Briton Ed Sheeran became the first solo artist to reach 100 million Spotify subscribers in July. At the same time, four of his songs were among the 21 most streamed tracks in the history of the popular platform. At the top of the charts? The unspeakable earworm Shape of Youlistened to no less than 3.2 billion times on Spotify since its release in January 2017.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
We have never had access to so much music, so easily. On my phone, which isn’t state-of-the-art, I can listen to almost any song I can think of, instantly and even for free (if I wanted), on a streaming platform or on YouTube. The possibilities are endless. A human jukebox of the caliber of Gregory Charles would not overcome it.
The most recent single from Backxwash or an old piece by Maneige, a Quebec progressive rock band from the 70s? No sooner said than done. Watching over the steps by Dominique Michel, Saturday’s guest at Live from the universe ? Here it is, there it is, in less time than it takes to say Julien Sagot. (No, for those wondering, I haven’t re-subscribed to Spotify. Supporting misinformation from Joe Rogan and his followers still doesn’t interest me.)
We have never had access to so many songs and yet Ed Sheeran is the author of the fifth of the 21 most listened to songs on Spotify, the most popular digital music platform in the world. His songs, along with those of Toronto’s Drake and The Weeknd, account for 40% of that same chart.
Although we estimate that 60,000 new songs appear every day, the same handful of pop artists find themselves year after year at the top of the listening charts, with a few variations. Which makes many observers say, even if it may seem counter-intuitive, that our musical horizon would not be broadened, but on the contrary limited by the overabundance of choices offered by streaming platforms.
Faced with the infinite panoply of musical proposals, we fall back on what we know, our sure values. While the whole popular musical universe is available to us, we prefer our slippers. What’s trending in pop music today, Harry Styles or Bad Bunny, or what rocked our 33s, the typical age when we stop making musical discoveries, according to a 2015 study of music habits. listening to Spotify subscribers.
Has online listening made it harder to discover new music? the London daily wondered on Monday The Guardian, in the first of a series of articles on the current state of music. “Platforms like Spotify or Apple Music give us access to the entire history of popular music. But has this access made us lazy? asks critic Alexis Petridis.
These are good questions, which I ask myself sometimes, when I listen while jogging once more the complete catalog of David Bowie in random mode rather than being interested in the musical releases of the week. Or that I go back to my 23 years and the album Fever In Fever Out by Luscious Jackson, while cleaning my yard, in place of an album published during the present century.
Laziness is perhaps also never to consult my CD collection again, which accumulates dust in the basement. The CD, by the way, celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, even if it is ready for the cemetery (as Claude Rajotte would say). However, it has its uses. It is not because everything is accessible to me at my fingertips, on a digital platform, that I have the reflex to look for what does not come to my mind spontaneously.
The human being is an impressionable bug. He’ll let mysterious algorithms guide his musical choices, and the soundtracks of popular TV shows determine which of all the songs from the past are worth uprooting from oblivion. In 2022, note The Guardianthe most effective way to promote a song is to hope it gets picked up for a TV show, movie, or commercial.
Thus, thanks to Stranger Things, Running Up That Hilla modest hit from 1985 by Kate Bush, became the most popular song of the beginning of summer 2022. And that Right Down the Linea little-known 1978 play by Gerry Rafferty, has had a second wind with fans of the series Euphoria. Among the youngest, the discovery often passes through TikTok, which popularized again, almost 40 years later, the unbearable Mr Telephone Man from New Edition (yes, yes, with Bobby Brown and the guys from Bell Biv DeVoe).
There are things that it would be better never to (re)discover.