Is old music killing new music?

[AbqAnonymous]

This is an interesting article here: Is Old Music Killing New Music?

Apparently old songs now make up 70% of the US music market, with catalog consumption increasing by 19.3% last year while current music declined by 3.7%. It also goes on to mention how viewership of the Grammy's fell from 40 million in 2012 to just 8.8 million last year. The blame seems to be put mostly on record labels, but radio is brought up a few times: "

• Radio stations are contributing to the stagnation, putting fewer new songs into their rotation, or—judging by the offerings on my satellite-radio lineup—completely ignoring new music in favor of old hits."

"In fact, nothing is less interesting to music executives than a completely radical new kind of music. Who can blame them for feeling this way? The radio stations will play only songs that fit the dominant formulas, which haven’t changed much in decades."

Of course, broadcasters just want an audience to sell to advertisers. The internet could supposedly bypass these barriers but that so far has not brought about a "radical new kind of music" to a mass audience. But it does mention how music algorithms are actually worse. Perhaps it has also brought more fragmentation.

"The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it." The author goes on to mention how record execs did not foresee the emergence of rock and roll in the 50s or the British Invasion of the 60s or hip-hop in the 80s. But could something like that happen today in a world that is becoming more and more individualized?

 

[Kelly A]

"The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it."

There's a lot of new artists and music being introduced via apps like TikTok, cutting out what amounts to the middle man. Otherwise known as music execs.

The author goes on to mention how record execs did not foresee the emergence of rock and roll in the 50s or the British Invasion of the 60s or hip-hop in the 80s.

And like today, some artists formed new record companies and distribution methods to carry new forms of music. The difference is; they're leveraging a world-wide reach via social media. It's a big global talent show where you'll either become a laughed-at meme, or a star.

 

[landtuna]

In general and no matter the genre old music is way better than new music (with the exception of Classical which never changes and Standards which are cast in concrete).

 

[kwthom]

This is an interesting article here: Is Old Music Killing New Music?

I read that very early this morning...

<...>The author goes on to mention how record execs did not foresee the emergence of rock and roll in the 50s or the British Invasion of the 60s or hip-hop in the 80s. But could something like that happen today in a world that is becoming more and more individualized?

Seems like it already is, as @Kelly A mentioned moments ago.

It now seems that it's incumbent upon the artist to know *where* their material will get the biggest bang for the buck by knowing which one of several on-line places to discover music will get those million views in a matter of weeks - or less.

Old people don't find music the same way their children (or grand-children) do. I'm sure there are probably some great tunes out there that are rock-related, but I'd never know where to sample them.

 

[davideduardo]

In general and no matter the genre old music is way better than new music .

That is opinion, not absolute fact. I am in the same demographic subset as you, and I find much of what I listen to comes from the last 20 years; the music I liked when young is now in the category of how I used to feel about visiting the spinster cat lady in my family... bearable if not too frequent!

 

[vchimpanzee]

with the exception of Classical which never changes and Standards which are cast in concrete

If only that were true. I remember a movie called "Mr. Holland's Opus". A good classical station won't do any of that sort of thing.

And there are contemporary artists who have managed to mess up the standards, though their versions don't show up a lot on radio.

 

[boombox4]

We're witnessing the gradual erosion of the music media as it becomes fragmented into smaller and smaller pieces. We are also witnessing the same thing with movies, books, news.... It's all eroding via the internet, where everyone gets their 15 minutes and everyone has a chance to grab the brass ring.

Grammys never were important to a lot of people but were still big news even if you didn't watch them. Now? If your main source of music is your favorite genre via online streaming, and it's some relatively obscure artist who has a Patreon and half million or so subscribers scattered worldwide, what do the Grammys really mean to you?

Some form of this fragmentation has always been around. When I was a teenager, a lot of kids traded tapes of relatively obscure alt and metal bands. But we still tuned into the mainstream. The big stars in the closest big genres of music (in my case, it was rock) still appealed. There seem to be fewer and fewer of those big stars anymore. But that could just be my own misperception.

 

[boombox4]

I just read the article, and the guy is insightful. There are a lot of problems, copyright lawsuits over a supposed lifted riff or verse line that prevent new artists from getting mass, mainstream exposure. The Grammy watcher graph is telling. In 2012 there were five times more people watching than last year.

But then, what was different in 2012? A lot. Taylor Swift was a big star with a massive, hit album. There even was a cardboard stand of her, life sized, in the local drugstore, with a tray of her CDs. I'd never seen that before or since. This year she's busy re-recording old stuff of hers (ranking #82 and #88 on the Billboard Hot 100) instead of producing new hits.

In 2012 there were a lot of massive stars. Katy Perry was massive. Justin Bieber was massive. Pitbull was massive. Boy bands like One Direction and The Wanted were massive. Pop music itself was massive. Even non-teens (like myself) knew some of the songs.

Who is massive now? Billie Eilish maybe? Katy Perry released a new song. I've seen the vid. It's pretty good. It's not even on the Hot 100. Granted, she's a 'heritage' artist by now. But 10 years from now, will the current crop of artists be 'heritage'?

Looking at the Hot 100 there appear to be a lot of repeats, i.e. several tracks by the same artist. And this happens for three or four artists. Twelve tracks by a guy named Gunna. So he alone consists of over 10 percent of the Hot 100. Wow. Other artists with more than one track are Adele, the Weeknd, and a few others. I don't recall seeing this sort of thing happen 10 years ago. Maybe I missed that when it happened. Maybe it's a sign that new music is alive and healthy in the mainstream. Maybe country music is healthier than pop. I know rock is hurting.

It would be interesting to hear more about this from the pros here -- calling BigA.

Either way, I can relate to much of what the Atlantic writer is talking about. And it's not because I think older music is better, because I don't. If it's good, it's good, new or old. It's just that in my favorite genre, rock, I have to seek out the new more than I probably did in the 80s, 90s, or 00s.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

"The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it."

Who exactly are these institutions whose interest is in nurturing new music specifically?

Record labels would always have been happy to sell millions of Gene Autry albums/cassettes/CDs if the market place would have demanded it. But of course you can only sell a particular Gene Autry record to a particular individual a few times, and Gene had to retire eventually. But if you market Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Cash to Gene Autry fans, you create more demand than Gene could create on his own.

Now that music consumption is largely by subscription, that incentive to market new artists in place of retiring or declining artists has gone away at the record labels. As long as I'm paying Spotify my $10, they couldn't care if I listen to The Weeknd or Judy Garland.

 

[landtuna]

That is opinion, not absolute fact. I am in the same demographic subset as you, and I find much of what I listen to comes from the last 20 years; the music I liked when young is now in the category of how I used to feel about visiting the spinster cat lady in my family... bearable if not too frequent!

Of course my post is an opinion. It cannot possibly be fact unless there was a way to ask every consumer of old and new music which they think is better. My 'evidence' is anecdotal. Of all the posts I've ever read, and from many different sources (with very few exceptions) people of every age group (except possibly pre or early teens) have a similar opinion: they like the older stuff better.

I've spent significant hours this past two years in front of my computer browsing through the musical entries on YouTube and reading the comments. Without writing down a record of the responses I can say that the most common comment on an Oldies entry can be paraphrased as "they don't make music like that these days". Many more comments tend to be much more sparse and say simply "modern music is <insert derogatory term of your choice here>". Perhaps the supporters of modern music just don't bother to comment but somehow I doubt it.

And I am not saying that all Oldies were better than the new stuff. I don't know how anyone would quantify any specific song. We like what we like and don't like the rest. That's not scientific and never will be. I do know that listening to music radio in the old days, including the MOR stations, was a whole lot more enjoyable than today.

 

[radio128]

I found the article very interesting, especially the part about algorithms keeping similar sounding songs on the radio. I guess that's why the current Billboard top 40 has at least five female sung "break up" songs: #9 "ABCDEFU" by Gayle; #19 "Fingers Crossed" by Lauren Spencer-Smith; #20 "Good For You" by Olivia Rodrigo; #34 "I Hate You" by SZA; and #37 "Happier Than Ever" by Billie Eilish.

 

[TheBigA]

"The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it."

Interesting article about a very complicated subject. It seems the writer of the article is trying to place the current music situation within the confines of an earlier media environment. Music isn't heard in the same way it was 50 years ago. At the same time, music creation doesn't have the outside limitations that it had 50 years ago. So there's less need for the structure (label, publisher, etc) that was once seen as a necessity.

What that means is that a lot more music is being made now than at any previous time. Plus a lot of that new music gets released without any "quality control." No label A&R people challenging the producer to create "radio hits," for example. So artists make music and release it without concern for how it will be marketed or used by media. They just release it on their Facebook page or via iTunes. They don't necessarily go through the process of promoting it to radio. They just take it directly to the people.

The next aspect to talk about is money. In the old days, the music model was built around sales. People heard music on the radio, and went to the store to buy it. That model is gone. So now the music model is built on streams. The streaming companies pay royalties, and that money goes to the musicians. Consumers don't buy music anymore.

So what we have here are two systems of music distribution. The one that seeks radio airplay, and the one that doesn't. Both systems have their own monetization. The radio system needs time for the music to work it's way up the chart amidst all of the other music. The music that goes directly to the people tends to have a much quicker and shorter shelf life. A hit can last a few weeks on TikTok, but a hit will last 4 months or more on the radio. Two different systems, two different business models. That's how I see it.

 

[TheBigA]

The blame seems to be put mostly on record labels, but radio is brought up a few times: "

We should be clear about this: The Grammy awards are put on by NARAS, which is the National Academy of Recording Artists & Sciences. AKA: The Recording Industry. Radio is not part of the recording industry. Ten or more years ago, NARAS specifically told its winners not to thank radio in their acceptance speeches. The Grammy people don't see radio as part of their process anymore. So if radio isn't included, then it can't be to blame for the state of the Grammy awards. The recording industry has built this system. It's up to them to promote it.

 

[Syfy]

This is an interesting article here: Is Old Music Killing New Music?

Apparently old songs now make up 70% of the US music market, with catalog consumption increasing by 19.3% last year while current music declined by 3.7%. It also goes on to mention how viewership of the Grammy's fell from 40 million in 2012 to just 8.8 million last year. The blame seems to be put mostly on record labels, but radio is brought up a few times: "

• Radio stations are contributing to the stagnation, putting fewer new songs into their rotation, or—judging by the offerings on my satellite-radio lineup—completely ignoring new music in favor of old hits."

"In fact, nothing is less interesting to music executives than a completely radical new kind of music. Who can blame them for feeling this way? The radio stations will play only songs that fit the dominant formulas, which haven’t changed much in decades."

Of course, broadcasters just want an audience to sell to advertisers. The internet could supposedly bypass these barriers but that so far has not brought about a "radical new kind of music" to a mass audience. But it does mention how music algorithms are actually worse. Perhaps it has also brought more fragmentation.

"The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it." The author goes on to mention how record execs did not foresee the emergence of rock and roll in the 50s or the British Invasion of the 60s or hip-hop in the 80s. But could something like that happen today in a world that is becoming more and more individualized?

Probably because most of the new music being put out is mostly crap people would turn off.

 

[TheBigA]

As long as I'm paying Spotify my $10, they couldn't care if I listen to The Weeknd or Judy Garland.

Exactly. This gets back to what I was saying about two different systems. There's the curated system, which is radio. And the UN-curated system, which is streaming. There is a certain amount of power in the curation process. If you can show that you're influencing music discovery, then you have power. Spotify and the other streamers are trying every way they can to demonstrate they are influencing music decisions. But in reality, people use Spotify like their own personal music system. They want what they want, and they'll bypass all of the various algorithms in order to get what they want. If what they want is only old stuff, then that's what it means, and Spotify is not going to force some Beatles fan to listen to Olivia Rodrigo. That, in the long run, hurts new music.

 

[semoochie]

Take this for what you will but there were 28, count 'em, 28 new songs on the Hot 100 this week! I thought it was usually more like seven. Has anyone followed this enough to know it that's unusual?

 

[Kelly A]

Probably because most of the new music being put out is mostly crap people would turn off.

Remember when you were a kid and your parents and grandparents used to say the same thing about popular music? Now here you are..

 

[JJSPC]

I am not putting down ALL new music and we certainly cannot stay stuck in the 60's, 70's and 80's, however a good portion of the new pop songs seem to all be angry revengeful sounding females and whiney men. Who wants to listen to that long term?

 

[kevtronics]

Keep in mind that anything greater than 18 months after release counts as "old music". So there's plenty of music that already counts as "old" by the time most people first get exposed to it.

As for modern music being "whiney", keep in mind that Gen Z and younger Millennials grew up with 9/11, school shootings, never-ending wars, the Great Recession, income inequality, political polarization, and now a two-year pandemic. They have plenty to whine about, just like the hippies and their anti-Vietnam War protest songs.

 

[TheBigA]

Keep in mind that anything greater than 18 months after release counts as "old music". So there's plenty of music that already counts as "old" by the time most people first get exposed to it.

That's what's interesting about music. If you've never heard a song before, it's new to you. The focus of this article is "old music" vs. "new music." And then the author tells this story about a clerk listening to the Police, asks her why she's listening to 40 year old music, and she says "I just like the songs." So my take is we've created this myth about old songs and new songs. To most people, they're just songs. They like them or they don't. They're hits or they're not. The age of the songs is the least important factor.