The music industry is churning out more music than ever before, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
Journalist Neil Shah reports that the amount of music released globally since the 1960s has increased by roughly seven times, and he credits this to the industry’s ever-changing landscape.
“Unlike CDs or downloads, which generate revenue once, streaming a song generates royalties every time,” Shah says. “That has major labels bidding on catalogs of music and reissuing old music as they battle for market share.”
This might explain why some artists are releasing music faster than ever. One example is King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, who released five albums in 2017, and have made 13 studio albums in the short space of five years.
Shah’s article also focuses on hip-hop, noting that tracks from that genre uploaded to SoundCloud rose 30% in January alone, compared to 2017.
Proving his point, Brockhampton released three albums in 2017, and Rae Sremmurd are soon to release a triple album, featuring 27 songs.
In 2017, Nielsen recorded that 150,000 albums sold at least one digital or physical copy, compared to just 36,000 in 2000, showing that fans are lapping up the plethora of music.
However, more music choice inevitably means that artists are having to fight harder than ever to be noticed, with fans potentially having too much to choose from.
Topically, it’s been noted that Spotify has changed the way songs are named, with our modern day short attention spans meaning the number of words in a song title is lower on average.
Meanwhile, Apple’s Jimmy Iovine recently said he thinks music streaming services are too similar, and that something has to change, hinting a move towards more exclusives.