"I had a hunch that old songs were taking over music streaming platforms—but even I was shocked when I saw the most recent numbers."

"According to MRC Data, old songs now represent 70% of the US music market.... The new music market is actually shrinking.... [T]he 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams. It was twice that rate just three years ago.... [T]he current list of most downloaded tracks on iTunes is filled with the names of bands from the last century, such as Creedence Clearwater and The Police. I saw it myself last week at a retail store, where the youngster at the cash register was singing along with Sting on 'Message in a Bottle' (a hit from 1979) as it blasted on the radio. A few days earlier, I had a similar experience at a local diner, where the entire staff was under thirty but every song more than forty years old. I asked my server: 'Why are you playing this old music?'

She looked at me in surprise before answering: 'Oh, I like these songs.'... The people running the music industry have lost confidence in new music. They won’t admit it publicly.... The moguls have lost their faith in the redemptive and life-changing power of new music—how sad is that?... [And yet m]usic company execs in 1955 had no idea that rock ‘n’ roll would soon sweep away everything in its wake. When Elvis took over the culture—coming from the poorest state in the US, lowly Mississippi—they were more shocked than anybody. And it happened again the following decade, with the arrival of the British Invasion from lowly Liverpool (again a working class city, unnoticed by the entertainment industry). And it took place again when hip-hop emerged from the Bronx and South Central and other impoverished neighborhoods, a true grass roots movement...."

From "Is Old Music Killing New Music?/All the growth in the music business now comes from old songs—how did we get here, and is there a way back?" by Ted Gioia (Substack).

I was listening to Bob Dylan's old radio show — "Theme Time" — the other day, and he read what was supposedly a letter from a listener, asking why did he play so much old music when there's new music too. His answer was: He plays old music because there's so much more of it. 

The old should dominate. There's a century and more of old recordings to play on the streaming services. Why should the music of the last few months predominate? Anything new has to compete with everything old. 

I'm old, so I don't expect to like anything new, and I'm delighted to have access to the entire history of recorded music with Spotify. I discover things that are new to me. Some of them are many decades old, sometimes even older than I am, and, as I said, I am old. These are recordings, not live concerts. They're like books. We pick what's best, not what's new. 

But I remember how exciting it was, back in the 1950s and 60s, to hear what was new on the radio, to feel that the culture was alive and inventive and a cool, unfolding surprise. Maybe none of that would have happened if we'd had something like Spotify/Apple Music to allow us to root around endlessly in the past.