Here at The Takeaway we love our music, both classic tracks and new hits, but these days there are fewer new hits on the top charts. 

According to music-analytics firm MRC Data, new music makes up 30 percent of the current music market, while artists from previous decades are among the most downloaded on iTunes. On Spotify, songs like “Dreams by Fleetwood Mac'' are being discovered by new audiences, thanks in part to platforms like TikTok. 

So what’s happening? What does this signal about the future of the music industry? To answer those questions and more, The Takeaway turned to Ted Gioia, who writes the music and popular-culture newsletter The Honest Broker on Substack and is also the author of 11 books, including, most recently, Music: A Subversive History.