Rick Rubin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Some commentators have argued that because of streaming, listeners consume too much old music and not enough new music. Indeed, if you look at Spotify data, how much people listen to older music seems to be rising steadily. Is that good? Is that bad? It’s a sign of good taste? It makes it harder to break in? How do you think about that? I don’t think about it. I don’t think it matters. If people are drawn to older music because they prefer it, that’s fine. I think the idea of people listening to what they like is a good idea. On occasion, there’s a new piece of music that really captures someone’s attention. I’ll say the most difficult thing about it now is that all of it has a disposability that it didn’t have before. In the old days, you would buy a piece of music. You would own it, and you would be invested in that piece of music as yours. Now everything is available, which is fantastic and I love it. As a fan, I love it. When something comes out by an artist that you love, it doesn’t have the same gravitas that it once had because it’s on this conveyor belt of music that’s always going by. So, even the thing you love—you listen to it, but then there’s something new right behind it, coming right behind it, always something new coming right behind it. I don’t know how the music of today can get to the point of the canon of the music of the past based on that short term, the fact that the music goes by so quickly. Even the things we love—the shelf life is very short now. Or very long, right?…

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