Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. Getting busier because there's too much damn music being uploaded to the internet.

According to a Music Radar study talked about in NME, apparently more music was released in a single day in 2024 than in the whole of 1989. I'm not personally an expert on the number of singles and album releases over the course of every year of popular music up until that point – but if it's the case for 1989, it's got to also be the case for some years leading up until that point, or at least close.

But yes, according to this study, right now, the music creation economy is exploding. This report also states that there was a 12% increase in the number of music creators between 2021 and 2022, bringing the number to 75.9 million. This study also predicts, if current trends continue, that this number will more than double by the end of the decade with an estimated total of 188 million music creators.

I will push back on this for a hot second, though, and say maybe using a pandemic year as the jumping point in your assessment here with that percentage increase might not be the best, considering there were many people who were stuck at home sitting there thinking, 'Yeah, let me start that music project I've always been wanting to get out there.' But I digress. That's still an insane amount of musicians and songs and albums more than any one human can consume and fully appreciate. And it's all happening within a single day, over and over and over and over for year after year.

This NME article goes on to say that it had been previously reported that in 2023, 120,000 tracks were being added to Spotify and other streaming services each day for an annual total of 43 million songs. What do you, as a music fan and music appreciator even do in the face of that? It's enough to give you option paralysis.

And you know what? Honestly, I understand why your average person might just log on to their streaming platform of choice and then just pop on some random playlist they vibe with that gets updated every once in a while.

What's the alternative? Just sifting through this endless stream of songs and albums, the vast majority of which are most likely not really worth your time. Even if we were to break these numbers down to some of their smallest percentage points and fractions, it's still too much damn music to listen to. It's impossible.

This is less statistical, I'll say, just in my own personal, very unique experience, being somebody who reviews and consumes and observes music full-time is like a job. I'll say that at least from my perspective, it has seemed in recent years like things really have been ramping up in terms of the amount of music to sift through, and the number of major or notable releases being dropped every year.

And I'm not even talking about merely underground stuff. I mean, in terms of the stuff the labels are pushing every year and putting out there and building PR campaigns around, at least on some level. I know this year I've put out a fair amount of very negative reviews, but honestly, some of the worst of the worst of the worst music I know I've come across at some point this year, I haven't even bothered talking about it. There's a new Lil Xan album, there's a Skillet album, there's an Imagine Dragons record, there's a G-Easy album, there's a Meghan Trainor album, there's a Lil Mabu record, there's a Tones and I album, there's a Falling In Reverse album. I can't even keep with all the terrible records dropping right now. I'm lucky I even reviewed the Katy Perry.

And you know what? I'm not entirely complaining because on the flip side of that, there's also been an intense increase of records that are actually exciting and great and worthy of praise. And really, the only issue and downside is that I wish I had more time to just sit with them, not in preparation for a review, but just sit with them and enjoy them casually after I'm done reviewing them. If you look at my scores this year, I've given out a fair amount of nines, even a 10.

I do feel like we've been enjoying an unseasonably great year for music. There's been a lot of stuff worth talking about. Even an inordinate amount of reviews where we hit a million views or just about a million views within 24 hours because they're just very big, hyped releases. There have been a lot of records getting released on this level this year, and on top of that, there's all of the independent and underground stuff that actually drives my excitement and passion for the most part.

I feel like in previous years, I didn't need to actively keep in mind the need to set aside some focus for that stuff, because in the past, it was more or less staring me in the face. I had maybe one or two major releases to cover that week, and then whatever time I had left over, I was like, 'Okay, I'll just use that to play with whatever albums I'm actually genuinely interested in.'

But now I'm actually having to cut away reviews for some pretty major projects just in order to make room for some records that I'm actually excited about. Because if I were to start ignoring those albums, not only would it be difficult to make a year-end list of records I actually enjoy, but I would not be a very happy Anthony Fantano if all I had time for was reviewing stuff that I thought was mid or sucked or just covering stuff because I know it's going to bring in views and that's it.

So again, I know my personal experience here is my personal experience alone and is not shared by everyone, especially considering not everyone has the job that I have, but I can at least say from my side, that there is a serious feeling of oversaturation of everything right now. It's making it increasingly difficult to sift through everything that's going on and actually curate the best and most interesting records that are popping out at any given time.

Beyond that, though, if this trend increases, I predict two things occurring that are going to be more broadly experienced across the music fandom, across the music sphere, and they both have to do with the value of music, literally and culturally. One, while I do very much and very heavily advocate for, at some point, some kind of artist boycott of streaming platforms or withholding of music or something in order to twist the major label's arms and Spotify's arm to get better payouts for musicians. I very much advocate for this.

It would be great if musicians across the major label spectrum could link arms and actually make this thing happen, force the hands of the labels and the streaming platforms, because these execs, these leaches, these technocratic losers are just living high on the hog. Meanwhile, musicians who are actually worth a damn are being paid dirt. Yeah, these people are really just like, sucking the lifeblood out of music monetarily right now.

If the amount of music being released and posted to the internet continues in the direction that it is, it's going to be really difficult to argue for the value of music when you have so many people willing to upload their music to the Internet for literally nothing. Because if you remember, recently, Spotify made changes to their platform where you have to actually hit a certain streaming threshold of a certain song, of a certain number within a year in order to actually be paid for those streams.

So, yes, unfortunately, it will continue to be argued that because there is so much music out there, that the monetary value of any given song is virtually nothing. But yeah, let me know what you guys think of this trend. Is there too much damn music? Let me know. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Music. Too much? Forever.