The history takes it all
September 01, 2021

Hitmaker Ryan Tedder: New bands are competing with every song that has ever come out

"A large portion of the people that are streaming, they've never owned a CD, they may not listen to the radio, and when they hear David Bowie's Life On Mars, they're hearing it for the first time" - songwriter Ryan Tedder, who wrote songs for Adele, Ed Sheeran, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X - told the BBC. "So the source of discovery is the last 70 years of music. It's all brand new, right now. So you're competing with every song that has ever come out". He's got a point - entertainment analysts MRC Data say that catalogue albums (defined as anything older than 18 months) now account for 66.4% of all streams worldwide.