A draw to nostalgia is changing Canada's music industry

What music did you listen to in 2021?

If you're like most Canadians, you turned to a lot of old favourites.

According to a year-end report from the music business magazine Billboard, 2021 was a year music fans in the country turned to "nostalgic favourites," continuing a trend that started during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While that included re-recordings of Taylor Swift's old albums from the past decade, it also extended further back: according to Billboard, the best-selling rock album of 2021 was Queen's Greatest Hits, released in 1981.

And that change in listening habits has transformed the way musicians are marketing themselves to fans through social media and music streaming apps.

For example, Vancouver rock band Mother Mother just released a new version of their 2008 song Hayloft after it went viral through the popular social media app TikTok.

WATCH | The making of Hayloft 

Song Cycle: Hayloft

3 years ago

Duration 6:34

When Mother Mother released O My Heart in 2008, there’s one song that almost didn’t make it onto the album. It also happened to be the band’s favourite. The song was “Hayloft,” and at the time, it was considered a bit too strange, a bit too quirky for what was being played on the radio at the time. Twelve years later, it became their biggest hit. This is the story of Hayloft. Song Cycle looks at how some of the best Canadian songs were made, and the surprising things that happened to them after they were released.

Torquill Campbell, a singer-songwriter with Canadian band Stars, says musicians have to be looking for success in more places than in the past when they could focus on radio and TV. 

"Now you can be absolutely massive and be someone that no one who listens to terrestrial radio has ever heard of, until terrestrial radio starts playing it in response to the fact that it's massive on TikTok. So the tides have turned, literally."

That sentiment is shared by Nicole Bell-Dupas, lead singer of Strange Breed, an all-queer, all-female alternative rock band based out of Vancouver who released their debut album in 2019. 

Bell-Dupas says even among millennials like herself, the draw of nostalgia is strong, as evidenced by the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas announced last week, which will be featuring early-2000s era artists such as Avril Lavigne, My Chemical Romance and Paramore.

And while she understands being drawn to the past, Bell-Dupas says such nostalgia can make it difficult for new bands – like hers –  to break into the market, especially when radio is focused on established acts or those with high streaming numbers.

"The biggest roadblock we face is radio," she said. "And that's every band that we talk to, whether they are just ahead of us or behind us. It's very hard to get your music heard by the masses. Maybe it's not what the programmers are interested in, or you don't have a million streams of your whole album."

She adds: "The biggest problem is that a lot of people aren't actively seeking out new bands — and it's a lot of people."

Vinyl sales also up

At Vancouver's Red Cat Records, clerk Ford Pier says the mix of people coming in looking for old and new music is roughly split in the middle, but one area definitely trends toward the past: vinyl, which Billboard says saw a 21 per cent increase in sales last year.

"Nostalgia is a pre-existing condition, that's really what fuelled this vinyl resurgence," Pier said. 

"When Red Cat got started there was no such thing as a pressing of a new Pink Floyd record. As the format had a second or third life the companies that controlled that material started manufacturing it for a buyership who wanted to get a new album that wouldn't fetch collector's prices."

With all this nostalgia and new music finding dificulty reaching new audiences, what are bands to do?

Campbell says it's about staying close to the fans you have: his band Stars has created a subscription page where paying members get access to online jam sessions and demos that might not appeal to a broader audience.

He says it's all about continuing to make "beautiful things with good people" — and Bell-Dupas agrees.

"I think that for new artists, know what makes you unique and do that and people will find you," she said. "It doesn't mean you're going to be Queen but if you do it because you love it and people love it — I think you will have a sustainable career."

She also said for new artists, it's about managing expectations and realizing the industry has changed.

"It doesn't mean you have to pack stadiums or have an old-school career because I don't think that exists anymore. If it pays the bills, that's great from my perspective." 

LISTEN | What happens when old music outsell new music?