This article in The Atlantic makes interesting points about the popularity of old songs. Does it discount the pandemic? If record companies and radio are too conservative, how strong an argument is this? University radio and local scenes are not conservative. Something catchy enough to attract crowds will attract then. Is the problem really the lawyers?
TL:DR
The article is by a music industry professional who says he spends 3h daily listening to new music. He says it is now impossible to interest record companies or radio from even accepting demos. Companies fear if a demo has any similarity to future music it could cause unwanted litigation, so return unsolicited music unopened.
He says that even youngsters prefer music from the last century, and under 5% of downloads are from newer tunes recorded in the last eighteen months (down from 10% preCovid). Discounting Covid, he says that no one will promote any music that differs in any way from proven formats. He claims there is plenty of innovative music now, no one hears it, and no one buys it despite this is his characterization for how the music business has always operated. He does not mention how bands can self promote, Tiktok, concerts ir university radio.
It’s possible that COVID has resulted in fewer concerts resulting in fewer new bands being heard, but I doubt that’s a real shift in taste. When (if?) things get back to normal, this will too.
Rick Beato’s (mostly supportive) commentary on the article.
My go-to example is radio station WMAG in High Point, North Carolina. In 2000 they adopted the slogan “The 80s, 90s and Today”, so they were playing 20 years of songs. 22 years later they still have the same slogan, now covering over 40 years, and also have “80s Weekends”. I don’t remember any radio stations having “30s Weekends” in the 1970s.
Similarly, the author claims many radio stations essentially have not changed their playlists in ten or twenty years. Obviously there are many stations and this is clearly true for certain formats.
Do kids even listen to the radio anymore? I’m 43 and all my music comes from streaming and YouTube. If there’s a problem, it’s with the algorithms and not an ancient playlist. Though I can see the same thing being true–algorithms may find more engagement by promoting comfortable, old, “known good” music instead of new stuff.
I’m sure that is true, but the claims are made for streaming services too.
Something weird is going on with our culture. When I was a kid in the ‘70s-80s I thought the 60s was old, the 50s were twee (had I known the word at the time), and anything older was stone age. That goes for cars, music, film, clothing, anything. The same scale doesn’t seem to apply anymore. Our culture seems to have been largely frozen for 40 years. Sure, some stuff is superficially different, but there’s not a lot of NEW making its way into the mainstream. Skyrim just launched a 10 year anniversary edition for a video game with no meaningful differences to the original, Call of Duty is still Call of Duty, Vinyl is popular again despite providing inferior music reproduction and a highly volatile medium. We’re still wearing denim. Jackson’s rendition of Lord of the Rings, and the Harry Potter movies are coming up on 20 years old and are still super popular with young and old alike. When I was 11 years old I didn’t even know any movies that were from 1947—Miracle on 34th Street, maybe, which I still haven’t bothered to watch. It’s like marketeers are afraid of anything that doesn’t fit the old equations, and they don’t have the courage or brain power to come up with ways to make genuinely new stuff relevant to the masses.
I didn’t watch the entire video, but it does sound reasonable that the music industry appears to have lost the ability to find and market new artists. I’m sure plenty of quality music is being made. But because it’s scattered all over the internet, you probably don’t get the same level of cultural adoption for specific songs like you used to.
Even discounting the fact that I’m “old”, there are very few recent songs I can think of that have universal recognition, let alone appeal.
I see this. I’ve bought a lot of music in the past 10 years, and nobody I know has even heard of the bands. I think most of it would make great radio listening, but it’s not like what’s already on the radio. It’s not safe for radio. But it’s real and it speaks to me. I’m an odd duck, but I’m evidently not the only one who isn’t buying what MegaVinyl wants us to listen to.
It’s certainly true that it’s very easy to never ever hear new songs you like. It seems one has to make an effort to find new music that appeals.
I’m more likely to look up a cool song on Spotify. I’m also less likely to hear anything new on the radio.
Other than a small band I follow (TK and the Holy Know-Nothings). The newest hits on my Spotify were released in 2012,14,15, and 21. That’s 4 songs in 10 years. Most of those songs I heard in a commercial or a movie and found on Spotify.
I happen to like a lot of new music. But I don’t think any of it is heard on the radio.
I don’t think that’s right. The 5% figure is referring to the top 200 songs from the year. But according to the cite from the article:
Last year marked the first year that the streaming of current songs, defined as titles less than 18 months old, declined over the prior year. That led to a nearly 5% increase in the share of streaming that went to catalog titles (those more than 18 months old), from 65% to 70%.
So new music is still 30% of streaming. The fact that 2021 is the first year that new songs declined, it’s hard to call it a trend.
That is not the impression I get from talking to musicians, who are not all trying to ape old styles or crank out soulless corporate or pop-type music.
Yes, I think you can’t lose if you go to actual performances, or actively search out youtube channels, web sites, recommendations, on the Internet. If you expand “radio” to internet streams, there are some crazy compilations out there, too.
Old music is definitely not killing new metal music. There’s more good new metal every year than the year before and most subgenres are still evolving and growing. This has been true for about 15 years now, maybe 20.
There’s plenty of new pop and hip hop. I can think of quite a few new songs I’ve heard in recent years. Fallout Boy, Imagine Dragons come yo mind immediately, and there are a great many I hear on NPR or college and alternative stations and then buy the albums.
But why should I specifically look for new songs I’ve never heard before when I can also look for old songs I’ve never heard before? They’re both available at the click of a button, and there’s a lot more of the latter. If I hear something I like that’s new to me, why should I care if it came out a month ago, or if it was recorded by someone who died in 1995? It’s all the same to me.
I’ve said it before, but I think we’re at the threshold of a cultural singularity. Old culture, new culture, there’s no difference - time has no meaning any more. Neither does fame. Everything is equally accessible, and “new music” is just another playlist.
The article feels like the author found one data point (the slight decline in new music been streamed over one year) and tried to find a bunch of unrelated things to fit. Like the Grammy Awards having declining ratings. Kinda ignores the fact that ALL award shows have declining ratings. Or vinyl being the most popular physical medium. Yeah, because people don’t buy CDs anymore.
also, people dont need record companies or mainstream radio to be popular anymore
I mean all acoustic guitar girl(aka “sad girl”)
has to do to get noticed is have youtube play her video which she made in her own in her backyard as an ad and she can get millions of views and possibly subscribers to which she can direct to her Spotify or similar streaming service to buy her albums or singles …