I think we don’t talk about music enough anymore, and as of 2026 maybe less and less every year. That bothers me, because I love talking about music and it’s one of the strongest things that connect people. But while a lot of my friendships are still built on sharing music, I don’t know if that’s true for younger people.
Back in middle school and high school, in the late 90s and early 2000s, music was one of the main ways we made friends. We gave each other CDs, and whoever had a CD writer burned copies for everyone. So everyone brought what they heard from an older sibling or their parents, and that’s how we built a common culture.
Music changed too, of course, and over the last 10–15 years it got more and more Spotified. The book You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, by one of Spotify’s former data people, calls it music turning into furniture. You know, those pieces at your parents’ place that nobody loves but that sit there doing their job forever.
The platforms push us there as well. Open Spotify and you get songs for eating, for the shower, for working, for running, so music is served as an activity enhancer rather than something someone created.
Then there’s the 30-second economy. Spotify counts a stream after 30 seconds and pays artists based on that, which is why intros get faster and the long Pink Floyd intros we grew up with don’t make commercial sense anymore.
To be fair, I’m not blaming the artists, and I’m not saying music was better back then. Still, I had started believing the “rock is dead” talk myself, since no huge albums come out anymore and most bands turned into touring bands.
Then one night I came across the qualifiers for the mor ve ötesi episode of Oğuzhan Uğur’s Saygı1 on YouTube. A lot of 15, 20 and 25 year olds were singing the songs of my youth like their own, so young people who love rock are clearly still out there. They just don’t gather in one place anymore.
I saw the same thing at the Foo Fighters show at my last festival. The average age was probably 50–55, but there were 18 and 20 year olds in the mosh pit, doing exactly what we used to do.
That’s why I decided to talk more about albums. A real album, with a beginning, an end and something to say, is a composition you’re supposed to hear as a whole, but it’s slowly becoming an archaic way of telling a story.
The problem is, I couldn’t find many people online talking about albums like that. Maybe that’s because not many people want to hear it, and to be honest, that’s probably the case.
So for me, if even a few people listen and start a conversation, that’s still greater than zero. I’m not a musician or a critic, just a regular listener, but our opinions should exist online too. And if one person ends up listening to an album from start to finish, it did its job. Do you still listen to albums?