I'd like forum members to consider all the music (prog or otherwise) they listen to in an average week and tick the three boxes representing the most common eras/ decades the music would have come from. I realise how difficult this would be to do accurately, so take an educated guess.

This should depict when the music was originally created, not performed... so a Beethoven Symph would be Pre-1970, even if it was performed at the Proms a couple of weeks ago. 

I would be interested to see what overall trend is created...

Thank you 

This can be done quite exactly in my case, as I know how many albums I have from each decade in my collection, and roughly speaking, I listen to all my albums equally. So the result says:

1. 1970s

2. 1980s

3. 1990s 

A smattering of everything else when the mood hits.

2020s: 1095 (476)

2010s: 488 (343)

2000s: 1778 (1427)

1990s:  414 (358)

1980s: 91 (67)

1970s: 172 (131)

1960s: 26 (17)

Disclaimer: These are full release listens, and of course I haven't tracked every listen (by a long shot), but the numbers are surely an approximation of what I'm listening to the most. 

I'd say 67-73, but on a wider scale, 61-79 or 59-83

but let's play the game:

70's

60's

00's

10's

90's

80's

Of course, I spend a lot of time discovering new stuff, so in a given week of 2024, 70% of my listening would be 2023 & 2024 stuff.

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1. Current releases

2. 1970's

3. 2020-2022

I've been using streaming services for the last 3 years very heavily and put all new interesting (to me) prog an non releases in massive playlists for each year. I gobble up new albums and there has been a lot of great stuff in this year so far and with more to look forward to (Frost* and Opeth especially)

Of course I still go back to my 70's prog a lot although I can't say it's as much as I should. Other than ELP, Floyd and Gentle Giant I seem to have taken a bit of a 'rest' on this decade. I can't remember the last time I listened to Thick as A Brick although I do listen to Aqualung a few times a year. Close To The Edge also gets an occasional spin as well as those early PFM albums. I don't know with Genesis anymore. I sometimes wonder if they are now 'superceded' by Big Big Train. I was talking to an Australian fellow at a recent gig and he opinioned that Genesis were now 'out' and BBT were in for him. I kind of agree. In general I find modern prog a lot more interesting and diverse. I also like the harder edge that so many modern bands bring.

Please vote for up to three... it'll flesh out a rough picture.

PA says over 77,000 releases have been included on the database, and it must be that a fair number of these have subsequently fallen into a void and almost been forgotten.

Flicking around online, it does appear that celebrated albums from the 1970's heyday, far from having lost any popularity thru the decades, seem to have only increased in their appeal over the past 10-15 years.

It does make you wonder therefore, whether most Prog music created in the 1990's gets much of a hearing now? I'm not talking about the likes of Spock's, PT or tFK, but I suspect that the music of many of the smaller bands at the time who perhaps never made it out of that decade, has become all but lost in time?

I wonder what will happen to the majority of prog music from the 00's and 10's... has much of it gone the same way? And, how many of the 2024 releases will still be being regularly played in 20 years time when there will be so many more albums created and vying for our attention?

Because, you can bet your life that in 20 years time, ELP albums will still be played regularly... ?

I have to say, that is a very impressive list Mike... 

Every decade has something to offer, I can't make just three choices, I would not do justice to a lot of artists/bands I enjoy. 

Good idea for a poll, no doubt, but I cannot choose. 

Like I said, i don't know or am not sure what a "listening habit" is. Most of the time it's my mood that is what decides what I end up listening to. It's not a matter of what decade the artist/band is from. 

I might have misunderstood what I'm supposed to be doing in this thread then. 

Even if I like digging around, the 70s are still the decade I go more often. Nowadays I'm listening a lot to the last Gilmour's and the last from Bass and Biro. New albums by people coming from the 70s 

Maybe the use of the word should be trends, instead of habits, might make it simpler to grasp.

Seeing from which era the music you're listening recently is from. 

I would imagine that a lot of us are listening to recently-released stuff, so the 20's will probably get a lot of votes.

actually, I think that would be a good idea for another poll... of all the 'brand new' releases you've listened to over the past few years, how many would be by newly formed bands (and if so, how did you hear about them) how many were formed in the 2010's, 2000's and so on.... and how many new releases are by bands in their twilight years of creativity, such as Focus, Yes, Steve Hackett etc...

Yes, this isn't about 'favourites' (although in a roundabout way it might be!)... it's simply about exposure and airplay. You listen to a great deal of varied music, so it might be hard for you to quantify, but which decades would be best represented by your listening choices?

My gut feeling is that much of what was created in the golden era of Prog still gets a lot of airplay, while companies such as Esoteric Recs are busy remastering and repackaging albums by... let's say 2nd and 3rd tier Prog bands from the 70's, perhaps on the wave of nostalgia??

My feeling is that by way of contrast, only the very best releases from the 90's and 00's will stand the best of time as a higher percentage appear to have been forgotten?

1970s: 6949

1980s: 5538

1990s: 8643

2000s: 16696

2010s: 14075

2020s: 8547

TBH, most of the 60/70's stuff I listen to nowadays is what you call "2nd and 3rd tier Prog bands from the 70's" or "more obscure 70's prog" (that less disrespectful), because I haven't had enough of some - which I've discovered in the 90's via labels like Repertoire.

I rarely get the urge to listen to the 70's masterpiece anymore, because I know them by heart

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As for the 90's, I tend to prefer that decade over the 80's, but it's not that much better. Not only the 80's production values lasted well into the 90's, but also around the end of that decade, the Loudness Wars started happening, rendering some albums painful to listen to (thinking of Rush's Test For Echo & Vapor Trails), but the LW (compressions) lasted until well into the 00's.

What saves the 90's for me are grunge, funk metal (RATM, RHCP, etc...), post rock & trip hop as well as the Scandinavian Retro-prog, but I'm not quite sure that I would retain all that much more albums in my top 90's list than for my 80's list. And if there would be more rock albums in my 90's list, it's because I paid more attention to what was going on than in the 80's - when I almost literally turned the radio off from 86 to 89.

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I don't think my website is attractive for younger audiences (than PA) ... for one thing, back when it started most of the heavy users came from PA. And then, as others have pointed out, many young people really gravitate towards RYM. And nowadays there's a handful of users that generate the lion's share of all the playlist entries, and I think they're all in my age group (or older) 

In the 1960's:- My Mum & Dad's old records

In the 1970's:- Glam Rock, Prog Rock, Soul & Disco (in that order)

In the 1980's:- Synth Pop/New Wave & Dance Pop (mainly Madonna & Michael Jackson)

In the 1990's:- Electronica

In the 2000's:- Symphonic Metal

In the 2010's:- Absolutely EVERYTHING I missed out on in the previous fifty years after finally going online in 2010 and discovering the miraculous wonders of YouTube - opening up a whole new world of music listening I never even knew existed before 2010.  

In the 2020's:- Discovering for the first time that Progressive Rock is a worldwide phenomenon and not just confined to British shores. 

Interesting stuff, however, I can not say that I listened to more of one ting than another anymore ... perhaps way back when I might say that the 1970's were special and I had many more listens from there than otherwise, but in the end, I have never looked at the time period for listening to anything, as picking up Debussy, was as good, or better, than a lot of stuff for me.

I love music in all its forms, even if some of them seem to make me wonder what they are about, but the general feel is that it is honest and true to itself, and thus worth a listen, and I suppose that is my main idea, and that kinda takes away the time period ... I'm not sure I dislike, or not like enough, some Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky ... and many classical folks, though I might even say that I probably heard more AD2 and the affiliated "krautrock" a bit more during the 70's.

Interesting results ... but the hard/metal thing in the 2000's did not grab me that much even though I got to see DT (3 times), Queensryche, Fates Warning, and a lot more of those bands. It's all "music" to me, but in general the 2000's is not any better than any other time for me ... they are all really good in my book!

That's similar to me but unlike you and most here, my teens were in the 80s. However, I don't listen to much 80s prog or 90s prog either for that matter (the two weakest decades for prog imo). I do plan on going back at some point and discovering some of the better (and more well known) ones from those decades and the 2000s also.