More and more frequently these days, I'm discovering great music from bands who have just recently broken up, having been toiling away for years under the radar for diminishing returns.
It frustrates me because I've missed them when they were active, the first time around. Especially if they were a local band whom I could have seen playing at a venue close to here.
But why am I missing out? You see it's one thing to be a Gen X or Gen Y kid who has just discovered Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" LP. It's totally another to discover a band last week whose nine year career came to an end 12 months ago.
My hunch is that this is going to be an ongoing phenomenon for me as the years roll on. My theory as to why is this:
As you read this right now, whether it is within a day of two of publication or 2 years down the track, at this very moment there is more music available to each of us in the world right now than there is available opportunities to listen to it. At the time of writing, Spotify and iTunes have libraries of 30 million-plus songs, and while they overlap they're not identical. They don't have copies of everything ever recorded (yet).
There is no way anybody is ever going to be able to listen to all that music. If you did ever listen to it just once, (factoring in the shortest of Guided by Voices tunes and the longest electric Miles Davis live jams to come up with an average song length of 4.5 minutes) it would take you 256.673 years before you started over at the beginning.
Couple that with marketing - nobody can possibly be aware of every new release unless one is totally immersing themselves in release schedules and press releases. And even then...
With those statistics, it's almost inevitable I'll miss something along the way. It doesn't mean I'll stop searching for great new music. But it does explain why I will probably continue to have these "why didn't I discover this earlier" moments when it comes to finding new music.
I just hope the creators of the music don't mind me turning up late to the party...
Add to that 256.673 years, the additional years of listening added for all music created while listening to all the already-created music... AAAaaaauuuuggggg!!! It's a vicious circle! But completely understandable. I have more or less given up on new stuff cause it just comes out so fast. i've found myself sticking to genres and eras i enjoy the most, which range from the early days of jazz, back in the 20's-30's, the 70's (as those were my adolescent years), the 80's (as a pre-teen/teen, is where the memories start adding up, and you start building the foundation of your own personal style). The early 90's I had a bout with country music, but beat the cancer. Hahaha. For me, I think my letting go of new music was the turn of the century. I have no emotional attachment to any msic from 2000 n through current day, sad as it sounds. There are some good artists and albums out there, but I have just grown weary of trying to keep up.
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