Written October 3, 2022

Today’s piece by Ted Gioia, “The Nostalgic Turn in Music Writing,” gave me pause – actually several pauses. There are three points from this article that I want to examine. The first is the dearth of coverage for new music artists, the second is dominant streaming platforms “rewarding technocrats at the expense of musicians”, and the third is newspapers becoming “oldpapers.”

First off, read the entire article from Ted G, as it’s completely free (as of this posting at least). Next, think about what your favorite songs are right now. It’s very likely that among them is “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran, a song from 2017. Now, I have no reason to dislike “Shape of You” and I like quite a few of Sheeran’s songs. But, it’s far from my favorite Ed Sheeran song, never mind among my favorites – that song isn’t even part of my daily rotation! But, as Gioia points out: “New songs only account for 28% of current demand—and this number is getting smaller and smaller over time.”

The bigger issue I see is that most “new music” was actually released in the past calendar year. The coverage of new music is limited to a very few artists, many of whom are actually artists who debuted decades ago returning to release new tracks. The problem is, many of these new tracks are simply retreads of older hits. It’s the same reason that older songs, especially from the 80’s and 90’s, have gained such a resurgence in the 2020s. It’s not just nostalgia; this reemergence of older hit songs is entirely purposeful, because it’s safe and easy money (for the rights holders). 

Why invest time and resources into new artists who haven’t yet proven their worth? Look at today’s music coverage; the vast majority of it is looking ever more backward. “What happened to music?” their by-lines will often read. That’s a good question, but that answer is quite clear: new music isn’t being supported, when there’s really no good reason not to, other than to be lazy and just profit off of old artists’ back-catalogs. As Ted says, if new artists aren’t being supported, they’re going to eventually see their ranks grow ever thinner.

As it stands, most new artists “cut their teeth” on covers of old, popular songs and occasionally the odd new hit that gets high on the charts on major streaming platforms. This is where Ted’s second big point for me comes in: these streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify benefit most from old standbys and “meme” songs. Now, this idea of songs as memes isn’t one that Ted mentioned specifically, but it’s one I’ve been thinking about for awhile. 

Part of the reason songs have become memes is the format of many TikTok shorts; put a well-known song as the background of your short-form video that adds little to no value to society. If nothing else, this is what makes me sick of TikTok…

Anyway, it’s much better for those in the technocracy lording itself over the majority of popular culture to rehash old tunes because they’re a known quantity. Today’s formula is take a look at what worked in the past, break it down, remix it just enough to avoid copyright infringement, and release it on every possible platform everywhere and shove it down the public’s throats. Of course, with many of the most influential artists of all time selling off their catalogs to major corporations, there won’t be any copyrights to infringe; you can’t infringe on copyright if you own the work you’re massacring! 

Now, this isn’t to say there aren’t good platforms for musicians; Bandcamp still exists and Soundcloud also still is in use. But, the vast majority of listeners get their music news from what they hear on the radio, around town being blasted on the PA systems, and in YouTube videos, Instagram shorts, and… TikToks…

Of course I’m happy for the older artists getting a sudden, unexpected payday. But, that doesn’t help today’s musicians, many of whom just give up while still teenagers or early on in young adulthood because they just don’t see the point in being broke for their entire lives pursuing the arts. At least back in the day, you’d at least get your name in print, and chances are, people might come to see your show if it was well-reviewed! But, now, unless your song or performance goes viral, good luck having any sort of career in music outside of maybe production or songwriting, and even then that’s a stretch.

Now, that leads directly into the third point. Newspapers have become “oldpapers.” Ted specifically said that because newspapers are supposed to talk about “new” things. But, as Ted points out, more often than not, what music coverage there is often is written by freelancers who probably wrote this same article to be cross-published in numerous papers. And it’s often looking pretty far backwards!

As a former freelancer myself, I’m fine with freelancers carving out this niche for themselves. But, not long ago, most newspapers had a music writer on staff. As Ted points out, if nonprofits supporting the arts hired writers in each major city to cover the music scene, having freelancers would be perfectly fine… they’d get paid reasonably well and the newspapers would actually have music news from their local area on a regular basis.

The problem is many times when I’ve looked at news publications, more often than not, they’re looking at reboots, rereleases, or rewinds of music’s past. Yes, there might be “news,” but it often involves the same old names we’ve read for years. These new releases often are just greatest hits albums with some B-sides, both new and old, mixed in. It’s extremely rare that music “news” is actually new; it’s just someone else’s opinion on the same old song and dance – quite literally. Or it’s all about, where are they now?

In any case, popular music is running out of fresh blood fast. What talent I’ve found is often reduced to playing covers of whatever songs happen to be trending recently or have been requested by their channel members or Patreon supporters. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with doing these things, original music very rarely breaks into the mainstream anymore.

Oftentimes, when you see a new artist get press, they’re a “plant” handpicked by corporate executives who tout them as the next big thing. It’s not that these so-called “plants” are bad musicians or don’t deserve success; it’s just that you have to actually catch the right executive’s eye. While it’s always been like that in the music industry to some extent, it’s gotten even worse. 

Now over one thousand words on what was meant to be a short reaction piece, I’ll wrap it up quickly here: Ted’s right. We need to save music right now, or pretty soon, music history will actually be over as we know it sooner than later.