Golden Years
January 22, 2016 1:15 PM   Subscribe

Old music is outselling new music for the first time in history - 2015 marks the first year that catalog albums, albums over 18 months old, outsold newer ones in the US.
posted by Artw (70 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've always said that new music was a fad.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:19 PM on January 22, 2016 [15 favorites]


I have been buying a lot of old Yiddish recordings lately. I wonder if that's what's caused the spike.
posted by maxsparber at 1:24 PM on January 22, 2016 [18 favorites]


And if awesome people keep dying, 2016 is gonna be even better for the catalog I suppose.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:24 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


We will go down in history as the first generation to back up our rants about "that crap the kids today call 'music'" with solid data.
posted by darksasami at 1:27 PM on January 22, 2016 [44 favorites]


Buying albums is for old people.
posted by graymouser at 1:28 PM on January 22, 2016 [19 favorites]


People still buy albums?
posted by octothorpe at 1:30 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Digital sales of current albums still maintained a slight lead, but when it came to physical releases, more people opted for the oldies. And when it comes to individual tracks, not whole albums, catalogue outsold current in digital as well."

(The numbers also don't account for stuff like streaming an album from Spotify.)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:30 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


People still buy albums?

Sure. They velocipede to their nearest musicquarium to purchase the latest Edison cylinder what ho.
posted by maxsparber at 1:31 PM on January 22, 2016 [46 favorites]


Album sales being mostly older music makes a lot of sense. First, consider that vinyl is such a "thing" that Barnes & Noble is doing displays with vinyl albums. Of course the newest choices are 20-25 years old. Second, most people under 40 are probably streaming music, and even downloads are increasingly something for the older generations. Third, older and more obscure music is likely what people are searching out, stuff that hasn't made the admittedly vast catalog of digital music services. (Of course, Spotify is working on fixing that.)

But really. Buying albums is a thing that trends older. Sorry.
posted by graymouser at 1:37 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wonder how this compares with the book publishing industry. At this point we have a ton of available "good" music out there that someone can explore forever without finding something recent. Sure, there's still a lot of good music coming out (just like there are a lot of good books still being written). But I would imagine most of what's sold bookwise are the classics and niche genres. I doubt most people seek out new literary fiction. Will we get to a point where most people don't seek out new pop music?

(I have no actual knowledge of the book publishing world, so forgive me if I'm talking out of my ass.)
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:39 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is just pop & rock going the way of classical music. The "classics" on repeat, forever.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:41 PM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


Finally, some cultural stability! All that "new" music was causing too much confusion.
posted by Area Man at 1:44 PM on January 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


Barnes & Noble is doing displays with vinyl albums. Of course the newest choices are 20-25 years old.

That's not correct. There are more than a few recent releases on vinyl at my local Barnes & Noble, and several of my college students are totally into vinyl. Vinyl is not an oldster thing exclusively.

most people under 40 are probably streaming music

This is the most salient factor in this, I think. If so, it does not bode well for artists, as the compensation from streaming (in current models) is paltry. Hopefully sites and practices like Patreon will continue to bloom and grow.

I think we're seeing a clear generational divide with people for whom owning music (having the album, or download, or etc.) is what we like and are accustomed to, and people for whom music is just something that's "out there" to access via streaming services or Soundcloud or whatever. In other words, those of us who grew up when music was a commodity still think of it that way, and still buy albums. But if you grew up post-Napster? Music is something that you access, not own.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:46 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


So my angry fist shaking wasn't for naught? Well, dog my cats.
posted by tommasz at 1:47 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Buying albums definitely trends older, but so too does buying individual songs. Hell, the idea of "an album" is increasingly obsolete.

Streaming worries me, probably foolishly, for two reasons: first, it seems like an even worse deal than the already abysmal record company structure for most artists.

Second, it feels more vulnerable to IP shenanigans that move content around and make content vanish because profits. Certainly (legal) streaming video suffers from the second such problem.
posted by kewb at 1:48 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I haven't even bought a digital album in a few years now since I started subscribing to Google Play and I can't remember the last time I bought a CD. I haven't bought a vinyl album since the '80s (or had anything to play one on).
posted by octothorpe at 1:48 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


A family friend has thousands of CDs. Each time a remastered edition comes out, he buys it and gives away the CD it replaced. Brilliant!
posted by parmanparman at 1:49 PM on January 22, 2016


First, consider that vinyl is such a "thing" that Barnes & Noble is doing displays with vinyl albums. Of course the newest choices are 20-25 years old.

This is entirely not true. New releases are available on vinyl pretty much all the time, and you'd be surprised at what is actually released on vinyl that is, like, exactly currently being released. Adele's 25 is out on vinyl. The Batman v. Superman soundtrack is available on vinyl. The Weeknd's album is out on vinyl. When I was in Millennium Records in Portland a couple of years ago, walking into their room of vinyl was shocking, as I was expecting to see only old stuff and reprints, but much of it was stuff that was entirely current.
posted by hippybear at 1:52 PM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


(or had anything to play one on)

Last year a close friend very proudly sent me a copy of his new CD, and as I took it out of the package to enjoy it, I realized that I no longer owned a device that could read optical media of any kind (let alone tape or record).

(I've since bought a USB optical disc player for instances when I need to read a CD or DVD, but rarely use it.)
posted by LooseFilter at 1:54 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


They velocipede to their nearest musicquarium to purchase the latest Edison cylinder what ho.

While wearing an onion on their belt.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:56 PM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


I met a guy 10 years ago who had something to do with manufacturing vinyl records at one of the last remaining places in Toronto that did it.

I felt sorry for him. Brief blip of a dying industry, short-lived hipster fad! How will his skills be transferable? Will I be donating money to him on a street corner in a decade? Poor man!

I guess not, if what you're all saying about Barnes and Noble is true.
posted by clawsoon at 1:58 PM on January 22, 2016


graymouser: “Buying albums is for old people... most people under 40 are probably streaming music, and even downloads are increasingly something for the older generations.”

This is actually not true. "Young consumers aged 18 to 24 score an index of 98, which means they are only 2% less likely than the average U.S. adult to buy CDs," according to Billboard. So kids are just about as likely to buy CDs as 40-year-olds are. The idea that physical music media is something only the aging generation likes is pretty thoroughly a myth, from what I can tell.
posted by koeselitz at 2:06 PM on January 22, 2016 [15 favorites]


Does "catalog" includes regular shelf-stuffing records as well as re-issues and deluxe editions and bullcrap "Record Store Day Limited Editions" ? Because I'd find more notable if that number just included people buying a $10 Dark Side of the Moon or Rumours 10 year old CD reissue instead of people upgrading from their mid-90s CDs to a brand new box set.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:06 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


much of it was stuff that was entirely current

I just today received Four Tet's new record. The cool thing is, you get the neat lookfeel artifact AND you get a download code for the digital files, which often offers you your choice of lossless or not. Win all around.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 2:10 PM on January 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


Personally, I think this has much less to do with generational listening habits – which are vastly overstated, in my experience – and more to do with the sheer availability of music today. These days there are whole swaths of music available at our fingertips and ready to order at the press of a button that we couldn't even have known about even ten years ago. Once upon a time, record shops pushed the latest releases, and media campaigns were all bent toward that goal; now, with so many different vectors of music product delivery, there are more and more people getting into things from ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago.

Another big factor here: the marketing of "boxed sets" and nostalgia releases has grown exponentially over the past few years, as far as I can tell. For at least four months running up to Christmas, every store I go to and every music website I visit is promoting the latest re-release handily packaged as the perfect gift for that one person you know who's a fan. Just in the few months before the last Christmas we had usually hugely expanded re-issues of Velvet Underground's "Loaded," the Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers", Popol Vuh's "Nosferatu" soundtrack, each of Led Zeppelin's last four albums, Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk," Bruce Springsteen's "The River," and a 14-disc set of Yes concerts from 1972. Nostalgia music is huge right now.
posted by koeselitz at 2:21 PM on January 22, 2016 [16 favorites]


Am I the only one who read the title of the post and went "gooooold whop whop whop" in his head with a sad smile?
posted by Mooski at 2:25 PM on January 22, 2016 [17 favorites]


There's a lot more history now than there used to be.
posted by biffa at 2:32 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I met a guy 10 years ago who had something to do with manufacturing vinyl records at one of the last remaining places in Toronto that did it.

I felt sorry for him. Brief blip of a dying industry, short-lived hipster fad! How will his skills be transferable? Will I be donating money to him on a street corner in a decade? Poor man!

I guess not, if what you're all saying about Barnes and Noble is true.


Vinyl sales are actually going up, according to ye olde Pedia of Wiki (and TFA).
posted by Existential Dread at 2:44 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


How many people in the 18-24 demographic bought CD players last year? Oh yeah, precisely none. Is it a wonder that pop favorites would fail to outsell nostalgic shlock where the target market for the media is 40+?
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:45 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Perhaps it's due to the so-called vinyl revival. In recent years, the sales of vinyl records have significantly increased as young music lovers are discovering the physical LP. In the first half of 2015 alone, vinyl sales increased by 52%. If they're building a physical collection, it stands to reason that people would want to buy a copy of their favourite album on vinyl and not necessarily the newest release. It seems plausible, judging by the fact that, according to the same Nielson report, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon sold 50,000 records this past year, the third highest selling album on vinyl.
This is a kind of odd assertion, considering that the Nielson report they cite had the #1 and #2 selling vinyl albums as Adele's and Taylor Swift's new records, selling a total of 190,000 units combined compared to the Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Also, CD sales outpace vinyl by an order of magnitude, so it's hard to argue that vinyl sales are causing the "old music outselling new" effect.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:49 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's a lot more history now than there used to be.

In a way that's actually true. As a teenager I went to record stores and tried to buy albums from some band I'd just discovered. Their earlier music being all of 10-15 years old, it was nearly impossible.

If I still cared about that band that much, their entire catalog, which is now more like 45 year's worth, would be just a credit card transaction away.

My kids have more opportunity to listen to '80s music than I did, and I grew up in that time.
posted by randomkeystrike at 2:52 PM on January 22, 2016 [22 favorites]


I think koeselitz hit the nail on the head here.

My experience with high school students is that they just don't listen to music the way we did. To them, everything is easily available and everything is potentially new. I have kids who are huge fans of The Beatles, of Bon Jovi, of obscure 70's-90's metal, of Robert Johnson style blues, of brand new bands, of local groups, of current pop acts, etc. When I ask students to name some songs that they think everyone knows, they can't do it anymore. I mean, at dances there's less "oh not not this song" groaning and more general bafflement.

I imagine clubs are more of a source of shared musical experience, but there's never been a better time to introduce teenagers to the stuff that you wish had been more successful when you were a young person.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:19 PM on January 22, 2016 [14 favorites]


I've always preferred listening to music by the album rather than just as one-off songs, which makes sense because I am old, but in recent years, I've noticed that among young people around my kid's age (20s to early 30s), the ones who are the most into music have been increasingly doing the same.

There are still lots of casual listeners who probably mostly stream music, probably like the people who would buy singles when I was a kid, but the ones who are musicians themselves or just really into music have been putting together good old fashioned hi-fi systems and collecting physical media. In the past month or so, I think I've talked to three different people who'd either just bought a stereo for CDs and/or vinyl or were researching it.

Maybe it does have something to do with availability. It used to be just harder to find new music, but maybe in a way it was more rewarding than having everything at your fingertips. Instant gratification really doesn't feel the same as something you've put some effort into. Maybe collecting physical media and doing more longform listening provides some of that.

And man, it used to be you'd bust your ass tracking down music, ordering from catalogs and reading music critics and digging around in record stores. And then when poseurs would come around pretending to be into stuff you were actually into, you could call them out for STOLEN VALOR because you had tangible, physical proof of the length and depth of your appreciation.
posted by ernielundquist at 3:44 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Anecdotally from someone who works at Barnes and Noble; They guess vinyl buyers to be about 50/50 for under/over 25 years old. Seems like slightly more over 25 years old CD buyers.

Most of the people I know who do streaming music are in their 40’s or 50’s. I think the simplistic narratives are simplistic.

Many, many new albums are released on vinyl. Barnes and Noble has a surprisingly large section compared to just a couple of years ago.

I agree with the idea that much of this is a change in the availability of music from any era, I’m old but this is totally the case with me. I listen to everything from the last 100 years. But I think there is also a bit of people not being excited, or just not as passionate about their new music choices. For the last decade or so when I’ve asked younger people to name their favorite new music I just get a bunch hemming and hawing. Usually the answer has been "I can’t really think of anything" or "Artist X is OK I guess" which is still sort of shocking to me. There’s a lot of good music being made today, but many people just don’t seem as worked up about it as in the past.
posted by bongo_x at 3:51 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


They velocipede to their nearest musicquarium to purchase the latest Edison cylinder what ho.

I use my steam-stilts to get a jar of aether-vibratory harmonium, but OK.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:02 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was just talking with an acquaintance about how the only new music that I've bought in the last couple years has been on Bandcamp, which I don't think is covered by any charts. The physical object is usually over-rated — otherwise, we'd still get CDs in longboxes. But if I'm buying something physical from a band, it's likely going to be a t-shirt or a poster.

Which, yeah, is a shame on some level because the sound quality from CDs and vinyl is usually still better, for a handful of reasons that have more to do with the recording and mastering than the actual media, but convenience still wins.

So, yeah, I stream the majority of stuff, and go with a basic rule that if I listen to the album more than a handful of times on Bandcamp, I should just buy it, because then the artist gets some money. But with the rise of streaming (which has largely displaced piracy for me), it both encourages me to listen to a lot more music overall (lower risk) as well as have less attachment to any given bit of music that I might otherwise have had to buy. A former teacher of mine just described having to hunt all over for a Morrissey b-side in order to make a mix CD (like, in the last six months) and paying like $30 for a Japanese import of an album he already had just to get that bonus track. I remember having to do shit like that, and doing it for a ton of music that, in the long run, ended up not being at all worth the trouble, and I'm glad that instead of going through that I can just pull it up on YouTube, decide that it's meh, and go find something else that will really be awesome.
posted by klangklangston at 4:04 PM on January 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


I was at a meeting with a young colleague and she dragged me to a bar because they were going to be SPINNING VINYL. I was extremely amused, having a basement full of vinyl (includinng Moondog's first Columbia album, which I ought to play for her)
posted by acrasis at 4:04 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


"includinng Moondog's first Columbia album, which I ought to play for her"

A couple of my secret mixtape weapons have gotten reissued or sample lately and kinda taken the (totally snobby and kinda reprehensible) fun out of dropping them in, but so much Moondog is both totally unlike anything else and short enough for an interlude that I still use it all the time.
posted by klangklangston at 4:06 PM on January 22, 2016


the only new music that I've bought in the last couple years has been on Bandcamp, which I don't think is covered by any charts

I came to say the same more or less. I was looking over the Nielson system, and for one, this is the first full year they have even tracked downloads and streaming, so I don't know if you can even compare this to historical charts without a big asterisk.

Secondly, like Klang, I buy new artists from a wider variety of sources - Bandcamp, indie and label sites, direct from the artist sites, none of which I think are represented here. And also the new artists who sell direct do so at lower prices because there are no labels syphoning off most of it. So perhaps the conclusion to be drawn is old music is overpriced. That said, I still hope streaming services find better ways of compensating artists; it's still sort of a joke.
posted by p3t3 at 4:17 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Looking back at the article instead of the actual Nielson report, I see that they at least separate the digital from physical which is easier to compare to past years (since they started tracking digital in late 2014), but I'm still skeptical of Nielson's ability to track with any accuracy the diversity of today's media landscape.

I also wonder if this finding may point to a factor of increased overall music exposure leading to broader knowledge and refined tastes, which then leads to more discerning and conservative additions to one's collection. Or in other words, now that everyone gets to hear everything, we're all becoming the record store snob who passes on 80% of new music because we've already heard it, but better.
posted by p3t3 at 4:42 PM on January 22, 2016


I'm not at all surprised. As a wise man named Homer Simpson once said, "Why do you need new bands? Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974, it's a scientific fact."
posted by bawanaal at 4:44 PM on January 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


Perhaps whoever comes after whoever comes after Taytay or Bieber or whoever won't actually release their music in a purchasable format designed for listening. There'll be premium-priced deluxe commemorative vinyls in lavish packaging (the commemorative plates of music formats, intended more for presentation than listening) and, other than that, YouTube/Spotify streaming (monetised to the hilt, of course).
posted by acb at 4:56 PM on January 22, 2016


Heh. At the beginning of January I looked back on my 31 music purchases for 2015, and was amused to see that I had only acquired one 2015 release - and that was Wilco's new album, which they were giving away for free on their website, and which I probably wouldn't have paid money for. I thought to myself, "Hm, that doesn't make 2015 look very good." Now I feel like a representative sample of something bigger. Which is an odd feeling, because I usually feel so out of step with modern society.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:12 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


The divide between buying albums & physical copies vs. downloads & streaming is probably the biggest factor, sure. But I've found that lots of Millennials genuinely like Gen X-era music. I hear it in classrooms all the time as a teacher.

It's not what I expected. I always figured we'd have as big a gap there as we had with our parents. But it looks like Millennials are closer to Gen X than we Gen Xers were with the Baby Boomers.

I hope that continues.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 5:50 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


When the definition of "old music" is like, that stuff from Black Eyed Peas...well, yeah.

I didn't read it.
posted by Chuffy at 5:51 PM on January 22, 2016


I'm 32 and a musician so I'm probably an outlier but I buy vinyl and download full albums or torrents and keep the mp3s stored manually. I only have a fraction of the huge CD collection I used to have, mostly for nostalgic or completist reasons. But I generally use torrenting if I want to hear something classic and more mainstream, no reason to pay for Thin Lizzy or Lou Reed albums.

My partner is younger, mid 20s and her friends and her all buy vinyl of new and old artists but don't bother with cds or mp3s out side if the home/in cars. The stream from youtube. My youtube account is filled with suggestions for italian hardcore punk and spanish pop from the 80s and 90snot readily accessible on vinyl but easily streamed.

I have a few recording engineer friends who have Apple music and use it in the car but are slightly embarrassed.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:55 PM on January 22, 2016


It's not what I expected. I always figured we'd have as big a gap there as we had with our parents. But it looks like Millennials are closer to Gen X than we Gen Xers were with the Baby Boomers.

Most of the 20somethings that I know (mostly through the furry fandom, so maybe not a representative sample) are WAY into 80s everything. Music in particular. Its odd to talk to someone young enough to be my kid and have them going on about Frankie and Pet Shop Boys and other big MTV staples. But there you go.

(When I was in my 20s, I was getting into 60s psychedelia like It's A Beautiful Day and Firesign Theatre, so maybe it's not that big a leap, really.)
posted by hippybear at 5:57 PM on January 22, 2016


I should say that I'll still purchase music from an artist that is recent or underground, and usually tip if there's an option. Thinking about the new music I purchased that was released last year, I ordered 3 records online (with downloads), bought a comedy music album digitally and tipped, and bought a couple singles from google play. Pretty shabby considering the amount I spent on re-releases or used vinyl.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:59 PM on January 22, 2016


I own a brick and mortar record store (no online sales) and will say: many, many of my customers are in their 20s. Many. I would not say that's skewing old. About 25% are female. I only deal in used vinyl but still see used copies of new records often. I can "add" a few hundred records to my inventory every week and sales are brisk.

The linked article doesn't take into consideration used vinyl and 90% or more of those are going to be "old music" so of course old music outsells new music. Always has, they just have no way of tracking it since oldskool stores like mine don't use computers.

Since I Instagram most anything interesting, records can literally sell in less than 60 seconds. I can sometimes get 10 calls about the same records within 3 minutes of posting a photo. No exaggeration.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:31 PM on January 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


I was visiting my parents in their retirement golf community last weekend (ugh). My mother insisted we make a stop at Barnes and Noble so we could pick up Huey Lewis and the News' Sports on CD.

"Mom, aren't you using the Spotify account my sister and I got you for your birthday?" (Not to mention her old cassette, and my old vinyl copy)

"Yeah, but I need to listen to it in the car."

Lol old people don't understand technology
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:40 PM on January 22, 2016


Maybe human musicians playing melodies in a major key are better than *bLo33P!*~

SkWeEEedaaawwwwwwwwwkkkkssshhhhhkhkhk0074...0

GATOR!!
posted by petebest at 6:43 PM on January 22, 2016


Just got my copy of SF Sorrow by the Pretty Things in the mail today.
posted by lester at 7:23 PM on January 22, 2016


One thing that struck me about the subscription Apple music service was that since I already had 30 years worth of CDs bought their value proposition to me was rather iffy.

I figured I'd rather just take the $10/mo and buy 10 songs with it, so when Costco was offering 20% off $100 Apple Store cards I got that.

But young people just entering their media consumption curve might get hooked on this $10/mo music rental approach, and after 30 years end up spending more than I have, and have nothing (other than a much, much better music selection starting out, LOL)
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:34 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've been thinking a lot about how I take in music, lately. I bought a ton of music in my teens and early 20's, starting with cassettes, and moving on to CD's. This would be late-eighties-early nineties. Around mid-nineties, I stopped listening to radio and my music consumption dropped with it. Radio programming, at some point, failed me.

Nowadays, I subscribe to a ton of YouTube Channels and, lo and behold, I'm buying music again, this time from young artists with Patreon accounts and Kickstarter campaigns. The kids are all right.

I'm not a vinyl purist; I actually prefer the crisper,cooler sound of CD's. I do understand the appeal of the package; larger art, album notes that you can read without glasses. I think vinyl's resurgence has something to do with the glut of music that we have available to us. It has never been easier to find the stuff that truly moves you and when you find it, you want it in a format that you can hold in your hands.
posted by Eikonaut at 7:49 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Most of the 20somethings that I know (mostly through the furry fandom, so maybe not a representative sample) are WAY into 80s everything. Music in particular. Its odd to talk to someone young enough to be my kid and have them going on about Frankie and Pet Shop Boys and other big MTV staples. But there you go."

What's weirder to me is that the '80s revival now seems to have lasted longer than any other decade's ride on the nostalgia-go-round, but to be fair the schmindie of the mid/late '90s never ended and has been the default guitar music for about the last 15 years.

I kinda wonder if that's because the '80s were the last decade before rap and r & b took over pop music, and being an '80s fan now is like being a Glenn Miller fan in the '70s.
posted by klangklangston at 8:48 PM on January 22, 2016


The 80s revival is way, way better than the actual 80s, which were mostly garbage. I have mixed feelings about the ahistoricality of this.
posted by Artw at 8:54 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think koeselitz is basically right, but I think it's also possible that we have achieved a certain level of stability in modern "pop music" from a musicological perspective.

Recording technology has gotten to the flatter part at the upper end of the S-Curve, as far as fidelity and general capability goes, and the whole supergenre of things which fall under "pop" music has not undergone a huge level of evolution in decades.

Aside from production style, once rock and roll evolved (largely) out of the blues, a huge percentage of well-regarded pop songs from 1965 (50 years ago) could have been written today with virtually nobody noticing. You can't say that about most popular songs written in 1915.
posted by chimaera at 9:52 PM on January 22, 2016


When I ask students to name some songs that they think everyone knows, they can't do it anymore.

The funny thing is that despite this if you turn on a commercial radio (that plays contemporary music) you will notice they still play the same songs practically every hour of every day.
posted by atoxyl at 10:20 PM on January 22, 2016


I bought the new David Bowie album when he died because I wanted to remember him. But I'll probably never open it--I stream it on Apple Music.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:27 PM on January 22, 2016


How are people tipping when they buy stuff?

I will be delighted when all over the Internet there is one click tipping--both for bands and for journalism.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:42 PM on January 22, 2016


Let me ask, too--for the Google Play subscribers, how are you finding the YouTube integration into the service? I rarely listen to music on YouTube for a bunch of reasons, but being able to stream stuff from it through a decent interface sounds pretty nifty.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:45 PM on January 22, 2016


I would not have predicted this but I own quite a few CDs because it was literally cheaper to buy the CD from Amazon than to buy the mp3 version. And note that in most cases, Amazon has pre-ripped the tracks into mp3 files so when you buy the physical CD, you immediately get access to the mp3s too.

I would say that the future is complicated. On one hand, streaming is a huge thing now. On the other hand, One Direction has sold a hell of a lot of disks. On the third hand, smaller, independent YouTube musicians releasing EPs on iTunes has become a pretty big thing. On the fourth hand, most of the people I know really into records are in their 20s. I think what this means is that there are a lot of ways to hear music and the future probably has room for most(*) of them.

(*) Sorry, 8-Track. Here, thanks for playing and have a copy of our home game.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 5:05 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


The kid is doing a bibliography thing in 1st grade. Teacher is introducing them to the Beatles. He came home excited about it. I dusted off a stack of records that haven't been played since I was a kid - my mom's albums, I inherited them, but hadn't actually had a working record player until this last Christmas. He was thrilled to listen to his grandma's copies of Abbey Road and Let It Be. I also discovered - to my surprise - that the 1972 vintage release of Sgt Pepper I had inherited didn't have the locked groove repeat track that the British versions did. Spent so long listening to the CD version that I never realized mom's record didn't do that. (Plus my dumb-ass brother had dropped the album and chipped it, if you place the needle very carefully you can still play the entire 1st track, but most of the lead-in groove is gone in that one spot... Maybe I should buy a replacement disk? I have seen the same vintage release (based on the code scratched into the vinyl) for like $20 online)

Anyway all that is old is new again, I like new music but delight in introducing my son to stuff that was old when I was a kid. He's equally happy with all of it. Good music is good no matter what the age.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:09 AM on January 23, 2016


Regarding vinyl and age, I always assumed that the only ones buying it where 20-30 ish who hadn't actually lived through the switch from vinyl to tape to CD to MP3. I'm 45 and I thank Glob for streaming services and not having to worry about my precious 'record collection' getting scratched, broken, stolen, etc. I also threw out all my CDs as soon as it became apparent that MP3 where around to stay.
I get some trust-fundies with $5.000 audio equipment and special climate controlled rooms for storing their vinyl records going on about the 'warmth', I really do and more power to them, but for the rest of us? Not so much.
posted by signal at 12:43 PM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don’t really have an allegiance to a format, I have tons of CD’s, vinyl, MP3’s. They’re delivery formats, they work different for different situations.

The only thing I can’t get with is streaming. I’ve tried it on and off since the earliest days, I’ve had accounts with different services, it just doesn’t connect with me and offer what I want. There’s just something about the amount of work involved in actually setting up and using it compared to the payoff. Even Netflix. I’ve had Netflix streaming since it was introduced and can count on my fingers of one hand the number of things I’ve watched.
posted by bongo_x at 1:07 PM on January 23, 2016


Most of my time spent listening to music I'm just not going to get up to flip the record or change the cd. Apple Music is a godsend.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:11 PM on January 23, 2016


persona au gratin: "Let me ask, too--for the Google Play subscribers, how are you finding the YouTube integration into the service? I rarely listen to music on YouTube for a bunch of reasons, but being able to stream stuff from it through a decent interface sounds pretty nifty."

I'm not sure what that means. I've been using Google Play Music for a couple of years but it doesn't seem to have any integration or relationship with YouTube as far as I can tell.
posted by octothorpe at 1:53 PM on January 23, 2016


Count me in as thinking this has nothing to do with tastes and is entirely due to music streaming services.

I'm 27 and haven't purchased almost any music in several years - basically since I discovered Spotify. This is the same story for most of the people I know in my age bracket.

The only people I know that still buy music are:
1. Older generations (presumably buying a higher percentage of older albums).
2. People that enjoy buying old favorites on vinyl.

Show me the same data with streaming added in and then we'll talk.
posted by Defenestrator at 5:41 PM on January 23, 2016


Related to this (and including some of the same points), a very in-depth and great article on Stereogum last week about rather dire straits in the music industry. There's some promising news elsewhere, though, like Apple Music and Spotify both growing their subscribers (instead of cannibalizing each other).

Personally, I like to consider myself a lover of old *and* new -- I listen to music every day, and get (almost) as excited about new stuff as I do about all my gold soundz of the '60s, '70s, '80s & '90s. (Granted, I sure don't buy much of it; I like to flit from Rdio to Google Play to Spotify to Apple Music and back just for kicks.)
posted by saintjoe at 6:08 PM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


lol at renting music
posted by entropicamericana at 7:05 PM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


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