But I doubt these old playlists consist of songs from the year before last. Only songs released in the past 18 months get classified as “new” in the MRC database, so people could conceivably be listening to a lot of two-year-old songs, rather than 60-year-old ones. Success was always short-lived in the music business, but now even new songs that become bona fide hits can pass unnoticed by much of the population. In fact, the audience seems to be embracing the hits of decades past instead. Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact. I asked my server: “Why are you playing this old music?” She looked at me in surprise before answering: “Oh, I like these songs.” A few days earlier, I had a similar experience at a local diner, where the entire staff was under 30 but every song was more than 40 years old. I encountered this phenomenon myself recently at a retail store, where the youngster at the cash register was singing along with Sting on “Message in a Bottle” (a hit from 1979) as it blasted on the radio. The current list of most-downloaded tracks on iTunes is filled with the names of bands from the previous century, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Police. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams.
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