Is Old Music Killing New Music?

Not my words, his…

Is Old Music Killing New Music?

 

Well, it’s not my problem, is it. But we should be grateful we lived through such heady times.

 

Capitalism is killing new music

 

I’d rather say that old music destroys new music! One reason could be that record companies don’t take much risk anymore and only want to earn money with the same formulaic stuff. George Martin and Parlophone for an example took a big risk when they got the Beatles under contract! The consequence was that the mainstream was way more diverse back then in comparison to today. I think people get annoyed with the uniformity we have in the top 40 charts today

 

I read this article this morning. On this point, in his book Retromania, Simon Reynolds noted how new technologies such as YouTube have made old music more accessible than ever before: when I was a kid in the 80s, I loved the Byrds, but it was next to impossible for me to watch their 1960s television appearances. Now all of those appearances, and hours of archival footage from every major artist of the twentieth century, are only a click away. Likewise, the invention of the CD, and the multi-CD box set, made consuming old music easier than ever before. Fans of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and the Grateful Dead have so much archival studio and live material from their heroes to sort through, they could spend all of their time, if they so chose, listening to nothing but “bootleg” Dylan, Young, and Dead material. In the 70s and 80s, there just weren’t never-ending “Archives” release projects from pop/rock artists like those we see from these three artists, or even, increasingly, from artists such as the Rolling Stones and U2.

Pop/rock fans can increasingly live in the past because it’s so easy for them to live in the past. Why deal with a new rock album when you can fire up the deluxe Tattoo You, with nine “new” Stones songs?

 

New music is killing new music.

 

That’s a great point! We also shouldn’t forget that the music itself is much more accessible today because of streaming! Almost everyone can listen to the old records today! That wasn’t so easy 30 years ago

 

This video explains it very good in my opinion

 

Ooh, I'm not a Beato fanboy, but I'll take a look at that later, if I remember to.

 

Worth noting the stat is the Gioia piece relates to catalog 18 months old or older so that includes not just music from decades ago but streaming of music like Ed Sheeran's Shape of You, Lil Nas X's Old Town Road, Justin Bieber's Sorry, etc.

 

Maybe Frank Zappa explained it best…

 

I don’t want to flood this thread with Beatles music because I know that many people get angry because of that, but do you hear chord progressions and key changes like in „Penny Lane“ in modern music? Nothing is surprising in most of today’s songs

 

That provocative headline of the article must be doing the trick. There have already been two threads started about it, though one was shut down.

the whole world's turning SHF! (Or: our reputed favoring of old music is worldwide)

People Are Listening to More Old Music Than New

 

That opinion piece is a lot of malarkey. Nothing is "killing" new music. There's plenty of it, and plenty of it is excellent. Sadly, there are some dinosaurs who are stuck firmly in the past. These people refuse to listen to new material. I feel sorry for them.

 

This again?

It's like moths to a flame

 

Today's music is only boring if you have boring tastes. Unfortunately many people are not very curious when it comes to music and think the only new music is top 40 crap or whatever is being spoonfed to them via advertisements, movie soundtracks, etc.

 

They want new music to go up in flames. Disco demolition style.

 

People get so hung up on time as if things just magically change because we got a new calendar.

 

A lack of what was once termed as “talent” is killing music… that and houses without garages.

 

I only talked about mainstream music! That doesn’t mean that everything what is recorded today is boring! Joshua Lee Turner is a great example for that

 

Is this another thread where “old music” is actually just 18 months old?

 

Jakob Dylan said that one problem of modern music is that every charlatan can record, produce and release his own music without any seal of approval.

 

The inevitable convergence of influences. I remember talking about this with some friends who were into music back in the early 1990s. It's only continued to narrow since then. New mainstream music is gradually compressing itself into an inevitable streamlined death.

It doesn't surprise me that anyone who is interested enough to invest their time with music is more likely to be listening to be older material today.

 

First off the article gets off to a shaky start by mis-contextualising a quote

"old songs represent 70% of the music market"
Now we all know that most folks here assume that means Beatles and Stone and Who etc etc, but I'm not so sure it does, because the article he stole that little theme from was based on music 18 months old, and I seriously doubt that many people on this site consider songs from 18 months ago to be old.... So we open with a misleading piece of information and context.

Another thing to take into account is that these figures are based on the industry during the covid lockdown period ... so has anyone figured out how many artists didn't do anything due to that lockdown? Are we just going to randomly spew out stats with no context?

As far as the Grammy's goes.... I doubt any serious music lover considers the Grammy's to be even mildly relevant. I stopped watching years ago, and sure part of that is that Pop music and Artists continually highlighted on there, have nothing to offer me, but as an older person, that isn't really surprising..... but also the show moved into, seemingly, just trying to shock the general public, every year doing something a little more over the top, but for no real reason.... it got to the stage where it was less important what songs were on there, and more important what the supposedly "shocking" performances would be.
The Grammy's have been irrelevant for years ... as far as I can tell at least.

It seems that the writer has taken a personal stand, and clamoured to find information that backs his personal opinion..... this seems to be more and more the way that the media works these days, and a good reason why en mass people are moving away from the rubbish put forward by them.

I think any realist would need the state of the world to settle down somewhat before trying to put forward an accurate analysis of what is actually going on, rather than cobbling together a series of online info, that may or may not be correct in order to push a particular wheelbarrow