“Remember when music sounded this good?” The business of music nostalgia

This is a warning from the future. You will one day see an advertisement for James Blunt's Greatest Hits which asks “Remember when music sounded this good?” And you look up and think “Ah yeah those were the days, when music was made by actual people, not robots...and I did always secretly like You're Beautiful...”

You think it won't happen to you but this advert exists right now, not for the warbling soldier boy but for dull as 40 year old dishwater country rockers The Eagles.

Their record label's marketing department is playing on the very sentimental nostalgia for days gone by that millions have fallen for with the endless reunion tours of 'big in the 90's' bands.

Nostalgia is big business and getting bigger as record labels get taken over by equity firms who see your teenage soundtrack as something to repackaged and sold back to you as if you'd never grown out of The Spice Girls or god help us all, Boyzone.

So here's the news. Music was never better than it is now. And it will be better in 10 years again. You've never had it so good.

Don't fall for the marketing tricks that make you think you can relive the simpler times again with the simple purchase of a Take That Greatest Hits or a ticket to see stadium pub rockers Oasis.

Go and listen to some new music instead and don't believe the nostalgia hype machine.

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“Remember when music sounded this good?” The business of music nostalgia (text) by Alex Capes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.