Do you all agree when Prince said the 60s, 70s and 80s were the golden ages of music?

My sense is music in those eras was more a shared experience, we all knew the popular songs, they were a soundtrack to our lives. We had limited sources for listening to music, and those sources tended to play the same songs and artists.


As music and the music business has evolved we have ever increasing genres and sources to hear those multiplying genres. Certainly, popular forms of music still exist, but even those have diverged from each other. And then we have a huge amount of more obscure music to choose from, and the means to hear this music via streaming. I could argue today is the golden age of music.
Still, I understand the sense of loss of the shared soundtrack of our lives. Music was reflective of the greater cohesiveness of the general society, now we can easily have entirely unique playlists/soundtracks to our lives.

Music reflects the zeitgeist of the time made in. 1940's-war years and aftermath,pre and mid war,  music reflected determination and togetherness of war effort, post-celebration and optimism. 1950's-happy times, optimism continues, a more innocent sense of everlasting love, monocultural, homogeneous perception of our world, very insular and feeling of being safe and protected. 1960's- early-basically extension of 50's, mid to late-the world suddenly not so safe, government and cultural institutions not to be trusted, angst, revolution, alongside illusory visions of universal love, communal living, mind altering drugs-finding new doors of perception-ultimate expressions of optimism. Wow, really wide open decade! 1970's-60's dreams gradually die, cynicism, drugs no longer used for mind expansion, rather to numb the mind, freaks or druggies vs. hippie intentions,  society continues in divisive mode-traditional American values vs. new values of 60's, 70's youth. 1980's-Increasing fragmentation, beginning of search for more individualistic ways to live, being more authentic to oneself.

Above, annotated summary of times, much left out, but gist of decades here. Also, I'd suggest popular music more reflective of time produced in than other music forms. Music always reflective of group identity, over time groups subdivide, results in increasing varied genres and sub-genres of music. Today, we can easily create playlists that reflect a singular soundtrack for however we feel at the time. For me, this is the golden age of music, I have all the music made up until now to listen to. I can bring up memories of the past and find so much new and unfamiliar music. I don't particularly care to want to relive my past, the memory of past music to events of my life is good enough.
As to what is a golden age of music for anyone is more applicable to one's age than some objective judgement of what constitutes good music. For me, most of the best music is timeless, I seem to only get into the music rather than feel any specific memory. Memories interfere with pure music enjoyment, mind distracted and fixed on memory rather than music.

@emailists  +1, Agree with everything with exception of my mind can crave both the familiar and repetitive, and the complex and new within a singular listening session. In fact I suspect every listening session meanders in this way.
Nostalgia likely correlates greatly with favored music, new experiences allied to adolescence creates powerful emotional responses that stick with us for life. I retained strong attachment to music of my adolescence for many years, still, always open minded to new forms of music my entire life. Finally, there came a point when I intellectually analyzed this attachment to music of my youth, ever since then I've been less nostalgic about that music. Funny, but now I hear music from that time with new ears/mind, listening to the music rather than the memory.