Each year when the Brit Awards come around, someone, somewhere, is complaining about how music is not as good as it used to be.

This year, we decided to put that theory to the test. Are we just getting older and more cynical, or is music genuinely not as good as it used to be?

In order to find out, we took the top albums of all time, as judged by experts at NME and Rolling Stone Magazine, and plotted all 803 of them by year to discover when the best music was made.

The results are shown in this infographic, and are very interesting indeed. Perhaps we are right to be cynical about music, we have never matched the peak of good music that occurred between 1969 and 1973. It would seem that we did manage to slowly claw ourselves out of the lull in 1981, peaking again in 1994, although not to the level of the late 60s / early 70s; but good music has been on the decline ever since.

Top artists include Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who all are featured in the top 803 records ten times.

Discover the state of music for yourself in this infographic. What do you think – we’d love to hear your comments.

Infographic - Is Music Getting Worse?