We Don't Need New Music

We don’t need anything new, there is enough music to keep us going for the rest of our life on streaming services like Spotify and the like. Many years ago , lots of shops sold records but some would only stock the Top 30, and this led to the premise that if the top thirty never changed there would never be any new music.

Ironically in the sixties and seventies according to Frank Zappa the people who ran record companies were old guys with cigars who’s attitude to something new was “try it and see what happens, if it fails whatever , if it succeeds we’ll make money” and this resulted in some great new music and lots of worthy artists being supported despite not having the sales (Nick Drake is a classic example whose music has sold a lot since his death but while he was alive sales were very low).

Then next up were the bright young things who saw music as something to make sales from and make money and more and more music was funneled towards what would sell rather than what was artistically worthwhile. However good music still was being produced and finding its way to the market , and with the rapid development of IT home recording has become more of an option. Plus with download options people can release an album digitally without the cost of physical record production, and if you are successful then you can release it on CD , tape or vinyl.

However this digital format has led to various streaming platforms that do make a lot of money but pay the artists very little . It’s a bad business model for artists , because the pay per play returns miniscule amounts to the artist , whereas if a record is played on the radio a substantial amount is paid to the artist.

Now the amount of music available for streaming platforms is enormous, Amazon tell us they have a million songs , and other platforms will have similar catalogs available. The only one I use is Bandcamp where I listen to albums I have bought which means the artist is supported by my purchase.

However these days to most people music is a soundtrack for adverts. Recently a friend got her daughter a best of Elton John which her daughter skipped through listening to ten seconds of each song , when she asked what she was doing her daughter said that was all she was interested in. I don’t know whether some people just can’t maintain their attention.

Music to these platforms is just part of their catalogue , and really if there was no more music it wouldn’t matter to Amazon or Spotify or Deezer because they would have their Beatles and Elvis Presley and Abba for people to stream and pay their monthly fee which mostly lines the pocket of the streaming platform owners.

One of the problems is that unless there is some form of mass advertising , information dissemination there is no way that new music by new artists can break into the mainstream. 6Music tries to platform new music but if people don’t listen to radio and see X-Factor or Reality TV or adverts and film soundtracks as what they perceive as music , the reality becomes that there is no need for any new music.

Streaming platforms do not promote new artists and music , because it doesn’t make them money. Amazon used to promote new music by giving away free songs and EPs of live music by artists which you could download and then if you liked you would buy the album. Yes it was a loss leader but probably ended up selling records.

I’ve included a piece of my own called “FXLA” which you can listen to on my Soundcloud Channel to illustrate that anyone can publish their own music . I included my YouTube video of it , and while the streaming platforms don’t need any new music , I think that art lovers all do. So keep making music , keep writing books and keep producing all forms of art.