There's a simple explanation for this trend

[Dave W]

Is Old Music Killing New Music?

It's not the inability to get exposure. Obviously most listeners just don't like most newer music.

[uwe]

That is definitely a lasting trend. I see it everywhere:

- Film soundtracks are now littered with oldies, my son discovered Redbone (hardly a name band to fleeting listeners of even their era of music) via Guardians of the Galaxy. I saw Cruella with Emma Stone a few days ago (a hoot of a film!), only to hear Hush by you-know-who. Now that film was a period piece playing in the Swinging 60ies in London (where Hush did zilch, it was in the US charts only, but never mind), but what do Redbone's Come And Get Your Love and Looking Glass' Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) have to do with a sci fi comic flick?

The use of older music is exacerbated by the necessity of many modern movies having to play in a cell-phone free past - otherwise many suspense scripts don't work. You can only show broken/lost cell phones or areas without reception that many times and be credible. And if you set a film in the past, it is only logical to use the music from that past as well, especially if lasting recordings of that past music are easily available in good quality. Think of Gone With The Wind, when that movie was filmed, there was simply no period-correct canned music from the Antebellum South available/existing, all you had was written music to recreate it.

- A friend and I listened to the new Rival Sons and Wild Honey CDs in the car on a longer ride on Friday and it occurred to both of us that bands whose members weren't even born when Led Zep were in their heyday almost 50 years ago use all their energy and skill to sonically get as close to Led Zep as they can. Now everyone has an initial template to work from, but did The Beatles actually go out of their way to sound like The Everly Brothers (no doubt a major influence on them) AND STAY THAT WAY?

- Depending on where you start counting, we've now had pop/rock music rule the airwaves (I use the term to include streaming and such) for 50 to 60 years at least.  That is a huge body of work and it is omnipresent via media, it of course also includes tens of thousands great songs. And it grows every day. That is quite something new music is up against.

- I don't subscribe to the point of view that new music is automatically worse than old stuff. It does have a harder time to get itself heard though. Which is ironic as we all now live in an age where mass communication of not only music is as easy as never before in history.

One thing I do think, however, is that the streaming of individual songs has killed the album as a music-cultural concept. I guess albums like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper started off the album culture, no longer viewing an LP as just a collection of previous and future singles plus some fillers. That survived through the CD era (with playing time becoming longer and longer), but stopped with the advent of streaming. But songs that are not anchored in memorable albums are often destined for oblivion. Hardly anyone I know - old or young - still listens to albums all the way through, individuality is determined by your playlist of individual songs, not by albums.

[gearHed289]

Man, where to start...

This - "I listen to two to three hours of new music every day, and I know that plenty of exceptional young musicians are out there trying to make it. They exist. But the music industry has lost its ability to discover and nurture their talents." - is something I've been saying for YEARS. There's no more artist development. First record flops - bye bye. Not much in the way of tour support either. I'm not sure WHAT record labels actually do for a band these days. Distribution and some promo seem to be the main thing. Even the musicians have to be their own recording engineers now. As I often say - I'm glad I'm too old for it to matter to me. I play, write, and record music that I like. If I pick up some fans along the way, bonus.

[Pilgrim]

IMO the 12-bar blues is still a format that pleases the ear and is memorable. It dominated popular music for decades for a reason.  Country music still embraces it. 


As the article mentions,  music of CCR and  their contemporaries  still commands the memory and the ear. A few memorable pieces are written every year (Uptown Funk comes to mind) but not the stream that happened in the 6's and 70's. 

[doombass]

New music used to be mostly for the young generation. The hip radio stations and MTV played almost exclusively the latest releases. When streaming platforms started out and Mtv had already stopped being a music channel there were no longer any "musical guidance" directed to youngsters (read: This is the latest stuff you all like to get excited about, old stuff is for grandpa). The young generation simply started to discover music on their own on Youtube, Spotify and elsewhere. I think it's liberating, but the music industry really have to understand that maybe trends are'nt what they should aim at. Good music is good music, no matter in what era it stems from and is still being made, but there's no support from the industry like mentioned.

[Granny Gremlin]

Old music isn't killing new music.... just think of who is in charge of major mainstream movies.  Nostalgic old people (now includes Gen Xers).  Old music isn't better (or worse) either.  Pop music is and always was mostly was garbage, but historically there has been more breakthrough/crossover on the charts than there is now.  Instead things have got nichier - kids don't listen to the radio; charts aren't representative of anything but what gets played on the PA at the mall or grocery store.  There's punks and goths and metalheads starting junior high this year - and they're listening to new shit (that you will never know exists).  There is too much musical choice, so only the lowest common denominator pap breaks through to mass appeal.  There's more genres, more bands, and not, proportionally, as much fandom to go around.

What Tom said echoes what Frank Zappa and Steve Albini have said before, and I don't disagree, but the situation is very complex (I am not one of those  "I deserve to make a living from my art" people; with him on that too).  One can't expect the business people to take a hit to their bottom line as things change/evolve; they, as always, pass the costs down the line as much as they can. But the kids know this now (Steve Albini's seminal anti-major label treatise is now, what, almost 3 decades old) - where it used to be majors or bust, we now have a middle class of indie record label, and some of them (and their artists) do well enough, at least in terms of audience/following. Some of them have even managed to sustain that without being bought out by a Major.

[gearHed289]

One thing I'd like to add about the collapse of record labels as we knew them - It's weeded out the poseurs. It's REALLY a "do it because you love it" situation now. The goal of becoming a "rock star" is less attainable than ever, and in my opinion, that's a good thing. As a side note, I find it both annoying and amusing to see a lot of "kids playing dress-up", aping the rock stars of the 70s. Oh well...