Good music lasts.
Why are there so many "oldies" stations these days? Because the 60’s and 70’s were the golden age of popular music. It’s not nostalgia, it’s that the music was just that great.
Good music certainly does last.
People all over the world are still enjoying music written hundreds of years ago. Virtually all of the classical genre that has survived was written before we had any means of playing it back at home for ourselves.
That’s quite impressive, isn’t it?
Even from our own lifetimes, we can be fairly certain that some pieces of music will last as long as the human race does.
The 1960s in particular remains endlessly fascinating. That miraculous decade more or less featured everything that followed since.
On the other hand, if you take away the recency effect it’s hard to see which albums from the last 20 years will make the cut a century from now.
But then you could also argue the same for other art forms such as painting, sculpture, literature, television, film etc.
It would appear that human creativity has now moved on to other equally profitable areas of endeavour.
There’s already millions of attention seeking YouTube channels for example and new computer games coming out every week.
Then there’s the worlds of business, politics and finance...
That old Warhol comment about fame has never seemed more true.