They already did that one.

Kind of Blue was my instant thought, but even Miles Davis has an earlier on with Birth of the Cool (1957)

But Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours (1955) is the earliest I can think of.

High Tone- Driving Fast

Do kids go to the mall anymore?

I love Dub, so this is a bit tricky, since that's the origins of the genre.

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But I'll go with Massive Attack v Mad Professor- Weather Storm

I never even finished The Peripheral. But I don’t read as much as I used to either. So my copy of Agency sits unread. The thing is, I’ve read all the others- the Sprawl, the Bridge, the Blue Ant trilogy. But this one could not hold my attention. Few books do these days, however.

Soloists usually do, and often the rest of the orchestra also has, but has the music there anyway.

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And I've seen more than a few performances where the orchestra has played the whole thing together maybe twice prior to the performance you're watching.

Keeping it to just people who’ve released in the last year:

Adi Oasis

Jalen Ngonda

Kelela

The Suffers

They are people. They are going to do things outside of the music. It used to be that for the most part, these activities weren’t made known to the public.

Of course with Phil Anselmo, there was a video of him giving a Nazi salute and yelling “White Power” on stage, so it’s a bit harder to separate performance and performer.

playlists in the car. albums at home.

Is that relevant? Usually it’s just a clip- but the option to find the song and hear the whole thing is always there, if you care enough.

One impact social media has had that is fairly new is the song made for social media. What I mean is songs that have maybe as much as 40 seconds of actual song. Regardless of how long the full thing is, you’ll have heard everything the song has to give you in less than a minute. There’s a lot more of that these days. But that’s not really what you asked in the first place.

I’m not sure social media is any different in this respect than radio/MTV were in the past. Or TV shows and movies, for that matter. Either because of association with a thing they like, or because they genuinely like the song and were just exposed via a particular medium doesn’t really matter.

Music is resilient, and great music is all over the place.

It's certainly how it works for some people, yes. Though I'd be inclined to extend that to around 25 on the top end.

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But that's not all people. I've managed to find new artists to listen to well into my 40's, although I will admit that a lot of the newer artists tend to be heavily influenced by older styles (mainly 70's) I haven't heard a Top 20 song I liked since the late 90's.

It took me a while to get to the point of recognising why certain songs and artists are popular, even if I don't personally like them.

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Still no shortage of music where I cannot even begin to grasp why anyone would want to hear it even all the way through the one time, let alone propel it to the top of the charts.

Whether or not a song is a hit isn't subjective, if that's what you're asking. It's quite measurable, and has a definition. If it reached the top of the charts, it's a hit. That's what hits are. Now whether or not you like a song, or feel it should be a hit? This is quite subjective.

Maybe they don’t feel they need the money?

Living in a Box, from the album Living in a Box by the band Living in a Box.

Consistency is always delivering roughly the same quality level.

So you’d be looking for what the average ratings are, and how much deviation from that average they have. Miles Davis had several legendary albums, but also a lot of forgettable ones. He’d be fairly inconsistent, I feel. Though he also brings a problem- the longer the career the more inconsistent an artist is likely to be. So you’d need to find a way to account for that.

Here’s part of the problem: where it’s best to buy is likely to be very regional. Nationwide chains of record stores aren’t really much of a thing anymore. Hell, my advice when it comes to my city will likely even need to include genres, because it’s mainly independent stores, and they specialize.