The OneRepublic frontman is not impressed by music streaming as he finds it frustrating that the band's new music was recently outperformed by their old song.
- Aug 28, 2021
AceShowbiz - Ryan Tedder blames streaming platforms for undermining new music.
The OneRepublic star has bemoaned the impact of streaming services like Spotify, observing that their business model is having a negative impact on new artists.
"The frustrating thing about music is that now there's too much of it," he told the BBC.
"There's 62,000 songs a day uploaded to Spotify, so it's a lot harder to get heard."
Ryan noted that new artists are now facing intense competition from almost every well-known artist in history, as the streaming services all boast vast catalogues.
"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," he said.
"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."
Earlier this year, Ryan was shocked to discover that OneRepublic's new single "Run" was being outperformed by "Counting Stars", a track they originally released back in 2013.
The singer - who has previously worked with the likes of Adele and Taylor Swift - described the current musical landscape as a "nightmare" for artists.
"I was like, 'What the hell is going on?' And my manager was like, 'Oh, some kid took Counting Stars, and he sped it up and put it on TikTok, and it turned into a thing," he recalled.
"It's a nightmare, because we live in a time when track seven off an album that you released six years ago has a greater chance of becoming a hit than the current song you're promoting. It defies gravity."
