Reply #10: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven

[kcwayne]

Their body of work vastly outnumbers the Beatles

Their music is studied, played, and listened to by more people throughout the world than the Beatles.

Their music has lived for 300 years without a significant drop off in people that are involved with it. The number of people that pay attention to the Beatles declines yearly, as boomers die off.

"Better" is a relative term for which the criteria changes constantly in the musical world. So these comparisons in the end don't mean a great deal. However, I am betting that in 300 years, there will be very few people that even have a clue of who the Beatles were. They will be attractive to the same sort of people that listen to Gilbert and Sullivan today, who were the Beatles of their era.