Maximum the Hormone, Nujabes, Daft Punk, Muse, Gorrillaz.... foreign music is always intriguing.

Once you get past the age where you consider everything new to be "revolutionary" you tend to start getting interested in older music ...

Older music tends to have an advantage in seeming overall "better" because time tends to filter out all the crap. The reason why so much music today seems like crap is that the majority of the music we hear on the radio today is specifically produced to appeal to a small segment of the population, with a focus on popularity rather than quality. There are great bands and artists today, and 10 or 20 years from now people will be praising the music of today with statments like "Music used to be so much better at the begining of the century".

It’s the lack of originality that really grinds my gears – I know you could say that about all the arts at the moment, but I think it’s more apparent in the music industry than the others. The sheer quantity of cover songs or beat ‘sampling’ is both astonishing and annoying. People keep mentioning Kanye West, what he did to that Daft Punk song is nothing short of criminal.

Another annoying part of today’s music is the manufactured pop starlets dominating the charts, whose only talent is of the superficial kind who rely of pitch correctors/voice masking and skimpily clad outfits to sell music. For some reason the record industry ‘experts’ would have us believe that you need to look good to sound good on the radio…

I like all music, however, I don't think the music know is as good as it was in the past. Barring Japanese music which I'm really digging atm.

elton john, i don't know if he is still active but what a voice

See I don't like classic rock :P I only really get into music if it has the power to move me, easy listening or flow type music is fine and all, but I love epic chorus's and rifts of the sort :D

My FAV bands atm are Rise Against, Sevendust, Nightwish, Five Finger Death Punch, In Flames, etc etc... none of that classic stuff for me :x 

A point to keep in mind that classic songs are a tiny fraction of all the songs produced in a particular era. That being said, the whole music business today is completely off it's rocker and deserves to rot in hell for the crap it tries to promote. Far too many pop stars and way too few musicians.

Well, I'm not really aware of what most modern music is like. I listen to my stuff (metal, etc) and I'm loving 'Bullet for my Valentines' new album, or I listen to what my brothers like... British rap (For the Sky owners amongst us, channel 360 is a British rap channel - nothing like the American stuff).

Other than that, my parents only really listen to music in their cars, and that's all the latest British soft-rock bands. The second the FM radio goes on, so does my iPod.