I don’t buy the idea that the quality of music has declined. A quick listen to Gioia’s best of lists in the last five years proves my point. It’s more that the passive music consumer isn’t buying what the music industry is selling. So consumers default to what they last liked when they kind of paid attention.
To active listeners, the ones who still read columns and scour Bandcamp, the amount of great music being produced is impossible to keep track of.
A few weeks back, I went to a Journey/Toto concert here in Seattle with about 17,000 people. A very mainstream show. And I remarked that night, as I have very often over the last decade, that I can’t think of a single contemporary artist who is likely to sell 17,000 tickets in 2062. And what of The Rolling Stones, Queen, Elton John, or U2 or others who can sell out 60,000 seat stadiums? There are a lot of reasons why this is happening and we’re all going to agree and disagree about reasons and repercussions. But I think of those days in the 70s when I waited for hours (and some friends waited for days) outside ticket offices to get THOSE tickets for THAT concert. I think there was more ceremony then. It was more of a religious experience.
Remember how the Grateful Dead almost never charted yet seemed to sell tons of albums? There is no shortage of popular music right now but it exists in a world where bands upload to Bandcamp and hope for donations, or simply hand out their music for free to get people to buy tickets for their shows (admittedly not the best business model during the pandemic).
These charts simply document the decline of the old guard while not measuring what's happening now. Historically charts show you what kind of music was popular earlier and is now being copied by everyone. Now that "the kids" are hearing music as it's released, they're ahead of the charts (which they probably don't even know exist).
At the risk of repeating myself, there is a lot of great music from Africa, Brasil, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Trinidad, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba et al that might not be "new" but it will be for those who have never ventured outside of the USA and Canada for new sounds. Well worth the effort.
"What does it mean when this forward-looking art form unexpectedly turns around and decides it prefers the past?"
In this case it means that the dominant method for playing music to people has a strong bias toward old music. Algorithms are currently optimized to pick old music for people because old music is the music the algorithms have data on (less risky financially and statistically). The newer the music, the less data, the less effective the algorithm. Changing this would require a completely different type of algorithm, or not using an algorithm to choose your music for you (the horror!).
"Surely that is a sign of some broader cultural change that is coming at us."
Yes, algorithms being used to herd everybody into predesignated marketing segments within which peoples tastes and opinions will be highly stereotyped.
Someone I know works for a market research company in Europe. They just realized that they made a serious mistake when determining listening rankings, for a whole country, for the last 5 years. No one noticed throughout the whole period. This is data that has directly impacted royalty payments.
I bring this up because it makes me wonder about the reliability of studies such as these.
Trusting the average music listener with choosing new music to listen to is like trusting a monkey with matches and dynamite. hey are used to having music presented to THEM and not at all prepared to actually go and seek it out.
Bandcamp is an awesome source of new music. And GOOD music. I never in my life looked to Billboard magazine or ANY "Top 100" charts to choose what I listen to. Music is personal and shouldn't be taken flippantly.
Maybe quality music frightens the average listener. Maybe the only exposure they get to new music or new performers is "The Voice" or "American Idol". THAT is a sad commentary.
I am no expert on statistics, but I think a sample of 1.000 people is not big enough to draw any kind of meaningful conclusions on a topic like this. The population of the US is around 320 million, and that of Canada is around 35 million. Perhaps the fact that the list has changed so little during 4 years just evidences a glaring sampling error. How many users are there in total in their Strategic Music Test platform, what are their demographics (not just age), etc.?
There is a personal sense of everything such as "novelty," or 'tragedy," and a global sense, e.g. "last week I went to a funeral–slipped and turned my ankle, and it lent a somber air to the entire occasion." In this Age Of Simultaneity–where all possible musics are available at one's beck and call, there is no longer anything that one can call "old music," or "new music." In fact, when one first hears any music, it is "new music" by definition (personal), whether it is a Bach Oratorio or Brian Eno aural wallpaper piece (hear Satie here). Current box office proves this assertion to be true. It certainly isn't surprising that music that was popular at one time will not remain so forever (global). Newness is in the ear of the hearer . . . only people (like me) who have been around a long while might be tempted to think otherwise.
Yes just before the Mongol Invasions, the rise of the Ottomans, and the Tennis Court Oath the charts took a surprising turn even with remarks like "Dick I don't give a shit whether I can dance to it or not, there's a revolution coming Bro'."
Five years is old? I just got a solicitation from Sirius XM for a Who world tour. What stuck me most about the list is that it was nearly all white people. Shouldn't Beyonce be there somewhere? Kanye? JayZ? If we were in 1958, would a list like this be dominated by Perry Como and Patti Page rather than Chuck Berry?
Recently, people on the XTC fan page were bemoaning the lack of new work from Andy Partridge. I commented that an album with just him and a guitar would sell well on Bandcamp. People replied “Meh, he probably just doesn’t want to release a bunch of demos online.” Um … a simpler recording released on a digital platform IS what new music means now. People waiting around for a fully produced object delivered by trusted cultural gatekeepers will just keep getting another Glenn Frey show at the casino.
Can a possible reason for older music doing better is that the overly-produced pop music of today, created by teams writing hooks, etc. might just not be as good as earlier pop music? And not to sound like a cranky old person, but there is a lot of good music that is coming out today: Sarah Jarocz, Leyla McCalla--to name a few, but they will never be marketed in the same way as 95% of the spectacles shown on the Grammys, etc.
Are we sure we understand how lag and short term nostalgia works as we’re interpreting this data? Had such a survey been done in day 1980 might we see a similar dominance by big tracks from the preceding 5yrs?
I don’t buy the idea that the quality of music has declined. A quick listen to Gioia’s best of lists in the last five years proves my point. It’s more that the passive music consumer isn’t buying what the music industry is selling. So consumers default to what they last liked when they kind of paid attention.
To active listeners, the ones who still read columns and scour Bandcamp, the amount of great music being produced is impossible to keep track of.
A few weeks back, I went to a Journey/Toto concert here in Seattle with about 17,000 people. A very mainstream show. And I remarked that night, as I have very often over the last decade, that I can’t think of a single contemporary artist who is likely to sell 17,000 tickets in 2062. And what of The Rolling Stones, Queen, Elton John, or U2 or others who can sell out 60,000 seat stadiums? There are a lot of reasons why this is happening and we’re all going to agree and disagree about reasons and repercussions. But I think of those days in the 70s when I waited for hours (and some friends waited for days) outside ticket offices to get THOSE tickets for THAT concert. I think there was more ceremony then. It was more of a religious experience.
Remember how the Grateful Dead almost never charted yet seemed to sell tons of albums? There is no shortage of popular music right now but it exists in a world where bands upload to Bandcamp and hope for donations, or simply hand out their music for free to get people to buy tickets for their shows (admittedly not the best business model during the pandemic).
These charts simply document the decline of the old guard while not measuring what's happening now. Historically charts show you what kind of music was popular earlier and is now being copied by everyone. Now that "the kids" are hearing music as it's released, they're ahead of the charts (which they probably don't even know exist).
At the risk of repeating myself, there is a lot of great music from Africa, Brasil, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Trinidad, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba et al that might not be "new" but it will be for those who have never ventured outside of the USA and Canada for new sounds. Well worth the effort.
"What does it mean when this forward-looking art form unexpectedly turns around and decides it prefers the past?"
In this case it means that the dominant method for playing music to people has a strong bias toward old music. Algorithms are currently optimized to pick old music for people because old music is the music the algorithms have data on (less risky financially and statistically). The newer the music, the less data, the less effective the algorithm. Changing this would require a completely different type of algorithm, or not using an algorithm to choose your music for you (the horror!).
"Surely that is a sign of some broader cultural change that is coming at us."
Yes, algorithms being used to herd everybody into predesignated marketing segments within which peoples tastes and opinions will be highly stereotyped.
Yes, to echo Ms. Martiniz, perhaps it's possible that older songs are simply more musical?
Someone I know works for a market research company in Europe. They just realized that they made a serious mistake when determining listening rankings, for a whole country, for the last 5 years. No one noticed throughout the whole period. This is data that has directly impacted royalty payments.
I bring this up because it makes me wonder about the reliability of studies such as these.
Trusting the average music listener with choosing new music to listen to is like trusting a monkey with matches and dynamite. hey are used to having music presented to THEM and not at all prepared to actually go and seek it out.
Bandcamp is an awesome source of new music. And GOOD music. I never in my life looked to Billboard magazine or ANY "Top 100" charts to choose what I listen to. Music is personal and shouldn't be taken flippantly.
Maybe quality music frightens the average listener. Maybe the only exposure they get to new music or new performers is "The Voice" or "American Idol". THAT is a sad commentary.
I am no expert on statistics, but I think a sample of 1.000 people is not big enough to draw any kind of meaningful conclusions on a topic like this. The population of the US is around 320 million, and that of Canada is around 35 million. Perhaps the fact that the list has changed so little during 4 years just evidences a glaring sampling error. How many users are there in total in their Strategic Music Test platform, what are their demographics (not just age), etc.?
Old tech challenged guy here. Not even sure how to access new music.
There is a personal sense of everything such as "novelty," or 'tragedy," and a global sense, e.g. "last week I went to a funeral–slipped and turned my ankle, and it lent a somber air to the entire occasion." In this Age Of Simultaneity–where all possible musics are available at one's beck and call, there is no longer anything that one can call "old music," or "new music." In fact, when one first hears any music, it is "new music" by definition (personal), whether it is a Bach Oratorio or Brian Eno aural wallpaper piece (hear Satie here). Current box office proves this assertion to be true. It certainly isn't surprising that music that was popular at one time will not remain so forever (global). Newness is in the ear of the hearer . . . only people (like me) who have been around a long while might be tempted to think otherwise.
Yes just before the Mongol Invasions, the rise of the Ottomans, and the Tennis Court Oath the charts took a surprising turn even with remarks like "Dick I don't give a shit whether I can dance to it or not, there's a revolution coming Bro'."
Five years is old? I just got a solicitation from Sirius XM for a Who world tour. What stuck me most about the list is that it was nearly all white people. Shouldn't Beyonce be there somewhere? Kanye? JayZ? If we were in 1958, would a list like this be dominated by Perry Como and Patti Page rather than Chuck Berry?
Recently, people on the XTC fan page were bemoaning the lack of new work from Andy Partridge. I commented that an album with just him and a guitar would sell well on Bandcamp. People replied “Meh, he probably just doesn’t want to release a bunch of demos online.” Um … a simpler recording released on a digital platform IS what new music means now. People waiting around for a fully produced object delivered by trusted cultural gatekeepers will just keep getting another Glenn Frey show at the casino.
Can a possible reason for older music doing better is that the overly-produced pop music of today, created by teams writing hooks, etc. might just not be as good as earlier pop music? And not to sound like a cranky old person, but there is a lot of good music that is coming out today: Sarah Jarocz, Leyla McCalla--to name a few, but they will never be marketed in the same way as 95% of the spectacles shown on the Grammys, etc.
Are we sure we understand how lag and short term nostalgia works as we’re interpreting this data? Had such a survey been done in day 1980 might we see a similar dominance by big tracks from the preceding 5yrs?