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Post by ghost on Feb 2, 2022 22:18:27 GMT
Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market. Even worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high as little as three years ago. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music. Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact. In fact, the audience seems to be embracing the hits of decades past instead. Success was always short-lived in the music business, but now even new songs that become bona fide hits can pass unnoticed by much of the population. Only songs released in the past 18 months get classified as “new” in the MRC database, so people could conceivably be listening to a lot of two-year-old songs, rather than 60-year-old ones. But I doubt these old playlists consist of songs only from the year before last. Even if they did, that fact would still represent a repudiation of the pop-culture industry, which is almost entirely focused on what’s happening right now. There are other trends: The leading area of investment in the music business is old songs. Investment firms are getting into bidding wars to buy publishing catalogs from aging rock and pop stars. Major record labels are participating in the rush to old music: Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, and others are buying up publishing catalogs and investing huge sums in old tunes. In a previous time, that money would have been used to launch new artists or sold off to smaller labels. The best-selling physical format in music right now is the vinyl LP, which is more than 70 years old. I’ve seen no signs that the record labels are investing in a newer, better alternative—because, here too, old is viewed as superior to new. Decades ago, the composer Erik Satie warned of the arrival of “furniture music,” songs that would blend seamlessly into the background of our lives. His vision seems closer to reality than ever. On the other hand, this state of affairs is not inevitable. The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it or for record label gatekeepers to refuse to let it in. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/
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Post by HIStoric on Feb 2, 2022 22:35:12 GMT
Statistically, it makes sense. Anything over 18 months is considered 'old' according to them, which means anything upto August 2020 is 'old'. Almost the entirety of music in human history was released before August 2020, so it only makes sense that it will make up the majority of plays. Dua Lipa - #4 on Spotify and one of the biggest pop stars in the world for the last few years - of her top 5 songs, only one is 'new'. 3 of those 5 songs came from her (very good) album Future Nostalgia, which came out at the end of March 2020. Sure it may not be the latest album, but I wouldn't call it 'old' either. The thing that stands out to me though is that by making this so simplistic and only having two categories, you can classify an album like Future Nostalgia right alongside something like Dark Side of the Moon. Despite the fact they are nearly half a century apart, the survey both classifies them in the exact same category yet no-one in their right mind would classify them as the same type of 'old'. When you keep it that simplistic, of course it's going to be heavily biased towards 'old' music, so this really isn't surprising.
I think if you're going to do a survey like this you need to be much more comprehensive in how you're going to differentiate 'old'. There's a difference between '2010s old' and '1950s old' IMO.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2022 7:34:23 GMT
Streaming has basically made music "disaposable", even more so than digital purchases. Do you remember the first time you streamed a song better than remembering when you bought the CD single? Streaming has removed most of the emotional attachment to music IMO.
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Post by HIStoric on Feb 3, 2022 9:31:55 GMT
Do you remember the first time you streamed a song better than remembering when you bought the CD single? Streaming has removed most of the emotional attachment to music IMO. Honestly, I do. Not every time, but I've been able to just think of many songs/albums and where I was the first time I streamed them. Many times (but not always) they were songs or albums I was looking forward to so that no doubt helps. I don't agree that streaming has removed most of the emotional attachment, or at least it hasn't for me. There are hundreds and hundreds of songs that I never bought yet bring back wonderful memories for me, or I put them on and throwback to this one time some years ago where something happened - be it special or mundane. Emotional attachment comes from the music itself and listening to it, not whether or not I spent money on it.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2022 9:47:53 GMT
Do you remember the first time you streamed a song better than remembering when you bought the CD single? Streaming has removed most of the emotional attachment to music IMO. Honestly, I do. Not every time, but I've been able to just think of many songs/albums and where I was the first time I streamed them. Many times (but not always) they were songs or albums I was looking forward to so that no doubt helps. I don't agree that streaming has removed most of the emotional attachment, or at least it hasn't for me. There are hundreds and hundreds of songs that I never bought yet bring back wonderful memories for me, or I put them on and throwback to this one time some years ago where something happened - be it special or mundane. Emotional attachment comes from the music itself and listening to it, not whether or not I spent money on it. Ah Ok. The artwork, notes, holding it in my hand was always something I loved. For the few years I went digital only, I found that I discarded music (mainly new music) quote easily. Whereas not so much with something I had bought and held. For any of the digital music I have bought, I always wonder what I am missing out on in the notes/imagery. Everyone's different though, so this is only from my point of view I guess.
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Post by HIStoric on Feb 3, 2022 9:58:59 GMT
Honestly, I do. Not every time, but I've been able to just think of many songs/albums and where I was the first time I streamed them. Many times (but not always) they were songs or albums I was looking forward to so that no doubt helps. I don't agree that streaming has removed most of the emotional attachment, or at least it hasn't for me. There are hundreds and hundreds of songs that I never bought yet bring back wonderful memories for me, or I put them on and throwback to this one time some years ago where something happened - be it special or mundane. Emotional attachment comes from the music itself and listening to it, not whether or not I spent money on it. Ah Ok. The artwork, notes, holding it in my hand was always something I loved. For the few years I went digital only, I found that I discarded music (mainly new music) quote easily. Whereas not so much with something I had bought and held. For any of the digital music I have bought, I always wonder what I am missing out on in the notes/imagery. Everyone's different though, so this is only from my point of view I guess. That's fair man. The artwork is undoubtedly one of the very best things about LPs, and it's half the reason I display two of them in my room (the other half being I love the artwork ).
While I enjoy reading the booklets, I never really did spend much time going through them. Probably because with CDs, they're small, and not many vinyl have those nice big booklets. I guess because most of my obsession with music begun once I got an iPod, it's been pretty digital-centric so I never wonder much about the notes or imagery inside the booklets. If there's imagery for the music, I usually just come up with my own if I have no other reference. I guess today's equivalent of 'imagery in the booklet' can be those small, looping videos artists have playing on Spotify during the songs. Some artists get pretty creative with them (funnily enough, I have that feature off).
But yeah. I think for me it comes down to the actual music, more-so than how it's delivered to me, or 'the whole package' in that regard. Maybe it's because I'm often doing something while listening to music, or if I'm not doing anything, I'm lying down and just listening. I've never been one to sit down and go through the booklet with an album. I realized some years ago that, while nice to have no-question, I don't need physical copies of the music I enjoy. Though sometimes I also wonder if it's because I'm young, renting, and don't want to deal with a big music collection to lug everywhere since I like all kinds of shit. That certainly plays a role.
But each to their own! I don't think there's a wrong or right way to consume music, and I think it can be a beautiful thing that we can all be united by this art-form yet find different ways to immerse ourselves in it.
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Post by respect77 on Feb 3, 2022 11:30:47 GMT
In my country the most popular radio stations for a long time have been those that play old music, ie up until the late 90s and nothing modern. I always found that interesting, although of course one can argue that it's simply because the radio listening demographics would be that age group, which is of course also true.
There's also a trend that out of physical sales these days old, classic vinyls dominate the market. Again, that's also down to which age group tends to buy records as opposed to streaming.
Still, I think there is a trend that old music gets more in the forefront now than it used to. I think streaming helps that too, because it's easy for young people now too to discover old artists on Spotify.
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