Time is the enemy of old music. Most music consumption these days is by streaming, and recent statistics show that (overall) the older the songs are, the less they’re streamed. Almost 90% of streaming is of songs from 2000 through today. Songs from all of the 20th century make up only about 10%.
You can see that the number of streams consistently goes down with each older decade. Songs from the 1960s make up less than 1.4%, and that includes songs from the 50s, 40s, and before!
Although it’s not really measurable, it’s highly likely that older music lovers own a lot of their music and use streaming less. Using myself as an example, the above percentages are probably reversed, with 90% of my collection from before 2000, and 10% after. Also, the vast majority of my listening is to the songs I own.
Back to streaming…what are the songs from the 60s that are streamed the most?
The above list represents the 1960s songs that have been streamed the most since streaming became popular. It should be noted that The Beatles’ songs were withheld during the early years, so they automatically have fewer streams than would be expected. Here’s a list of some of the top 60s songs as they were streamed over the past year or so.
Here’s a similar list for songs from the 1970s.
Songs from the 60s and 70s do break through to larger audiences from time to time, but as the teenagers of each decade pass away (along with their favorite artists) those songs tend to fade into the sunset too.
In recent years, our local “Oldies” radio station completely stopped playing 60s & 70s songs. It was very much like when I became the General Manager of some radio stations in 1986. One of our formats was an automated station of Big Band music. I changed it to a live format with Adult Contemporary music. It had to be done to make the station more successful, and it worked.
Now, the era of 60s and Classic Rock music I love has moved to a much less prominent place in the world. Time eventually changes everything.
Extra Experiment: Just to see what I’d get, I asked Alexa (Amazon Prime Music) to play some 60s songs. She said “Here’s a mix of 60s hits”. The first twenty songs that played:
- Hey Jude…The Beatles #1
- The Sounds Of Silence…Simon & Garfunkel #1
- Respect…Aretha Franklin #1
- Satisfaction…The Rolling Stones #1
- Good Vibrations…The Beach Boys #1
- You Can’t Hurry Love…The Supremes #1
- Mr. Tamborine Man…The Byrds #1
- Son Of A Preacher Man…Dusty Springfield #10
- My Girl…The Temptations #1
- Like A Rolling Stone…Bob Dylan #2
- You Really Got Me…The Kinks #7
- Light My Fire…The Doors #1
- Ring Of Fire…Johnny Cash #17
- I’m A Believer…The Monkees #1
- I Heard It Through The Grapevine…Marvin Gaye #1
- Dock Of The Bay…Otis Redding #1
- California Dreaming..The Mamas & Papas #4
- Be My Baby…The Ronettes #2
- A Change Is Gonna Come…Sam Cooke #31
- In The Midnight Hour…Wilson Pickett #21
You can see 12 of the songs were #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 during the 1960s. The three songs that followed the top twenty were also #1 hits (“I Can’t Help Myself”, “Downtown”, and “Windy”), so songs with a #1 ranking obviously were given extra weight when the mix was developed. The songs they chose were so popular they’re also all in my collection.