The Parallel Timeline of Music Syncs Moves Forward

This piece originally appeared on April 6, 2023 in Sound Signal, our biweekly newsletter that identifies emerging artists, scenes, and trending tracks, crafted by the world's best writers and curators. Sign up here to never miss our take on what's next in music.

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Guardians of the Galaxy fans have been eagerly anticipating a new soundtrack ahead of the release of the franchise's third installment on May 5. Earlier this week, director James Gunn revealed the tracklist for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Awesome Mix Vol. 3 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. By repurposing oldies but goodies, GotG soundtracks have done very well for themselves: Vol. 1 topped the Billboard 200 in 2014, and Vol. 2 (released in 2017) made it to No. 4 on the same chart. These were soon followed by a slew of other nostalgia-minded sync opportunities, and music synchronization revenue from TV, film, and advertising has seen an impressive 29.9 percent increase year-over-year by the midyear mark of 2022. 

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The GotG syncs—largely mined from '60s and '70s gems—also established a parallel nostalgia timeline that the film and TV industries have followed. Marvel’s 2017 blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok famously made use of Led Zeppelin’s thunderous 1970 hit “Immigrant Song,” quickly resulting in a 189 percent spike in Spotify streams worldwide. In the past year, that timeline has inched up to the '80s. Kate Bush’s 1985 cult classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” appeared throughout Season 4 of the Netflix series Stranger Things, driving streams of her music to grow over 20,000 percent, while the use of Depeche Mode’s 1987 synth-pop banger "Never Let Me Down Again" in the 2023 HBO series The Last of Us tripled its official on-demand U.S. streams overnight.

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The new GotG soundtrack continues to push the timeline forward, drawing on songs from artists not only from the '80s but also from the '90s and 2000s, including “Creep” by Radiohead, “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + the Machine, and “We Care a Lot” by Faith No More. It’ll be interesting to see if audiences are ready for this jump and how this impacts the nostalgia timeline of the sync economy.