will we still be hearing classic 60's and 70's rock on the radio in a hundred years ?

[Icey101]

ok so there are stations still playing this stuff full time.... and others that touch on it regular like, so assuming there will still be radio in a hundred years, when is enough enough ???? If there is nothing replacing this music i assume this is going to happen: "Hi all you 3rd generation rockers, heres another golden hit from the last century one hundred and twenty five years ago....Love Me Do by the Beatles?"

is this how its going to work?

[kesslari]

I'd be amazed if it's still being played.
Then again, it's being played 50 years later. And some of the 50's stuff is still getting regular play 60 years after the fact. I'm kinda amazed by that.
So who knows?

[jmattbassplaya]

Truly great songs are really timeless and will always have a spot in regular music rotations.

[elgecko]

Interesting discussion. Here's a list of top songs from 1911.

Songs from the Year 1911

I've played Alexander's Ragtime Band but don't really recognize anything else. Maybe only the REALLY good stuff stands the test of time. It's also interesting to note how a couple songs show up multiple times under different artists. That doesn't really happen anymore.

[jerry]

Yes!

[johndough247]

Well considering we still have classical music, which has been around for hundreds of years only on paper, I see no reason why recorded music from the last 50 years won't be around too (musical complexity aside, they both (classical and rock) provide strong emotional responses)...although, a lot of it could be due to the fact that the baby boomer generation is still around, but several generations since have also been heavily influenced by classic rock/soul/r&b so it's a tough call...

I'd say another 50 years sure but 100 years and beyond...hmmm

[LegoBass]

I know that is what I will be listening to in the future! I am 18 and only really listen to stuff from the 40's throught the early 90's. I won't let that music die, nether will the other half of my generation that listens to it. I feel it has a little while longer to go. I will be listening to The Beatles on my deathbed!

[jerry]

I think almost anything done honestly and with feel will always connect, it's been over 75 years for Robert Johnson, his small catalog still does alright!

[rosanne]

Originally Posted by elgecko

Interesting discussion. Here's a list of top songs from 1911.

Songs from the Year 1911

I've played Alexander's Ragtime Band but don't really recognize anything else. Maybe only the REALLY good stuff stands the test of time. It's also interesting to note how a couple songs show up multiple times under different artists. That doesn't really happen anymore.

Tastes in music change a lot over time. When I was a kid (I'll be 70 next month) I heard numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10 and 21 a lot. Never hear them now, and not losing much by not hearing them. I wasn't a fan of any of those songs b/c I was of a younger generation and had a different musical taste. Who knows what direction music will take in the future. And who knows if we will have radio.

[seanm]

I think music from the 60s and 70s will die out with the boomers. I hope so anyway. I like the music, but I have heard it too often on the radio.

[rosanne]

Originally Posted by jerry

I think almost anything done honestly and with feel will always connect, it's been over 75 years for Robert Johnson, his small catalog still does alright!

You are right but - #1 was done with a lot of feel (don't know about the honesty part but I think it had quite a bit even tho it's a styalized delivery) and it's never heard. But certainly honesty and feel count for A LOT.

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Absolutely. With the conditions You describe, obviously.

Classical music, as said earlier, has been around for hundreds of years.

The music from far east, a great deal longer.

Distinctive drum rythms from Africa, thousands of years.

So YES, classic rock will be still be played mere 100 years from now.

Regards
Sam

[AnchorHoy]

Interesting, and very thought provoking question

I think it will have a lot to do with whether the technology used to preserve it is still viable 100 years (or more) from now. To offer up an extreme example: how likely is it that any significant number of people will ever again hear a live recording from a concert that is only available on Betamax videotape?

Music "recorded" on paper definitely has the potential to weather the ravages of time, as proven by the resurrection of many a Classical piece after hundreds of years of obscurity. OTOH sheet music can definitely be misinterpreted, with current fashion trends seriously distorting what the composer originally intended

Originally Posted by T-Bird

Classical music, as said earlier, has been around for hundreds of years

True enough, as a blanket statement, but IMO it's not quite that simple. Some styles are almost completely abandoned for hundreds of years at a time and performance practices can change with the whims of fashion. Case in point: vibrato on bowed stringed instruments - almost unheard of more than 200 years ago, now pretty much the default standard

Before the development of the modern piano, the vast bulk of keyboard music was written for (and performed on) the harpsichord or pipe organ. This did not keep the harpsichord from almost dropping off the face of the earth for something like 200 years, with what little of that repertoire that remained fashionable during the Romantic period being played on the piano

The same could be said for hundreds of years worth of Rennaisance and Baroque Lute music that sat around unplayed for centuries until Segovia took it upon himself to bring them back on the guitar - and not even the guitar that existed at the time those pieces were written (five or six double-coursed gut strings stopped by tied-on gut frets) but the 'modern' classical guitar (six single nylon strings stopped by metal frets)

The entire idea of playing old Classical compositions on the actual types of instruments that they were written for is a comparatively new idea, barely a half-century old, and it's still pretty much a niche market. You're still much more likely to hear Beethoven played on a modern Steinway piano than an old-style Austrian piano with leather-covered hammers and no metal frame, or to hear a Bach lute piece played on a modern classical guitar as opposed to the Baroque lute he wrote it for

Anyway, to extend the general idea to what we now call "classic rock" of "classic jazz", I do see one huge advantage to that stuff being preserved, at least at some level. The bulk of it has been saved as recordings that leave no serious questions about how the actual performance sounded. But here we get back to the question of the recording medium

33 1/3 rpm vinyl records are coming back into fashion lately, and it's getting a bit easier to find a suitable turntable to play music available in that format. OTOH finding a turntable to play a 78 rpm shellac disc isn't quite so easy to do any more and neither is finding a high-quality cassette player to play a 1 7/8 ips cassette tape. Speaking of cassette tapes, just how many different permutations of Dolby noise-reduction were there, anyway?....

With original Master tapes, the situation is even more grim. How many people do you know that have a 2" tape 16-track in working order lying around, or even a 4-track Portastudio that can play back at 3¾ ips ? In addition, magnetic tape has a finite lifespan that at best can only be measured in decades - certainly not centuries. Whatever doesn't get transferred from magnetic tape to some more durable medium within about 30-40 years is going to be lost forever. Personally, I'd be fine with that as long as it was only something like Disco Duck , but then again future generations may not agree.....

But....but....but....Computer files will save the day, you say

Mebbe

How many different bit rates are there for mp3 files again, and is the audio fidelity of any of those mp3 files comparable to a .wav file?

[hrodbert696]

It is being played on the radio now, and NEW rock is not - at least, I remember a story recently that the last radio station in NYC that played new rock music (as distinct from hip-hop/etc.) had closed down. Classic rock stations are still running, though. As others have said, you can still find Bach and Beethoven on the radio - just not on the big commercial stations any more. I'm sure classic rock will go the same way, it will remain part of the culture but more and more of a niche.

The 1911 list is interesting, but I'd point out that it predates mass media radio, which really only exploded in the 20s and 30s.

[Devo-lution]

First thing that came to mind is that there are still radio stations playing Mozart and Beethoven around the clock.

[tekdiver500ft]

AnchorHoy makes some valid points, but...

In some form or another, the hits from the '50s and '60s will be with us for a good, long while. Will everyone have access to turntables? No. Will the original 45s still be playable? Probably not. Will some enterprising individual keep updating the digital files to new formats to ensure that we don't entirely lose these amazing pieces? Almost certainly.

[AnchorHoy]

Originally Posted by tekdiver500ft

In some form or another, the hits from the '50s and '60s will be with us for a good, long while. Will everyone have access to turntables? No. Will the original 45s still be playable? Probably not. Will some enterprising individual keep updating the digital files to new formats to ensure that we don't entirely lose these amazing pieces? Almost certainly.

Agreed

It only takes one person in each generation to care enough to do that kind of archiving and format updating. So far, it has worked out pretty well, with some amazingly obscure stuff coming back after the vast majority of people had completely forgotten about it

Who could have possibly imagined that an old Nick Lucas hit from 1929 would have resurfaced 50 years later and climbed to #17 on the Pop charts?

Tip-Toe Through The Tulips (1929) - YouTube

[Rockmusician]

It will always be played. There are still stations playing music from the Big Band era so I suspect there will always be those that play classic rock. I think video games such as Rock Band have helped to bring music from the 1960's and 70's to a new audience. My son is 22 and loves it. He hates the newer stuff. His favorite bands are KISS, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and Queen. I'm sure that he will pass his love of these bands down to his children and so on.

[Lambic]

Originally Posted by AnchorHoy

(...)How many different bit rates are there for mp3 files again, and is the audio fidelity of any of those mp3 files comparable to a .wav file?

I think you forgot to mention cylinder recordings...

Time to put that rock stuff on paper, have Edition Peters transform it into an expensive edition, and put it next to Bach and Mozart in the libraries: that's how their compositions came to us, no? Well, more or less...

[Spectrum]

The long-term archiving of music is going to be a problem as AnchorHoy says. The best medium for it is probably something like vinyl records, stored properly, and played using a laser device instead on a needle so as not to actually scratch the surface of the record. The same device could be used to read from 78 rpm records as well. Not to long ago someone discovered what is thought to be the oldest recording of the human voice in existence on a wax cylinder record. The cylinder was heavily damaged and deformed, but instead of a needle phonograph the researchers used some sort of laser device to scan it. I wouldn't be surprised if something like that gets marketed for regular vinyl records, providing the trend of vinyl survives. CDs are the next best thing, but they also have to be treated well since they scratch.

I was talking to a photographer the other day and he mentioned that negatives were a better medium than, say, jpegs for archiving photos, because you don't know who can read a jpeg 100 years from now, but a negative is very simple and you will always be able to print from it with a light and some photo chemicals. The simpler and sturdier the recording medium, the better chances are the material will last longer.

Thus why we can play centuries-old sheet music; paper is as simple as it gets and when it starts getting old you just copy it. Plus since it's human-readable, you can filter out "noise" (wrinkles and tears and coffee stains) as you read it.