Is Old Music Killing New Music?

A lot of it the fragmentation of how we consume media. When something was a hit in the 60's-90's it was massive. It was everywhere. It was impossible to avoid. It became ingrained in the broader culture for better or worse.

Now? I teach middle school and do not hear any of the music my students talk about. I would have to go out of my way to seek it out. That concept of a universal presence (constant radio rotation, top 40 countdowns, acts doing the rounds on major TV shows everyone watched, massive presences in music magazines, etc.) doesn't exist anymore. Sure, radio still exists but no one listens to it anymore. Things like SNL and the Late Night talk shows still exist, but at a micro fraction of the former audiences they used to pull. A musical act doesn't become known overnight through those avenues anymore. You could play SNL and Fallon in the same week and nobody would care. There are no major cultural touchstone music publications anymore. Rolling Stone exists in a zombie incarnation, but nobody is reading it in major numbers.

That said, I have no trouble finding new music. But it's also very niche. We're increasingly all existing in a series of cultural and media bubbles that are sort of floating around next to one another but not really merging together. Some bubbles are bigger than others and there is definitely still a "mainstream" of media, but it's a much smaller bubble than it used to be.

For example, last year Variety did a cover that called Olivia Rodrigo a "voice of a generation." (Gen Z, specifically). But at best, I only have this vague understanding that Olivia Rodrigo exists as as a performer, and I genuinely do not know if I've ever heard one of her songs and could certainly never name one or even explain what it sounds like. Why? Because I don't listen to the radio (no one does anymore), because I no longer watch any kind of TV show she would be performing on (very few people do, compared to the past), and if I have been in a situation where a song of hers has been playing (say an advertisement or movie or TV show) it would never have been identified as such and it would have had to compelled me enough to go seek out who was responsible for it, and that's never happened.