Spotify block old music

Growing up, my dad always said his music taste was stuck in 78’ (or was it 87’? ‘81’?) I can’t exactly remember the year but he’s a huge fan of The Carpenters, Bee Gees, etc. All of it slaps and I’ve actually been on a big ABBA kick lately, thank you dad.

Anyways, this got me thinking about Spotify and how it disproportionately draws attention to extremely popular artists. To be fair, this makes sense because it’s highly retentive and their job is to generate revenue, but it’s very tough for emerging artists to make any meaningful money. This got me thinking… what if every once and a while oldies or music made before a certain date was blocked to force discovery of new music?

If Spotify made this, everyone would just churn to Apple Music probably. However, if everyone did this it would force people to explore new things and they’d likely end up finding some new things they liked. For better or worse, the world does not work this way and this will never get made, but after you read this, try finding a new artist and give them a chance. You might be surprised what you find.

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