We are living through a period of an abundance of music, yet our ears are firmly living in the past. Every day, more than 100,000 new tracks flood streaming platforms. It seems like a golden age of creation. However, present music is being crushed by history. The independent entertainment analytics from Liminate, paints an alarming picture of our current cultural trends. In the first half of 2026, roughly sixty percent of all music streamed in both the UK and US was at least five years old. This phenomenon is called the “deep catalogue.” With practically every song recorded available at the touch of a button, consumers are treating the history of music not as a library, but as their primary playlist. Decades old classics are effortlessly competing with new releases and winning. Micheal Jackson’s “Billie Jean” (1983) sits comfortably at number twenty-two on the charts while Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (1977) claims third. Even Zara Larsson’s “Lush Life”, which debuted over a decade ago in 2015, remains the eighth biggest hit song of the year.
When a new song does manage to break through the generational noise, it tends to park itself at the top of the charts indefinitely. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” achieved the title of the longest running number one song in US chart history. To reach these heights, a track must accumulate millions of streams every single day. This environment created a concentrated one winner-only market in the music industry. The market structure is hostile to new artists, meaning that the technology powering it is also actively working against them. The industry’s passive pivot towards artificial intelligence (AI) and automated curation is making the consumer taste even narrower. Spotify, Apple music, and Amazon Music heavily push AI assisted curation, generating prompt based playlists tailored to an exact mood or vibe. “With AI systems, the bias can either come from the data or from the system itself,” warns musicologist Anna-Kaisa Kaila. If a specific genre or independent style lacks popular data, the algorithm simply drops it from rotation. Algorithms are entirely based on past listening data. They are designed to give you a slightly altered version of what you already like, rather than introducing you to something new. The technology is simply never going to “throw a curve ball at you,” summarizes Dan Mackta, managing director of the human-curated music platform, Qobuz.
A popular “relaxing jazz piano playlist” located on Spotify with over 370,000 library saves, has caused frustration due to the top featured artists being unverified accounts with absolutely no digital footprint or biography outside the playlist. This means they are either bots, AI, or spam accounts. While Spotify claims to maintain their strict policy against impersonation and continues to clean up its platform, the line between authentic human art and digital noise gets more fuzzy as more days go by. As mentioned before, Spotify and other streaming services are implementing AI assisted curation, meaning these playlists are made by AI and appear to contain AI artists and songs. In response, a counter movement is gaining popularity worldwide. Organizations like Sofar Sounds are bypassing the algorithmic features entirely, staging pop-up gigs across the globe to help reinforce the feeling of personization. New music is not entirely dead, but it is locked in a battle against an unbeatable catalogue and algorithmic infrastructure that’s rigged.
Works Cited:
Apple Music. (2026, October 26). Top 100: USA. Apple Music – Web Player. https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/top-100-usa/pl.606afcbb70264d2eb2b51d8dbcfa6a12
Find the most recently played songs on Z100 New York. (2026, October 26). Z100 New York. https://z100.iheart.com/music/recently-played/
Spencer, T. (2026, October 24). Music streaming: Why we’re listening to so many old songs. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6kg50nnj0x4o
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