The 28% Problem

There is a growing, uneasy sense that popular music has stopped moving forward. This isn’t just a feeling; it’s a fact. As music critic Ted Gioia pointed out in his 2022 essay “The Nostalgic Turn in Music Writing,” new songs now account for less than 30% of current demand—and that number continues to shrink.

This “nostalgic turn” is not a harmless cultural trend. It is the result of a risk-averse, profit-driven system that is actively disincentivizing the new. It’s a cultural feedback loop driven by “safe and easy money,” and its effects can be seen in three key areas: how music is covered, how it’s distributed, and how new artists are (or are not) created.

How Media Curates the Past

The problem begins with curation. The media outlets that once introduced new artists have become “oldpapers,” focused almost entirely on the past. Music “news” is no longer about discovery; it’s about anniversaries, re-releases, and “where are they now?” features.

This creates a high barrier to entry for any new artist. The only exceptions seem to be “plants”—artists hand-picked by corporate executives who are then touted as the “next big thing.” These artists aren’t necessarily untalented, but they represent another form of “safe bet.” For the media, it’s easier to cover a pre-vetted, industry-backed newcomer than to risk platforming a true unknown. This system doesn’t just fail to support new artists; it actively filters them out, ensuring that the only “new” music we hear is that which has already been approved by the old guard.

How Technocratic Streaming Platforms Reward Repetition

The problem is supercharged by the platforms themselves. Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, and social media platforms like TikTok, are not neutral players; they are “technocracies” that reward musicians (and their rights-holders) at the expense of music itself. Their algorithms are designed for one purpose: engagement. And what drives engagement? Familiarity and repetition.

This has given rise to the “meme song.” This is my own term for a song (or, more often, a song snippet) that becomes popular not for its artistic merit, but for its utility as a soundtrack for short-form video. The financial incentives are clear: why invest in a complex, unproven new artist when an old, familiar chorus or a sped-up ’80s track can guarantee millions of “uses” and “shares”?

This system is perfect for the “technocrat” but toxic for the artist. It breaks music down into 15-second, interchangeable “content,” and it further rewards the (often corporate) holders of back-catalogs who get a payday every time an old hit is “memed” into a new trend.

How Artists Are Squeezed Out

This combination of risk-averse media and engagement-driven platforms has a devastating effect on the talent pipeline. The path for a new musician is now narrower and more brutal than ever.

Many new artists “cut their teeth” not by developing their own sound, but by playing covers of old, popular songs—the very songs the algorithms are already pushing. They are forced to compete with the entire history of recorded music, all at once, on a platform that values a “meme” over a masterpiece.

It’s no wonder many young musicians give up. They are being asked to pursue a passion in a system that sees them as a financial risk, all while being told their art is less valuable than a 30-year-old chorus.

Art, or Just Content?

Is Ted Gioia right? Is music history over? That feels too dramatic. But the business of music has certainly changed. We have created a near-perfect feedback loop that rewards the old, safe, and easily-monetized over the new, risky, and original.

The real danger isn’t that new music will stop being made. It’s that it will stop being heard. The question we have to ask is not “what happened to music?” but “what have we built?”

If music is just “content” to be broken down, remixed, and fed to an algorithm, then this new system is working perfectly. But if music is an art form—if it’s meant to challenge, inspire, and reflect the new—then we have built a system that is actively eating itself.