Everything comes and goes throughout history; everything has a date of creation and when that thing was alive and/or relevant. Forms of entertainment are not exceptions to this; gladiator rings in Rome were all the rage in 200 BCE, but we don’t watch people fight to the death for entertainment in 2026. With modern forms of entertainment and our ability to preserve literature and other media, we now have the ability to re-enjoy preserved entertainment whenever we want, like watching E.T., a movie that came out in 1982, on demand on our TVs whenever we want, or playing Metroid, a game that came out in 1986, at any time on modern game consoles. However, with both of these movies, there are aspects about them that represent the time period they were created in; back during the 80s, the fashion sense and style of homes everyone had back then were radically different than what we have in 2026, and I’m sure our 2020s fashion will change in the next decade as well. The original Metroid, while popular, struggles with limited graphics and clunky controls that not everyone enjoys nowadays, but these graphics and controls weren’t a choice; game development was in its early years in the 80s, and people only had so much space they could use on a cartridge back then. People enjoy movies, games, books, and TV shows, but there’s typically something that keeps people sticking to the latest releases of these pieces of media, whether it’s revisit-ability, the way it looks, or the message it spreads.
The only form of modern media that isn’t weighed down by this problem is music. Everyone enjoys music from a variety of eras every day. Music from the 80s is more popular than ever; people love classical music from the 1700s & 1800s; people love music made within the past couple of years. There are equally sized audiences for any era of music.
As to why, in my opinion, it’s because the only sound is necessary to preserve the feel of music; the vocals and the exact way one plays an instrument get perfectly preserved with modern recording technology. Sheet music has been around since the 1860s, preserving the exact notes and order of how a song is played so one can perfectly recreate it. People wait for new songs to release but also frequently enjoy old songs on Spotify playlists and such.
People still enjoy older books, TV shows, games, and movies as well, but it’s not nearly as even of an audience spread as music, which makes me believe music has a timelessness to it that the other types of media fail to achieve because they have more they need to preserve and more chances to come off as dated.
