Chart Toppers or Heart Stoppers: What Is Good Music?

"What is good music?" This simple question opens up a rabbit hole of educated opinions, heated debates, and quite possibly, the end of a few friendships.

It's the question that's haunted musicians, producers, and pretty much anyone with a SoundCloud account since the dawn of recorded sound. And in a world where about 120,000 new songs are being uploaded daily across major streaming platforms in the U.S., it's getting harder and harder to cut through all that noise.

Music guides and industry experts love to throw around tips and guidelines like "make good music" as if it's the most obvious advice in the world. But what actually makes music "good" in the first place? Is it the number of streams it will get? How many awards on the shelf it brings in? Or something a bit less tangible that makes your heart skip a beat when the bass drops?

A 2020 meta analysis study from Frontiers in Psychology found that what we think of as "good" music is all mixed up with emotional responses, personal background, and cultural context. It's not just about well-placed notes or perfect production — it's about how the music hits you. And also cultural background plays a huge role in how we perceive musical emotions. For example, Canadian and Japanese audiences use different acoustic cues to judge anger in music. This supports what many of us probably already know — that "good" music is pretty relative depending on where you're from and what you're used to.

"Even when it comes to sound or production quality, 'good' is subjective," says J. Henry, hip hop artist and music aficionado. "For example, pop music is 'good' when it is very polished (e.g. the vocal is clear and full, the bass is tight and punchy, etc.). On the other hand, punk or noisecore may be considered 'good' if it's not polished. Therefore, context plays an important role as well."

So as the music industry rakes in record numbers — with U.S. recorded music revenues growing 8% to a record high $17.1 billion in 2023 — we're left wondering: does more money mean better music? Or are we just talking about what's popular, something that more people like?

Subjective vs. Objective 

"There are no textbook definitions of what determines whether music is 'good'," says Rafe Gomez, professional DJ and host of the Danceteria REWIND mix show. "If the creator enjoys the process of crafting a music track and sharing it with the world, it's good. If the public responds by buying the creator's physical albums, downloads, merch, and concert tickets, it's good. If the creator is able to license the music for films, TV, commercials, or video games, it's good."

Gomez makes a pretty strong case that "good" can be measured in quite a few different ways even by the same person.

J. Henry, a hip-hop artist and music expert, takes this idea and runs with it: "Good music is anything that moves you. That could be emotionally (e.g. makes you cry), physically (e.g. makes you dance), or spiritually (e.g. makes you think about your connection with other life)."

This brings up the question of how we even begin to judge music. Is it an objective matter, like solving a math problem, where there's a right and wrong answer? Or is it completely subjective, where one person's musical masterpiece is another person's noise?

The music industry has some built-in ways to measure success. Album sales. Downloads. Concert tickets. Streaming numbers. Chart positions. Grammy nominations. But do these actually tell us if the music is good?

Is "good" music an objective quality that can be measured by charts and awards? Or is it subjective, entirely dependent on who's listening (and giving away those awards)?

The Main Gatekeepers: Grammys, Charts, or Crowds?

So who decides what's "good" music anyway? The Grammys? Billboard charts? Streaming algorithms? Your friend with the vinyl collection who thinks everything after 1979 is garbage?

Let's talk about the Grammys first: winning one still can change an artist's career overnight.

After the 2023 Grammy Awards, several winners saw their popularity explode. Beyoncé's album Renaissance jumped by 109% in equivalent album units the week after the ceremony, propelling it from #24 to #11 on the Billboard 200 chart. Harry Styles' Harry's House likewise saw a 51% gain, returning it to the top 10.

For newer artists, the effect can be even more dramatic. Samara Joy, who won Best New Artist in 2023, saw her jazz album Linger Awhile rocket onto the charts with a 319% gain in units and an eye-popping 5,800% increase in Spotify streams after her win.

But does a Grammy win really mean the music is "good," or just that it's commercially viable?

"It is almost necessary for albums and songs to be commercially successful in order to be nominated for Record, Song, or Album of the Year, whereas Oscar-nominated films often cover a much broader spectrum of box office success," explains Alex Biniaz-Harris (also known as Alex BH), an American pianist, composer, and musical director.

This helps explain why the Grammys are often criticized for honoring already-successful artists rather than truly innovative ones. The 2024 Grammys faced backlash for awarding Taylor Swift's Midnights over critically acclaimed albums like boygenius' The Record.

"By definition, those in the music industry as creators or business people will have more selective criteria for what makes music good because they have a more critical ear. Most musical creators want to make art that will last for generations, but some of them as well as those on the business side do consider and should consider its commercial viability because it is a business at the end of the day." Alex BH notes.

This commercial focus extends beyond awards to the Billboard charts, which have traditionally served as music's scorecard (some might consider it being a dinosaur, but some still swear by it). A #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 or an album that tops the Billboard 200 gains additional media attention and exposure, feeding a cycle where success breeds more success.

After Lizzo's Special album won a Grammy, it jumped 52% in units, and its title track's Spotify streams rose 260% the week after the award show.

But the real power players today might be streaming algorithms. These invisible gatekeepers decide what music gets recommended to millions of listeners daily. AI-driven playlists on YouTube Music now dominate discovery, with algorithms analyzing listener habits (like time of day and mood) to curate tracks.

This algorithmic curation has changed how artists approach their careers. A MIDiA 2024 survey found that a quarter of music creators now upload directly to user-generated content platforms like TikTok without using a distributor or label.

Read also: TikTokification of Music Industry: Is It a Real Thing?

Though I highly doubt that algorithms can really identify what's "good" to humans. Unless we are talking about the music discovery tool Every Noise at Once, which helped listeners find new genres and artists based on their preferences and used a human-supervised genre system. But it has been slowly disappearing since its creator Glenn McDonald has parted ways with Spotify. In a January 2025 update on the site, McDonald noted that Spotify had replaced his human-supervised genre system with "ML-assigned keyword tags," resulting in questionable classifications like folk metal being tagged simply as "folk."

Read also: Spotify Features 6,000 Music Genres. Some of Them Are Made Up

As McDonald put it in his notes, "This is great if you like ML more than music." But for those who care about musical nuance and discovery, something valuable was lost.

With all that, there’s an immense commercial pressure behind much of today's popular music:  As Alex BH notes: "Most radio-friendly music is catchy by design as it is designed to be most accessible to the greatest audience possible. However, I would argue that there is a difference between being catchy and good, and it remains to be seen whether music coming out now will be regarded in the future as good, great, or legendary."

And that's really the key point — time is often the ultimate judge of musical quality. As Alex BH put it, "Classics like Beethoven or The Beatles prove longevity > chart dominance."

So while the Grammys, charts, and algorithms may serve as today's gatekeepers, deciding what gets heard and celebrated in the moment, they're pretty terrible at predicting what music will actually matter in the long run. And I am not sure if you agree, but THAT might be the very thing that separates the “good” from the “meh.”

Can Data Predict “Goodness?”

According to Luminate's annual report, a total of 202 million individual tracks were available on audio streaming services in 2024. Of these, 93.2 million tracks were played no more than ten times in a year. That's millions of songs basically getting no love at all.

But why? Are that many songs just bad? Or is something else going on?

Well, the streaming world is dominated by a select few. Research found that less than three percent of artists account for more than nine-tenths of all streaming royalties. What's more, the top 0.009% has increased its share since 2017. So the most successful artists are actually getting more successful, not less.

This concentration of attention toward a tiny percentage of artists raises a pretty big question: does data really tell us what's good, or just what's popular right now?

On November 21st, Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga's "Die With A Smile" joined Spotify's Billions Club and broke a record while doing so. The track became the fastest to reach one billion streams, achieving this in just 96 days. While that’s impressive, does that make it objectively "good"?

"Production quality and lyrical complexity certainly play a part in determining how 'good' it is, but streaming metrics and Grammys rarely dictate the music's quality," says Alex Biniaz-Harris.

He points to a rather inconvenient truth for the streaming age: "Classical music like Bach's Goldberg Variations and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has stayed relevant over centuries, and classics of The Beatles and Stevie Wonder have been both commercially successful and critically acclaimed."

Those Goldberg Variations weren't exactly topping any charts when they were released. And yet, here we are, still listening to them centuries later. Meanwhile, plenty of chart-toppers from just five years ago have been pretty well forgotten. Reiterating once again the importance of a song's ability to withstand time.

"I'd say the algorithms are now the arbiters of 'commercially successful'. The artist can learn how to manipulate them and 'play the game' to their advantage," explains J. Henry, a hip hop artist and music aficionado. "However, there is a lot of luck involved as well. Ultimately, the listener holds the power of what is good and what is not."

And he makes a good point about how our ideas of "good" change over time: "Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' was not considered good when he played the song at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It even caused a riot. Over time, however, it is regarded as a pivotal moment in the history of music and one of the greatest songs of all time."

The streaming numbers get even more questionable when you dig into how easily they can be manipulated. In July 2017, the industry portal Music Business Worldwide identified 50 artist profiles on Spotify that weren't real people. These fake "artists" generated 2.85 billion streams within two years, equivalent to $11.4 million.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. A study by the French Centre National de la Musique estimated that by 2021, fraudulent streams accounted for between 1 and 3% of total streaming volume in France alone. Deezer calculated that around 7% of all streams on its platform were fraudulent in 2022. And I can go on. 

Another form of manipulation involves artificial streaming through what the industry calls "streaming farms" — essentially bot networks or click-farms that run songs on loop with thousands of fake accounts to inflate play counts and chart positions.

So, all in all, it’s painfully obvious that streaming numbers can be pretty easily manipulated. But even when they're legitimate, they might not reflect lasting value.

And while new hits get pushed relentlessly through algorithms and playlists, Americans increasingly favor older songs in their listening. In 2023, a whopping 72.6% of U.S. audio streaming consumption was for catalog music (tracks over 18 months old), versus just 27.4% for new releases.

And sometimes old songs find a completely new life. Kate Bush's 1985 track "Running Up That Hill" is a perfect example. Thanks to its appearance in the TV show Stranger Things, the song's Spotify streams jumped 8,700% globally in 2022 — a full 37 years after its release.

Beyond All Numbers: The Personal Connection

Charts, algorithms, Grammy awards — they all try to tell us what we should consider "good" music. But when you're alone in your room, headphones on, eyes closed, and that one song hits just right... that feeling can't be measured in streams or chart positions.

"I believe longevity is the greatest determinant of 'good' music," says Alex Biniaz-Harris. "Commercially successful music in the short term is more a reflection of current trends and accessibility and is rarely telling of whether it will have staying power in the future."

He touches on something that goes deeper than Billboard rankings or viral TikTok snippets — the emotional connection that forms between a listener and a song. This connection is so powerful that scientists have been studying it for years.

When we truly love a piece of music, our brain's reward system activates in pretty remarkable ways. Research from McGill University found that listening to music we enjoy triggers the release of dopamine, the same neurotransmitter associated with food, sex, and other pleasurable experiences. Even just anticipating our favorite part of a song can cause a dopamine rush.

You know that shiver you get when the perfect chord hits? Those "musical chills" are a real physiological response, and they're one of the purest indicators that a song has touched something deep within you.

You feel it when you're at a concert and everyone around you is moving to the same beat, singing the same words. There's a bond there, a shared experience that transcends language and logic. It's the same feeling that's drawn humans to gather around music for thousands of years, long before Spotify playlists or Billboard charts existed.

That connection — that personal, emotional response that can't be quantified — might just be the only measure of "good" music that truly matters.

"'Good' music can't be measured, nor should a set of criteria be pursued to do so," J. Henry concludes. "We have some today — streams, Grammys, Top 100 album lists — and they often cause good debate but also lead to injustices. This just provides evidence that 'good music' is in the ear of the beholder. You'll just know it when you hear it."