Is the Popularity of Older Songs Hurting the Sales of New Music?

It is getting harder to launch new music. People are listening to the same songs for longer and seeking out new artists less often. According to a recent Businessweek article, “half of the 10 best-selling albums in the US during the first half of the year were released in 2021.” The article notes that “it’s not clear if people are listening to more old music, or if more old people are streaming.”

Perhaps both, but when music goes viral on TikTok, as it often does, “a fan is usually the one dancing in the clip. The result, industry executives say, is that a lot of new songs come and go in a matter of weeks” because people may not even know who the artist was. This new reality is driving a shift in the long standing hit-dependent business model of most record labels, where they are now forced to become less dependent on finding the next breakout superstar and more on finding artists who can create music that stays relevant for longer.

The optimistic way to see this is that more musicians might get a chance to be discovered. The flip side, of course, is that the so-called “big break” that every aspiring musician dreams of might not even exist anymore.