Has new music gone down the tubes?


The demand for "old" music grew 14% in the first half of 2022 while the demand for new music dropped 1.4%. In the streaming world "old" music represents 72% of the market. Why does new music seem to be so bad compared to old/classic music?

I go though youtube sometimes and kids post videos of the first time they hear classics like the beatles, bob dylan, whatever and inevitable jaws drop. The music companies keep rereleasing old albums in new formats. Is it because todays artists just can’t "git er done"?

U.S. Music Catalog vs. Current Consumption

 

kota1

Down the tubes or down the soild state, there is plenty of great new music in the folk/americana genre.

Now you can't release new music unless it goes viral on TikTok first:

With each passing month, record labels grow more attached to TikTok—but it now looks more like addiction. Some have reached the point where they won’t release an album until the music goes viral on TikTok.

Consider the strange case of Trevor Daniel, who had more than one billion streams for his breakout hit “Falling.” The song climbed the chart in more than 20 countries. But now his label requires TikTok success before releasing a new record.

“It’s just been pretty much impossible to put out music,” he recently told Rolling Stone.

That’s dumbfounding. 

A 27-year-old with a billion streams can’t release new music? But he isn’t exaggerating. He keeps uploading snippets, waiting for one to go viral—but they don’t reach the threshold his label demands.