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Philosophical Notes: The Decline Of New Music

Philosophical Notes: The Decline Of New Music

No, this is not a rant about the quality of new music. Maybe something like that could be written, but actually I find that there is vastly more new music (inclusive of new recordings) than I have time to listen to. And much of what I do find is quite good.

Rather, this post is about the decline of new music as a factor in the listening habits of people today. If you look at the chart (from Ted Gioia’s blog covering this topic in more depth), you will see that old music, defined as more than 18 months since release, is gaining market share. Ted is an expert on the music business, so he goes into some of the structural and industry decision-making reasons why this might be happening.

I want to highlight two ideas. The first is the increasing presence of music in background mode. If one wants background music, which I generally don’t – another story, I suppose one wants familiar grooves to set a mood, not something challenging that takes some time to unpack. Thus, old music. But those of us more interested in music than is implied by a merely a workout soundtrack don’t have to go down this path. And, as I assert above, there is plenty of new music.

The other idea I want to highlight is what we might call “the Google problem”. As media becomes search-driven, or algorithm driven in the case of Facebook, we find ourselves in a world when we are browsing less and that means we less frequently come across surprising new things. Again, music lovers don’t have to be captive to search as a means of finding new music. They can explore media that brings them ideas. One such medium is The Absolute Sound, which we devotedly bring out in magazine format, because magazines are pretty good for browsing. I regularly browse our music reviews and add the best-reviewed albums to my Roon playlist, the results of which bring me great joy. I wouldn’t say TAS is leading-edge in terms of new music, though personally, for exposure to new material, it really doesn’t matter if some albums you discover are 24 months old or 36 months old or 72 months old. And delaying the review process a bit sometimes allows a more measured sense of what is really good over the longer haul than the first listen or two.

 

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