Is 'good' music objective or subjective?

[el murdoque]

This is simply not true. Define "high quality" with regard to music. Give me an example of both high quality and low quality music. It would be exactly the same as defining "good" and "bad" music. Who gets to decide what is "high quality" and what is "low quality".

(Answer: Each individual listener = subjective)

Take your pick. Three amateur versions of Europe's "The Final Countdown" picked from YT.







Would you not agree that you can use very objective ways of measurement for quality to pick one song over the other two ?

Things like how much was each participant on pitch and in time during the duration of the song.

 

[two fingers]

Take your pick. Three amateur versions of Europe's "The Final Countdown" picked from YT.







Would you not agree that you can use very objective ways of measurement for quality to pick one song over the other two ?

Things like how much was each participant on pitch and in time during the duration of the song.

Quality of performance and quality of music are two COMPLETELY different topics. It seemed OP was having an argument over SONGS and BANDS not individual performances...especially by amateur local bands.

 

[el murdoque]

Quality of performance and quality of music are two COMPLETELY different topics. It seemed OP was having an argument over SONGS and BANDS not individual performances...especially by amateur local bands.

Sorry, my bad. I did not re-read a 10 page thread from 2014 that was resurrected.

I will stick with my initial answer, though.
The answer to the question pivots around which definition of the term 'good' you stick with. There are plenty of those and some will lean towards subjective while others will lean towards objective.

 

[Alkali Ike]

This topic is so subjective it’s impossible to have a “correct” answer.

If a high school aged band performs a song that’s technically good, but obviously not professional or polished, is that bad music?

 

[two fingers]

Sorry, my bad. I did not re-read a 10 page thread from 2014 that was resurrected.

I will stick with my initial answer, though.
The answer to the question pivots around which definition of the term 'good' you stick with. There are plenty of those and some will lean towards subjective while others will lean towards objective.

Well, if the definition of good is dependent on who is defining it, that makes "good" subjective, doesn't it? That's the whole point of the conversation.

 

[el murdoque]

This is a point that has been debated in philosophy since the ancient Greeks started the biz.
So far, neither side has won.

 

[Peeved T-40]

I enjoy the 1998 American Godzilla remake. That doesn't make it good. Personal enjoyment is subjective. "good" is objective... sort of. It all has to be kept in context.

For instance

It would be ridiculous for me to say a rap song is bad because I judged it as a rock song. What matters is how well the piece of art accomplishes it's intentions and to what level it's technically competent. I would argue that as long as a piece of art does what it set out to do and does it with technical proficiency then it can probably be called a good piece of art. You personally may not like it though.

The important thing to acknowledge is that you're personal enjoyment has absolutely no bearing on the quality of someone else's work. If you don't like something that doesn't make it bad and if you do like something, that doesn't make it good.

There's loads of very real and quantifiable technical aspects to any art form and that's a much better angle to approach the "is it good" question from. If you try to start at personal opinion (subjective) then the conversation will never get beyond you personally because you've decided that you're enjoyment is the determining factor which is completely self centered and an absolutely terrible way to ago about the question.

 

[MidnightRunner]

The important thing to acknowledge is that you're personal enjoyment has absolutely no bearing on the quality of someone else's work. If you don't like something that doesn't make it bad and if you do like something, that doesn't make it good.

I think the musical and artistic QUALITY of something as Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", The Beatles' "Abbey Road" or Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" is absolutely undeniable regardless of whether someone digs them or not. So it's kinda moronic and very immature if someone who don't enjoy those 3 albums call them 'crap', because they cannot be crap by any means, there is not one valid argument for it. There is a general consensus that those albums are timeless masterpieces and there are good and valid reasons for that.

 

[dalkowski]

There is no "good" or "bad" -- you either like it or you don't and who cares anyway.