Was music really better "back in the days"?

No. Every era produces plenty of shit music, but as time goes on the better music is what is remembered. Also the songs that end up having lasting power decades from now are often not the "hit" songs of the day. Hell even the best artists of the era did bad songs, or songs the fans loved but the critics reviled. Google the reviews for "Kokomo", it's wild.

Not inherently, but I think there are some factors that can make it feel that way, including:

• There was a higher bar to getting air time back in the day. Having decent quality recording equipment wasn't something a normal person could afford, so they had to rent studio time. There wasn't an internet to put stuff out there with, so you had to get your music heard by the right people, who then had to decide it was worth playing. Today is a lot easier to get something out there.
• Though every kind of media has been subject to crafted and pushed personas for decades (e.g., The Monkeys), in these days so much of what we're exposed to is what algorithms and corporations think we'll buy. Way more true today than ever before.
• As someone else mentioned, when people compare "today's music" to music from a prior decade, they're usually comparing everything on the air today to everything that's stood the test of time from the prior decade. Classic rock stations don't play everything, just the stuff people still like. There's a lot of junk that's been forgotten.
• This is anecdotal, but from what I've seen, people's musical tastes are based largely on what they liked in their late teens and twenties. Even if they like new music, it tends to be music that's influenced by that same earlier music. As with any generality, there are lots of exceptions. But I think a society's tastes evolve over time more than a person's tastes, so it's not unusual to get older and think everything new is crap.

I don't know about better, but it's survival bias.

Only the good music is remembered

Music from the past has been filtered through many people, and a concensus has developed on what is good music and what is not.

This means that we simply don't hear the names of bands producing the crap of the day, and are just focusing on the top 20-75% of music from an era.

I have all of the Billboard Top 100's for every year from 1950 to 2009. When i downloaded it i thought that litterally every popular song i've heard of would be on there.

Not only are there a lot missing, there's so so much crap. It turns out bland generic love ballads have sold really well throughout the decades, and genuinely memorable songs are a lot fewer than 100 a year. Not even to mention all the ones that don't chart. Sure 1957 had Elvis's Jailhouse Rock, but you know what else it had? Elvis's Loving You, Elvis's Love Me, and Jerry Lewis's "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody". Cool. Thanks for that, Billboard.

Overall there's a tremendous survivorhip bias. By definition we only remember the memorable songs, which gives the illusion that everything was memorable.

But also, having grown up in the 2000's, i really think it's one of the worst decades for music. So much so that i was into 60's rock back then, and in the 2010's i was into the new wave of thrash metal, literally one of the most regressive genres there are. I wasn't alive for the 80's, i didn't like the video games or the movies and didn't participate in virtually any of the 80's nostalgia that was trendy at the time, but i did prefer the music to anything my current decade had to offer.

The best music sounded better, I’m not a fan of the harsh, over compressed and brick wall limited digital stuff these days. It’s tiring to listen to.

Answering the title: one thing can't be denied, and it's that production quality has been in a steady decrease from the 80s onwards. If you can look past that, there are some current really good music groups.

Now onto the body of the message: I am a big prog rock fan, but I can't stand Pink Floyd. My dad can't either, we never ever spoke about that but found ourselves agreeing on it when I turned 20. It seems like there is a large gap in quality to the likes of Alan Parsons, ELO, Genesis, Yes and whatnot.

assuming reasonable definitions of "new" and "old," i'd wager there's been more good old music than good new music for most of human history. it all comes down to numbers- there's simply more old music than new music! there are factors that i do genuinely think make pop music not as good today as it could be (see: streaming companies), but that's a rounding error compared to the sheer scale of music history, plus all the bedroom artists making up for anything lacking in today's pop music.

that said, if you spend any time focused on a specific period or specific periods, it will not take long to find stinkers, if only because everyone has different taste and you're bound to find something you just don't jive with eventually. i've been in spaces where people who love classic rock for example review classic rock albums and their analyses are sometimes so brutal you wonder if there's anything they DO like

I love 60s and 70s music, heard a lot growing up from my boomer parents. So many classic, timeless hits. Then my mum found some "Fab No. 2s of the 60s" CD, a compilation of songs that didn't quite make it to number 1...

It was truly awful, all clichéd cheesiness and triteness, so many lame songs that sounded like other, better songs. Just sucko-barfo all round. I think there are arguments for why music from the early stages of a genre (like 60s pop and soul) are particaurly good... But there's also a hell of a lot of selection bias going on.

I've heard a saying, and I really like it.

The best music is the music that was popular when you were a teenager.

Basically whatever was popular in your formative years will be your favorite. Because that is the time where you start experiencing all that music can be and expanding your horizons. And every generation says the music if their youth was the best. And everything after that is garbage.

None of it is true.

I would say no.

Honestly, since directly after the dubstep craze era, there has been suuuuuuch good music, because I feel like that's when electronics became much more mainstream for ALL musicians to play with. Prior and during that time, I think a lot of electronic music was about experimenting with sounds. But during that era I think was when everyday musicians got comfortable with the soundscapes, and started incorporating all their other music knowledge and to make more varied, complex, and interesting stuff.

The problem is just finding the good music, since it can be so quick for anyone to produce and distribute it. There's just way too much.

Drums by the fire on shrooms was the best music epoch, after that all down hill. Stoneage gang.

There's a new classics station in my city, playing music from the 90s, 00s and 10s. I've been listening to it almost exclusively. Based on that I'm going to say it wasn't, but we've forgotten about the stuff we didn't like.

The Shaggs come to mind

It was at least real on real instruments and the singing not auto tuned etc

Just because there are more crap music these days, doesn't mean music is worse these days.

Well the 50s was

Not really. The thing about oldies stations is that they play songs that have become popular not just then, but now as well. People forget a lot about the mediocre and bad, like Disco Duck: https://youtu.be/i_WEMCUhF0E

Yes, when comparing mainstream music.

I liked music before my time to begin with but more modern stuff as well. Still even older songs than the normal before my main likes can be really good. like band of gold.