It’s not about listening to something new; it’s about the wave of hype and promo you do around each release, it keeps you relevant and gives you something to talk about, keeps you fresh in peoples minds.

I get that side of it. But it seems to dismiss the listeners that don't care for any of that. The jist seems to be that they want to deliberately lower pay outs for older stuff even if it's played a lot.

There must be a niche for artists who record so rarely that each of their albums is accompanied by a 10000-word thinkpiece in the New Yorker.

This is basically Tool, as someone else pointed out in this thread, but it’s not a reliable or sustainable model for 99.9999% of artists.

This only works as long as everybody else isn't doing it.

That’s objectively untrue, because in the music industry today, everybody is doing this.

Found the old person! You must be over 25! Just kidding, I'm double that. And it's true, I don't listen to much new music. Occasionally some rap song catches my fancy. I've branched out a bit after listening to various elaborations on the music and styles in Hamilton to new rap artists. But I still love 70s rock, I'm a dinosaur. I think this article does make sense though, new stuff gets more attention, eps for the young ones.

They've created new revenue streams by allowing the music labels to purchase advertising on spotify to promote new singles/albums. More singles/albums coming out -> More competition for listeners -> Drives up advertising prices. I imagine that's part of the reason.

I'm similar, but I wonder how many people stream often enough minor artists or minor songs from the past. Maybe keeping the engagement up is the only way for non-unforgettable artists to make enough money to make a living?