Was music actually better when you were young?

An opinion piece written for Emelodious Collective, a sister ‘zine to Musik.

A good piece of music in my opinion is one that tells a story, captivates, empowers and speaks to the soul. It’s something that helps define moments in life, soundtracks that play for those times you need them and when you need a friend.

Growing up I had artists like Avril Lavigne, Florence Welch, Gorillaz and Bowie on repeat as well as CD hand me downs from my family, when I raided the CD rack on the reg’ for my portable CD player. Later for my iPod Nano where I sneakily uploaded to my Uncle Pete’s ITunes collection as well as knowing about YouTube to MP3 convertor and the dreaded Limewire. (Don’t come for me copyright laws – it was a different time, not to mention uploading cover art!)

I found out about new artists through word of mouth and through the early days of Social Media, Bebo, MySpace & Facebook, music cover art & short clips were shared around (showing my age there!) This music was part of our identity, you were an indie queen, a grunge or emo kid, or basic (a word thrown about in the mid 2000’s) though not the same as the 60s when music tribes emerged and music defined who you were as you kept to your own music cliques .

We were still able to operate in friendship groups despite different music tastes without being too divided, though band tees were an obvious status symbol and worn over your uniform to show what you were into. The emo kids did speak to indie kids and so on however if you were in to Basshunter or Skrillex you perhaps didn’t eat at the same table as some in the canteen. (No shade.)

The mid 2000’s circulated lots of indie tracks, a go to station was Radio 1, which was completely different to what you hear today, playing artists like Artic Monkeys on repeat. In the early days of my teenage years Kerrang & NME had the paper magazine and you would collect posters for your wall, a friend of mine plastered Lady Gaga over hers, we would get the bus especially to go to HMV to get the deluxe poster copies of our favourite artists.

Kiss Radio was the go to for more mainstream music with bands like N Dubz filling the airwaves, (we all had the luminous Dappy hat don’t lie.)

Music for me was a private journey, a sort of evolution as I got to know my own personality and became more confident in myself. I had a soundtrack for everything, getting ready, walking home, first break-up, first night out to crying in bed you name it my iPod had it.

When I look back and remember the music from my ‘youth’ I ask the question, why was it better then? Why haven’t I been able to feel that feeling I had when I was a teenager walking to school with my headphones on blasting ‘You’ve Got the Love’ over and over.

One answer could be that songs have not got boring but the way we consume it has changed.

According to SQ Magazine and their streaming statistics for 2025,

The global music streaming market is projected to reach $62.3 billion in 2025, marking a year-over-year growth of 9.7%.

Spotify continues to dominate the market, holding a 31.5% share of global music streamers as of Q1 2025.

Apple Music has grown its subscriber base to 110 million users worldwide, a 12% increase from last year.

These days music has shifted, you can get streams overnight from going viral on Tik Tok where as when I was younger you could mainly become viral on Soundcloud but a lot of that was done through in person networking first, open mic nights, business cards, flyers, stickers and exclusive t-shirts.

Another key change has been song duration, it was always a set length for radio airplays but now it’s for those fast clicks & is often released in short bursts to create hype around the track prior to release. These trending audios have been the focal points of Top 100 lists and was really prevalent a couple of years ago, with artists emerging to the scene from social media shares and social media hype.

The worry is if you start mechanically churning out heartless music for the sake of clicks or plays you won’t have longevity, like scrolling through reels people look for the next thing , attention spans decrease and music becomes a short meaningless sequence.

The second answer to why music seems better back then could be nostalgia.

According to an article in Psychology Today –

“Music can transport the listener to past times and places of their life, as well as to the attached emotions. Listening to a piece of music that was played a lot during a significant life event (e.g., a family celebration) many years ago can trigger a deeply nostalgic emotional experience. The feeling is not in the music, but in what it reminds us. A song can unlock all kinds of feelings” (Sedikides et al., 2021).

When you are setting a soundtrack to your years of learning and growing you associate those songs with those times. You hold those thoughts and memories that are linked with those songs, how they made you feel and what they did for you at that time.

We have to ask ourselves has music changed beyond recognition, is it just being manufactured for quick plays, or is it that we just feel so connected to music of our youth through nostalgia?

Let’s circle back in 20 years time and ask the question again.