Music And Literature In Star Trek

[u/DanEosen]

Riker loves jazz, Picard listens to classical music etc. We also have Picard loving 20th century detective stories and in TOS there are references to Shakespeare.

I would understand of all things to predict for the future is music. Yet culture wise with music and literature advances seem to end with the 20th century. I always found it odd how music like Jazz survived all these centuries. While an excellent genre as time passes music tastes would change. Also why so Earth centric music and Western civilization music in particular.

Is there a canon reason why music and literature never really progressed or is predicting and creating futuristic genres that difficult?

[u/Glittering-Most-9535]

We know the Beastie Boys music makes it to at least the 2260s.

Non-canon, I think it's a combination of not wanting to predict what recent pop culture would stand the test of time, as that can make a show feel dated (see Discovery praising Musk as an example), mixed with your note about it being hard to create genres from scratch. So they stick to what's timeless and royalty-free.