New Music Is Slowly Dying

It's getting murdered by its own caretakers

New music is slowly dying.

• The major record labels have abandoned it—investing in old songs, not new artists.

• Streaming platforms are even worse, promoting AI slop and algorithmic crud.

• Meanwhile the whole technocracy wants to turn music-making into digital content farming—and will spend a trillion dollars to make that happen.

Each year, fewer and fewer new songs reach the charts. Every genre gets turned into a museum, where antiquated works predominate. And fans can’t even remember the name of the artist they heard online—because they never learned it in the first place.

Below are the latest numbers, courtesy of Chartmetric. It shows the decline of new music as a percent of streaming hits. The trend is ominous.

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The decline in 2025 was ugly—the collapse of new music accelerated during those 12 months. But now it looks like 2026 will be even worse.

Source: Chartmetric

How bad is it?

“Instead of going to music school, you are advised to find a wealthy spouse—that’s how you will prepare for a music career in the future.“

Here’s one measure. Do you remember when radio stations played top 40 hits? In 2026, you would struggle to find 40 new song that qualify as hits.