Culture & Entertainment

Music streaming: Why we’re listening to so many old songs

Music streaming: Why we’re listening to so many old songs


Even after a song has gone viral, some musicians say it can be hard to promote subsequent releases and sustain a career. A platform like TikTok isn’t set up to boost artists, it’s there to create viral moments around a single song.

“It’s easier [today] for folks to be passive fans,” noted J Erving, the founder of Raye’s distribution company, Human Re Sources, in a recent interview with Billboard, external.

Zara Larsson performs onstage during the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on September 18, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“For you to consider yourself broken [as a mainstream artist], people need to care about you beyond the song. Where is the connectivity? Are people really dialled in in a deeper way?”

It’s a problem the music industry is keen to tackle.

Olivia Dean speaks on stage next to Sam Fender, during the BRIT Awards at the Co-op Live Arena, in Manchester, Britain, February 28, 2026.

Oliver Schusser, the Head of Apple Music, says his streaming service is working to champion “tomorrow’s artists” in its curation.

J Casa - a man with long brown hair and a moustache touches his sunglasses while bending down towards the camera. He is wearing a light green uit and a light ye

“You know, we do the Super Bowl halftime show, we need to make sure that we still have performers in 10, 20, 30 years,” he tells BBC News.

“Because if you look back at the performers we had in the last four years, they all started somewhere before they got to the world’s biggest stage.”

A man with a hair bun sitting at a drum set. He is wearing a black t-shirt and on a stage with purple and blue lighting.

Other organisations like Sofar Sounds work exclusively with grassroots musicians, putting on intimate pop-up gigs in cities across the globe.

This October, its Shoreditch Sofar Fringe festival showcased a whole host of artists like East London rapper J Casa.



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I studied medicine at Trinity College, Oxford, and qualified as a doctor. There are already many excellent blogs exploring faith, humanism, atheism, politics, rationalism, philosophical doubt and everything in between. But I don't intend to limit myself to any particular subject. This is simply a space where I'll share whatever comes to mind, whether it's something I've been thinking about for years or just a passing thought from the day.