At the beginning of last month, an outstanding collection of popular music entitled “Now That’s What I Call Music! Volume 49,” was released and quickly became quite popular. This is a perfect example of how people are recognizing the superiority of modern music over the music of the past.

Most of us enjoy listening to music, and luckily we are fortunate enough to live during the first time in history that good music is finally just starting to be made. Music has been around for several years, but until recently it has all been pretty bad. Because of this, most culturally-savvy people enjoy only modern music and largely avoid hearing anything that is not new. Just trying to listen to songs that are not currently popular is an unpleasant experience for many young people.

As college students we have many opportunities to listen to music, such as while avoiding social contact on the way to class, or when trying to distract ourselves from actually studying. We must take advantage of such opportunities, because the music we are able to listen to now is quite exceptional, and there is no doubt that popular music is only continuing to get better.

It is not difficult to understand why modern music is clearly the best of all time. Local student band-member and self-proclaimed music expert junior Ryan Bliven states “new music is more recently recorded than old music,” and this is a large reason for its superiority. Modern technology has allowed all parts of the music composition and recording processes to be of far greater quality than the methods of the past. Through the advancements we have made in technology, we have become less ignorant regarding what makes truly good music. In the same way we are currently creating the best works in history within many other disciplines, such as literature or architecture, by knowing what is actually worth listening to we have begun to make quality music at last.

Despite the fact that we have the privilege of experiencing good music, we must remember to appreciate that we do not have to endure the low-quality sounds that our parents and grandparents were forced to endure. If you are ambitious enough, I suggest you talk to someone you know about this, who was around when music was much different than today. They may even help you learn more about what quality music really is.

Many students, such as myself, consider themselves music aficionados. Overall, what we enjoy most are the songs that are recently released by modern artists. This proves that the musicians of our time have much more talent and originality than any that have come before them. Such a view is not unique to true music lovers like me, and is a view also held by virtually everyone who matters to the music industry. Literally all charts that list the current top songs or albums exclusively contain music from the last few years. As junior Chaz Hoffman, a student with a long history of musical performance, reminds us, “there are many genres of music now that did not even exist in the past.” People of the past were not even aware of what they were missing.

Anyone claiming that non-modern music is worth listening to is wrong, and truly does not understand how we advance in the arts. If the works of the past were any good, today’s artists would not continue to compose new works. Art is meant to express beauty, and the definition of beauty does not change through time. So if the things created in the past could be considered high quality works of art, trying to create high quality art now would be redundant and disrespectful to the quality works of the past. Instead, the terrible art of the past is an inspiration for many people to try and do better. In fact, many modern music artists willingly say that their passion for music came from the works of artists that came before them.

Additionally, if music of the past was any good, then old songs would be all we would need to hear to appreciate great music. Thankfully this is not true, and our radio airwaves and music video outlets do not simply play the same old songs over and over. I think we can all agree that hearing the same stuff over and over is not why we listen to the radio, or watch music videos.

Enjoying modern music is easy, especially because we are surrounded by it in many ways. For example, radio stations across the world are always reminding us of the outstanding quality of newly-released songs by allowing us to hear them constantly, and any social gathering we may end up at is sure to be playing the works of modern artists we recognize.

Undoubtedly the songs we listen to now will be forever remembered as truly beautiful pieces of art. But we must try not to forget how fortunate we are to be alive during the time when great music started to emerge.