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What if New Hits are Actually Oldies?

By Peter Don, BPR

It’s a common theme, contemporary music is in a difficult phase. US Music consultant Guy Zapoleon calls this period the ‘doldrums’ a phrase that assumes that the wind will eventually pick up and contemporary music will gather momentum and once again reflect the tastes of the mass / mainstream audience.

The causes of this can be put down to a few fairly logical influences for example fresh or individual music styles emerge and then are almost immediately saturated with similar sounding imitators – the loss of unique freshness or lack of variety leads to boredom and lack of music passion – more or less where we are now.

Media Fragmentation is another significant influence on mainstream music consumption.

Radio listening has been fragmenting for some time now with mass market stations competing with music streaming, personal music playlists, YouTube etc. attracting listening time that was once the exclusive preserve of radio.

Television is also going through its own fragmentation process; broadcast TV still attracts large audiences but they are smaller than the ‘hit’ shows of the past generated and ‘water-cooler’ TV is usually based on reality TV shows as streaming also impacts on TV and video viewing time.

Hit streaming shows attract new ‘mass’ audiences – but there are some surprising side benefits starting to emerge. Recently, Luminate – a US based company linking music and music data published an article highlighting two ‘Hits’ that have come from HBO’s series ‘The Last of Us.’

 Both Depeche Mode’s ‘Never Let Me Down Again’ (1987) and Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Long Long Time’ (1970) have both enjoyed a new life – and a new audience – as a result of this exposure both songs have seen massive increases in streaming and radio airplay.

The graph below shows that Depeche Mode’s ‘Never Let Me Down Again’ peaked around 30 days after featuring on the show.

While the radio airplay has been relatively brief, streaming for the band’s catalogue continues to grow.

So, the lesson for Radio Programmers?

‘New’ music can also come TV and streamers – although the life of these tracks may not be as long as a new ‘market’ hit, the songs exposed in this way may also boost interest in the artists generally.

New music sources may surprise you.

Source:

Luminate Entertainment 365

Luminate Music Connect

All streaming figures represent total on-demand streaming activity (audio & video)

Change in song-level streaming: Never Let Me Down Again (01/01/23 – 1/22/23), Long Long Time (01/15/23 – 02/05/23)

Change in catalog streaming: Depeche Mode (01/01/23 – 2/14/23), Linda Ronstadt (01/15/23 – 02/28/23)