Whoever said you should not look for old songs? Even music schools start by teaching the classics (often with a heavy dose of Eurocentrism, unfortunately). Good music is, and always has been, good.
Absolutely, and if you believe the statistic thrown out above, actual consumption is 30% new, 70% old. I would be suspicious of their methodology until proven otherwise, to be sure.
oops i was replying to the topic in general and no one specifically
I’ll also say that services like Pandora expose me to a lot of new music.
Alessan, I lived in Israel for a year in the mid-1980s, and when I went back in 2000 and looked for new music, the Tower Records in a Tel Aviv department store was playing old Machina (specifically, Rakevet Layla L’Kahir). New music and old Corrine Allal weren’t getting much air time 
My point is that it’s hard for new artists to break through because not only are they competing with each other for our attention, they’re also competing with every other artist from the past 60 years. That makes their job much, much harder.
I agree. Same issue with painting, literature, etc. The way the brain works, though, at least old or classic music can inspire, and, with a healthy dose of creativity, lead to even more variety of new music. Not that ideas do not take an awful lot of hard work to come by and reify (and then you discover, oops, that was done in the 1970s), but there is not a finite number of them.
I’ve ranted in various threads on this board about the scourge of the “classic rock” genre. To be clear: I think most classic rock is excellent, but stations and people that play nothing but mostly-white rock music recorded between 1966 and 1990 make me want to barf. I’m talking about people my age who haven’t bought new music since Appetite for Destruction and still sing along with “Don’t Stop Believin’” when it plays at the bar.
If the middle-class adults back when we were kids were as stuck on older music as people the same age are today, half the bands we now cherish from the 70s and 80s would never have gotten their songs on the radio.
That’s what I get for waiting twelve hours between reading the article, and posting without rereading it. You are right.
But I still think Covid affected the number of people buying stuff, concerts and the amount of new music. I don’t doubt sone truth to the claims. But too early to call it a trend. And a veteran may not exactly be an expert in modern media marketing.
The article’s alarm about the apathy expressed over the Grammy Awards’ postponement is misplaced. The fact is, outside the music industry, nobody takes the actual Grammy Awards seriously. In terms of award show credibility, they’re only a slight cut above the Golden Globes. The only reason people watched the show was for the performances and the off-chance something unexpected or unplanned might happen.
Hell, later this week I’m seeing Ghost perform live in a sports arena. Has your average mid-40s music critic even heard of Ghost?
Missed the Old Town Road and drivers licence phenomena, I take it?
Is there a prevailing style to today’s music? Do we have an equivalent to Disco / New Wave / Grunge right now? I don’t think we do, and that makes things hard to categorize, and hard to cater to.
A lot of it is influenced by trap. Not lyrically but musically. So, triple time and related things are a common feature, from American pop to K-pop to reggaeton.
My two cents is that the internet and its catering for a bazillion different niches is in part to blame. In the past the record companies and radio stations were gatekeepers for new music, but once you got through the gate you were heard by millions across the country (if not the world).
Now you can stream your music on a variety of sites large and small, but so can everyone else and odds are that you’ll be lumped in with some sub-sub-subgenre of similar sounding bands and singers, giving you a smaller actual audience and a harder time standing out.
Unless of course you’re Ed Sheeran, in which case you get lumped into every category for no good fucking reason.
Yes! It’s heavily influenced by hip hop and specifically trap, as MrDibble mentioned.
I mean, there still are Top 40s radio stations, even though no people I know under 25 even listen to the radio. There’s new EDM, new hip hop, new pop music.
I make sure my kids know lots of good stuff from the past, but some of my kids’ friends have no idea who Led Zeppelin is and don’t really know any classic rock.
Look at Travis Scott – he’s having crowd disasters just like the Stones and the Who. And, his Old Town Road collaboration was a mega monster hit.
Not him. Lil Nas X.
(Maybe a case in point. We know more about Led Zeppelin on this board than huge hits of today.)
I recently had an interaction with a teen wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt. I was impressed. I asked her what Pink Floyd songs she liked.
“I don’t even know who he is.”
mmm
Hahaha! My kids wouldn’t have made that mistake, that’s for sure.
You know, the main character from the movie The Wall? Played by Bob Geldof? The guy who put together all those hall of famers for Band Aid? I mean, don’t you know anything? Hey, nineteen! That’s 'Retha Franklin, you know, the queen of soul? Hello?
By way of a counterexample, I have a 23-year-old coworker whose favorite musician of all time is Paul Simon.
I don’t even think that many 23-year-olds in the '60s or '70s would’ve said Paul Simon was their favorite musician.
But did they used to?
No. I have a 16-year-old and she literally does not own a radio. None of her friends listen to the radio.