With this “mystical, magical” modern music industry, it’s not out of the ordinary to think that the current ‘golden age’ of social media would influence it.

With over 210 million tracks and counting on Spotify right now and about 15 million streams per hour, there’s plenty of music to go around but eventually all songs must come to an end… or do they? With many songs from the past resurfacing and coming back to the charts because of social media trends and appearances, songs have been finding fame once again faster than ever, but others might find themselves falling from that fame just as fast.

One example of an earworm that keeps coming back every year is “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey. The song came out in 1994 but never went up to the top of the charts until 2019 when the holiday hit reached the Billboard Hot 100, 25 years after it’s release. And now, every Christmas like clockwork, the song plays everywhere. With Mariah Carey’s large presence on social media during the holidays this is not very surprising. Mariah makes annual posts to promote the song and her 15 million monthly listeners eat it up.

Grayslake Central’s band director, Kamal Talukder, said “the proliferation of the streaming and the short form content apps has really allowed for certain songs to enter the popular zeitgeist of music that’s listened to.”  With social media, songs by talented artists that don’t have the label or budget of a big name artist now can be heard and seen.

An example of one of these artists is Jesse Welles, who blew up on TikTok and because of one song is now a Grammy nominee and has performed on multiple late night shows.

Social media is resurfacing countless older songs from long ago. Its also affecting tons of small artists and their careers, giving them a chance to make it big in the music industry.