I’m in too much pain from a tooth infection to want to write much this week, but yesterday I came across this article in the Guardian via Ted Gioia. The final paragraph:
“There will be no nostalgia in the future if the present is not properly tended to. But if the way people listen to music has fundamentally changed (many TikTok hits are used largely as background music to another activity, for example) then it makes commercial, if not artistic, sense to target those who remember the way it used to be.”
I hope to say more on this theme another day but, for now, I’ll note that various studies over the years suggest that most people’s music tastes form in their early to mid-teens and that most stop listening to new music by age 30.
It is certainly true that the financial trends laid out in the Guardian and by Ted Gioia have been accelerating for a while, with COVID the jet fuel that melted the remaining chicken wire of the music business. But put business to one side. There’s little money for most in recorded music, and perhaps the era of roughly 1940 to 2000 was a historical blip in that sense. Fair enough. But recorded music is a wonderful and relatively new art form, and since it is basically free, shouldn’t we try and do better than let our teenage selves dictate our adult tastes? You don’t have to jettison those youthful loves, but imagine only reading young adult fiction until the day you die, or only watching superhero movies. We can all do better. ;-)