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Comment by jimbokun | Hacker News Reader

> They knew the words to those songs, but not his entire set.

This has always been true for recorded music. Originally people would buy mostly singles after hearing a song on the radio, then maybe listen to the B-side too.

Listening to complete albums was only popular for a short while before streaming brought single songs back to prominence as the main way people consume music.

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Don't disagree. I'm merely commenting on the dramatic change in his audience, which IMO opinion was driven by TikTok virality. Going from a crowd of people who were singing along to people standing around waiting for the "TikTok hits" was really strange.

I had a similar experience when I went to see James Blake; the audience was bimodal in age and there was a younger crowd that only knew a few of his singles that had gotten real big (collabs w/ Travis Scott and Rosalia)

So maybe this is normal as we get older? I didn't know this had happened with Alex G but I'm happy to hear about his success -- to me that's the main thing that matters, however an artist finds their audience.

Not for alex g. He has had a cult following as the best songwriter in rock music for a decade plus. Up until he took off on tiktok everyone at his shows knew almost all his songs. I guess really the complaint here is just that he went from cult musician to a having more pop appeal.

Was there a time when it was common to have just one song on the media you bought?

The entire 45rpm era, from the 1950s to the early 1970s! It’s why they’re called “singles”! And also iTunes, so from about 2005 to 2010.

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