A new report by MusicRadar on the economics of music he discovered something that perhaps, deep down, we had already all understood: every day more songs are published than were published in the whole of 1989. If then, to hurt ourselves, we consider that 1989 was the year Of Bleach of Nirvana, Disintegration of the Cure, Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys, New York by Lou Reed, but also by great pop albums such as Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson and Like a Prayer of Madonna, this new research will be rather discouraging.
The report also indicated that there was a 12% increase in “music creators” between 2021 and 2022, with the number sitting at around 76 million. Estimates say that this number should double by the end of the decade, thus arriving at 2030 with around 200 million music creators.
In a previous survey, around 120 thousand songs published daily on streaming systems were counted, for an annual figure of 43 million songs. It is no coincidence that Spotify this year announced that it had exceeded expectations in terms of profits and the number of users subscribed to the premium service.
Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, declared this year – after removing the proceeds from songs that do not reach 1000 plays on his platform – that the incredible increase in content is due to the zero cost in production: «Making music today it costs almost zero, which is why we are experiencing a huge increase in content. And this made me reflect on the durability of projects: as often as what we see and hear becomes obsolete in an instant, there are timeless ideas and compositions that remain for centuries. What of what we create today will remain in hundreds and thousands of years?”.
