Only this assumes that the music industry and its impact on culture is a constant.<p>Katy Perry might has &quot;equaled Michael Jackson in terms of number of hits in the Billboard Hot 100&quot; but those hits now came with much less sales than in Michael Jackson&#x27;s era.<p>Ever worse, at MJ&#x27;s time, if you had a hit, everybody heard it -- the channels were few and not that fragmented. Nowadays you can be Katy Perry, have a #1 hit, and half of the country wouldn&#x27;t even know it, much less know how to sing it.<p>The cultural impact of Katy Perry is thus reduced to some teenage (or early teenage) kids, and tabloid gossip people reads and forgets that very minute.<p>And of course now there are 100 other things for a young person to do, between gaming, mobile, social, internet, anime, etc -- back then music was much more crucial.<p>&gt;<i>If you think these aren&#x27;t as significant as [fill in your favourite act from decades past] then you&#x27;re not the right demographic.</i><p>That&#x27;s the thing though. You didn&#x27;t have to be in the right demographic to think the Beatles significant. And even in the same demographic, you can have like 90% of people not giving a shit about Rihanna, whereas you couldn&#x27;t for the Beatles.