Moved to a more suitable subforum.

I don't know, the internet has made it much easier to track stuff down and the popular stuff from the 60s and 70s is still pretty clear in the mind as compared to stuff from the 30s. I think the internet has made it easier to be a fan of a lot of things and do research. I've played The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, etc in the past few years and am sure that stuff won't just go away that soon. Their influences still resonate with a lot of newer musicians.

I'm sure you could even find pockets of the internet that are super into old big band and jazz and whatnot. And there are always artists that evoke various old times with new music and keep it alive that way. Jack White does it, and people like Sturgill Simpson, etc.

I believe artists like the Beatles, Elvis, are always going to be known. These really big artists, that had a huge impact on music. Most likely their popularity may not be as big in twenty years as they once were, but they will always be known and liked. A new generation will always discover them and in general people are going to always know who they are. I will even say 100 years from now, people will still know who the Beatles were. Another generation will be getting into them. Does anyone think someone like NLE Choppa will? In twenty years very few people are going to remember him in the musical sense. In 100 years absolutely not. Just another blip in the world of music. There will always be certain artists that are always remembered and gain new followings.

I think what makes music seem "distant" is the lack of good production. That's why I have a hard time listening to a lot of metal from the 80's or early 90's (especially in the death metal and thrash metal genre, far less so with black metal)- a lot of the production just sounds terrible compared to what the standard is now. That's not to say all those bands sound bad, but a lot of them simply didn't have the access to good recording techniques, which is increasingly easier to acquire this day and age.

However, with a lot of the more popular stuff in the 60's or 70's (IE, those with large budgets), the recordings sound generally good for modern standards. It's not top notch, but everything is certainly audible and accessible to listen to. This is far different if you went thirty years back from there, listening to a Benny Goodman or Tommy Dorsey vinyl. And while I personally do enjoy a lot of that 30's music, I usually enjoy it because the crap production has that very retro feeling to it. I can't see that happening to the same degree with popular music from the 60s or 70s.

That said, this kind of hits on a bigger issue. I think it's absolutely crazy to look at pictures of me 10 or 15 years ago and see how absolutely no deterioration has taken place to the pictures. Obviously they wouldn't because they were all shot with a digital camera, but to actually see the past like it's present day is truly a weird sight. I think we all have sub consciously categorized black and white with "oldest", grainy color with "old", and perfect resolution with "present". We're reaching a point in technology where perfect resolution will depict the old and the present. Pretty crazy to think about, really.

For new music I mostly stick to artists I have some kind of connection with. Either artists I already knew, friends' bands, or bands from my country (usually ones I've seen live). So my method of keeping up is to be very selective, because at this point I know my taste too well. That applies to old music as well though. The sheer volume only gets daunting if I actively try to discover more music I like. I've gotten quite good at skipping through 100+ songs to find the 1 or 2 that hit the spot.

I don't think music from the 60s and 70s will be seen as distant until rock music becomes a truly niche thing, or something like that. I don't think music from the 50s should be seen as distant, at least to people who like softer/poppier music, but mainstream radio always discarded old in favour of new. The 30s and 40s are a different story because of the production as Unorthodox says. Also, albums were barely a thing then, only really taking off in the 50s. It's harder to get into artists if they didn't have albums to go by - you have to choose between an anthology of several discs or selectively picking out a few songs.