simple music is bad, I just feel people who have the balls to perform, and craft, very deep multilayered music at commercial risk(which obviously denotes more modern times than Bartok) deserve a bit of a pat on the back, and special distinction.

I know what you mean but I don't put one artist over the other. They are both performers. Sure, one is more complex than the other but at the end of the day they still provide music for the masses.

True, but some are better than others. I mean, just as any art form, though, what makes one better is interpretable. But some are better than others. I mean there will always be Scorsese/Zappas for Uwe Bolls/Vanilla Ices. Then again, there's ones that are a matter of preference like as if you compared Tim Burton to Vinchenzo Natali(one of my favorite directors, very underrated). You may like one, you may like both, you may like neither but that's really an issue of the kind of movie you like, not the quality of director.

like I mentioned earlier it all falls back to the individual listener/viewer to decide for themselves whether they put the ones that are "better" over others. I just don't feel like there is a need to is all.

It took Def Leppard 3 years to record their Hysteria album.
It took the Sex Pistols a couple of weeks to knock out Never Mind the Bollocks.

Which of those would you say was culturally more significant?

Well, one could argue that Never Mind the Bollocks obviously was a culmination of the Sex Pistol's career up to that point word of development/achievement, and therefore, exhausted what little they had to them.

Time doesn't always mean effort. Maybe those 3 years were spent trying to dumb it down for a mainstream audience(This is Def Leppard we're talking about). Considering how big of a name Def Leppard is, the effort may not have been spent in quality, but in palpability.

Besides, just because the Sex Pistols work was culturally significant it was largely due to timing, and one could argue was riding on the wave of the efforts of punk as a collective to get noticed. One could also argue there are many more effortful works that deserve more recognition.

And do not forget that effort doesn't equal efficiency. The reason why it takes longer for A to record an album than B may as well be that they simply aren't very well equipped and skilled to nail it during a given time period.

That sounds kind of weird coming from a Zorn and Sun Ra fan. I love them both but each has certainly recorded albums in the amount of time it takes to eat breakfast. The amount of effort put in and the quality of the finished product don't always have a one to one correlation.

Both John Zorn, and Sun Ra are EXTREMELY hard working musicians. They both run their own operations, write their own material(which includes often hand written notation. Sun Ra's material was often improvised often meticulously pre-written. Watching videos on Spillane's creation often proves sometimes Zorn utilizes extremely complex procedures to write material), promoted their own material, and both had to assemble a massive catalog of A-class musicians, and improvisers to pull off their works. It may be distributed over a larger number of pieces for both, but - in the end - I don't think you can criticize either for being a slouch.

Especially Sun Ra, who took so much dedication to his music that he and his band often hand assembled records for sale before shows. Why? He was doing it entirely without the influence, or funding, of any group which might interrupt his creative process. Sun Ra poured his heart, and soul into his music 24/7. It was his life, and I doubt there were many moments in the day where he wasn't at least contemplating what he wanted to do with his music.