Ten years after his death, is David Bowie’s musical legacy in danger of fading from sight? | David Bowie

When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016, the amount of media coverage and public mourning was so great that one assumed his music would be everywhere forever, elevated as he was, when he misquoted Smash Hits, to the position of Lady of the People. That happened briefly — Starman reached No. 18, Space Oddity No. 24 — but then it wasn’t.

Every year, Forbes compiles a posthumous list of celebrities’ billionaires. Bowie debuted in 2016, ranked No. 11 with estimated earnings of $10.5 million (£7.8 million), and again in 2017, in the same position but with earnings of $9.5 million (£7.8 million). This was not surprising given the huge spike in interest in the immediate aftermath of a star’s death. However, he did not appear on Forbes’ list again until 2022, when he was in third place with earnings of $250m (£195m) – the highest-ranking musician that year – but almost all of it attributed to the sale of his music publishing rights to Warner Chappell.

Unlike Prince, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, or Michael Jackson, Bowie did not become a fixture in Forbes. With the publication now removed from its earnings list, it is unlikely to appear again on that list unless the company sells the master recordings from 1968 onwards that it currently owns and licenses to Warner Music Group.

Financial success is one of the measures of success and importance after death. Live streaming is another matter, with Bowie also doing poorly for an artist of his stature. He currently has 22 million monthly listeners on Spotify compared to Bob Marley’s 26 million, Whitney Houston’s 34 million, Elvis Presley’s 45 million, and John Lennon’s 43 million. Only one Bowie song has made it into Spotify’s “Billions Club”: Under Pressure, with over two billion plays. But this is presumably driven by Queen’s engagement, especially since they have seven other tracks that each have over a billion streams.

One explanation for this may be the difficulties Bowie’s estate had in courting a new, young audience. While Bowie has an official Instagram profile with three million followers, and TikTok with 656k, with the latter particularly being home to younger fans, the estate’s focus has largely shifted towards expensive box sets such as Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) and I Can’t Give It All Up (2002-2016), as well as a large number of live albums (13 in total since his death). This approach caters to affluent, middle-aged fans – but the releases are outside the price range and area of ​​interest of teenagers who might become Bowie-obsessed tomorrow. Only one greatest hits album has been released since his death, Legacy (The Very Best of David Bowie) in November 2016. In the age of streaming, playlists like This Is David Bowie on Spotify and David Bowie Essentials on Apple Music arguably do a better job.

Bowie also became the unofficial sponsor of BBC 6 Music – a positive thing in some ways, albeit one that goes no further given that only 2% of 6 Music’s audience are aged 24 or under. Unlike in the 1980s, when he starred in Labyrinth (which hits theaters this week for its 40th anniversary) and The Snowman, there are few engaging entry points for younger listeners that are essential to keeping his legacy alive.

It could be said that Bowie’s ownership prioritizes quality over quantity, by saying no to more things than the green light. She declined to license the music to the Stardust biopic in 2021, and instead backed Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream documentary in 2022. The documentary Bowie: The Final Act was well received when it was released last month, and shifts the focus away from his 1970s imperial period to his commercial peak in the 1980s and his career afterward. There have also been year-long Bowie 75 celebrations in 2021, marking his 75th birthday, although this mostly seems to mean a series of pop-up stores in London and New York.

Undoubtedly the most interesting real estate project was the opening last year of the David Bowie Center in the V&A East Storehouse in London, where 80,000 items from his entire career are stored – including handwritten lyrics, costumes and musical instruments. Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has described it as “a new source book for the future Bowies” and may be their most enduring project.

This could be read as the organization’s focus on his long-term legacy rather than the short-term “algorithmic legacy” of chasing trending songs on TikTok and Spotify, which would risk reducing his ever-changing artistry to a single song. Clearly, the use of “Heroes” in the finale of Netflix’s Stranger Things last week was hoped to revitalize the track. It charted at number 34. In comparison, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill immediately made the top 10 after being used in the series in 2022. It’s also only had 38,000 uses in TikTok videos so far – not exactly popular numbers.

This quality over quantity thesis only holds up to a point. In 2022, the property embraced, albeit for charitable reasons, the short-lived digital gimmicks of NFTs, and did so again in 2023 with an unheard-of version of Let’s Dance. Then there’s the official Bowie store, where, alongside the usual T-shirts and posters, you can buy a wide range of socks, a high chair, a walnut cutting board or a baby bib. The site is filled with graphics of Chutchix featuring Aladdin Sane’s flash that became synonymous with Bowie, condensing his many visual incarnations to a brief moment in 1973 – not unlike the way American rock band Kiss became more of a visual brand than just a band. For such a future-facing artist, the future of Bowie’s legacy does not seem innovative or assured.