Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?
billboard.com
billboard.com
Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection.
Music discovery is easy, relying on a streaming service for discovery is lazy. What's hard is commitment. Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music.
When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other.
When you heard a new song on the radio or through a friend, there was anticipation. You had to wait before you could listen on your own. Whether it was a slow download on icewire or that wait until you could go buy an album, acquiring music gave you something streaming music doesn't.
It gave you forced limitation, which in turn I feel like led to a greater appreciation towards music. It wasn't just something tou consumed, it was something you waited for, finally acquired and then got to enjoy and became part of the rest of 'your music.'
Maybe the next MySpace will be kinda slow. SD Cards, PO Boxes, eventual consistency, widely adopted formats? Oh my.
In comparison, spotify will find and play hundreds of fresh songs similar to any song I like. And lots of songs I don’t like - but that’s fine, because more music I’ve never heard before is a click away.
I miss owning my music collection, and I’m very frustrated whenever spotify is missing some of my favourite music. But any scarcity of musical variety you feel is entirely artificial, self imposed and ridiculous.
I stream from my computer to my phone when I'm at home over the local network in the browser and thru a cheap vpn from my computer when I'm not (and/or just copy a random sample to my phone when I don't wanna pay for the bandwidth) if I know long enough a head of time.
Deff wont show up in billboards stats… nor have to deal with the misalignment of incentives when listening to music on the soundcloud trying to push a song from their algos an artist/agency paid them to do (or ads).
The music I like I can't really find anywhere else to higher degree and ease (occasionally I might find it on youtube, just available on bandcamp, or have to message the artist) so its not really applicable.
> It was pleasant to see this whole world of artists just doing their thing
This is what I like the most, reminds me of FOSS: artists all over the world doing their own thing and occasionally doing it together.
there's nothing stopping you from having both!
I havnt done this yet but im thinking about cancelling my spotify subscription soon and only signing up for a few months out the year just to discover new stuff, then put the rest of the money I would have given spotify that year towards buying the music I want to keep.
I won't have to worry about songs disappearing anymore or my playlists not being downloaded offline and more importantly you are giving an artist some money and not just a fraction of a cent
Actually it seems the entire music industry including the distributors don't want sales - they seem to prefer streaming.
I remember when apple music came out and I couldn't listen to my music anymore
Though maybe you're saying something differently.
I think the music industry is perfectly happy to sell you music at $1/song and even physical CDs if you like. It's just that, for most people who don't already have large curated collections, it apparently makes sense to subscribe for $10/month rather than buy albums for $10. For me it makes sense to subscribe and occasionally also buy something to add to my owned collection.
I think the music industry doesn't care anymore about selling music - why sell you a song for $1 (that you might copy for your friends) if they can sell you the same song again and again every month?
For years before Spotify went mainstream – going all the way back to the early millennium! – discovery was already provided by services like Last.fm where you could see what your friends and neighbors were listening to, and filesharing communities where you could then freely download the music.
They're merely "good enough" IMO. I can go to "Song Radio" or "Artist Radio", and browse through related artists and the like. But the latter still requires a significant amount of effort on my part, and the autogenerated radio playlists are nothing to write home about. I think it's fine that things like the "related artists" features exist, they emulate to some extent the old ways of discovering music, but they're also obvious and they would be part of a music service MVP nowadays. What I miss are solid automatic recommendations, more intelligent than those that are available.
As I remember, Pandora blew Spotify's automatic recommendations out of the water as far back as the mid-2000's. The idea of analyzing the song itself is so powerful and I think Spotify barely does it or weighs it way too little, favoring instead social aspects (such as the preference of other users). I discovered insane amounts of music with Pandora when I was able to use it, like dozens to hundreds of songs per week. Whereas with Spotify I go through these bad droughts that last weeks where I'm not discovering anything new that really clicks. I'd definitely pay for Pandora if it was available here in Spain.
It's weird to me that Spotify being the kingpin is so far behind Pandora in this regard. Is it that they don't care because users don't know any better or demand it? Or that what Pandora did was a technical miracle and can't be replicated at Spotify scale? Maybe it's some business model decision (eg, intelligent recommendations would stray users too far away from Taylor Swift)?
Maybe someone on HN can shed some light on this. And if anyone has any ideas for music services with intelligent recommendations available in Spain I'd be sure to give them a try.
It's a vastly inferior method to Pandora's song analysis method IMO. I'd definitely use Spotify more if it had that, maybe significantly more - I can use it for 6 hours on a given day but then I often give it breaks because I'm on a discovery rut.
Maybe that's just me, and they know on very certain statistical terms that for most users that's not the case and music filter bubbles work much better.
Or maybe they're completely wrong in their approach and they're making a massive mistake at scale. We've come to develop this bias that tech giants "must know what they're doing" but I think it's often not the case. In ten years we could be reading how a competing service took over by offering the same catalogue with much better recommendation tech or other bells and whistles layered on top.
The story I linked also has a similar feel, the music is basically avant pop and neo soul, and instead of forwarding this cluster to someone with a musical/cultural background, a techbro comes up with their own label that comes off as basically "it reminds me of my favourite thing".
From the outside it seems they are really only approaching it from a purely technical point with a subconscious arrogance, ie they are adding the value not the musicians.
Their programmers probably make more money than most musicians on their platform and that's frustrating as fuck.
People who might in the past have gotten their new music from such deeply passionate music lovers and experts as John Peel, or any number of other DJs, are now often using algorithms in their place. And there is a sense that those algorithms are created by people with no real love for music or personal investment in it as part of our culture, which is kind of sad.
I think this is a big part of why music discovery through Spotify feels so soulless, especially compared to something like Bandcamp Weekly.
I guess their next step would be to start creating the music itself with algorithms. You would simply turn on Spotify and it would start playing a continuous stream of algorithmically created music to match your profiled tastes.
I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing collapsed under the weight of some stupid policy of the rightholders (eg, make sure it plays Taylor Swift every 5 songs, or else!) or some other commercial consideration.
Spotify by comparison will also often recycle stuff I've already heard, but there's still always some new stuff in their weekly recommendations. Sometimes it's a hit, sometimes not, but at least it's something I haven't heard before.
This is pretty much my favorite recommendation by Spotify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9982wYPPm0
This way when I play the music (e.g. at a dinner with friends) not only do I know what it is going to be, but I can also tell them a little story about it.
In the 90s, I discovered a lot of great music because it was playing at a listening station at a record store, or because I was browsing through the ska-punk section and liked the cover art, or by flipping through a friend's CD collection. A lot of my early tastes came from gems I found in my parents old records.
It was also really common to buy an album for one or two songs and then "discover" more songs you liked on the album. The scarcity required you to actually give new songs a chance. I feel like streaming caused my music taste to stagnate because there is no reason not to just skip an unfamiliar song.
It is so easy to expose yourself to new music on spotify. Far easier than relying on whatever handful of records happened to be in the listening station.
Fair enough, and yet I probably never would have listened to "Chocolate and Cheese" without seeing the album in front of me.
> (and is accessible on spotify).
It's not the same. Come on.
> It is so easy to expose yourself to new music on spotify. Far easier than relying on whatever handful of records happened to be in the listening station
I agree, and yet, something about choosing from albums curated by store staff felt better to me than being fed music curated by an algorithm like a goose being stuffed for fois gras.
I never bought records, only CDs. My memory is small and low resolution cover art. Browsing album covers on spotify on anything bigger than a tablet will show the art at a bigger scale with better colors.
That and radio were my discovery processes and it worked great.
One of my wishes is that I could tell Apple Music/Spotify that I don't want its playlists/discovery to ever play me music from $X genre because I just don't like even if it's considered really good by the standards of the genre.
If music appreciation sucks today it can be blamed more on the music industry and their idol manufacturing pipeline than streaming. This rot started well before any of these internet era breakthroughs anyway.
The only difference I see in the Spotify era is that if I want to listen to the Beatles or the beach boys, I can. I might not be able to find the exact bootleg recording of Dylan from some concert but whatever, the internet probably has a forum where you can find it if that's what tickles you. Don't blame streaming for what is fundamentally a music industry problem.
That being said, I really appreciate your perspective, and everything you said about physical media, the radio, torrent services, and ultimately limitations to music selection, is all absolutely true and completely resonates, even if I prefer the modern "more music than you could care about" availability.
It somewhat saddens me that anyone under the age of 25 (this is arbitrary, maybe a few years younger) never experienced the sensation of really getting to know every song of an album by an artist who's album you purchased, _even the songs you didn't like_. This really can't be emphasized enough. The younger generation has no concept of listening to a song you "don't like" 50 times, simply because you listened to the album you purchased 100 times.
It's like actually getting to know a friend extremely well that you've spent countless days with, vs. an acquaintance whom you always have a blast with but only meet at parties once every couple months.
Not necessarily true. When Spotify reaches the end of one of my playlists, it automatically starts playing a radio of "recommended songs" based on the playlist. However, these recommended songs are usually the same, with only minor changes over time.
As a consequence, I can think of several songs that I don't like that I have listened to more than 50 times, simply because they tend to be the among the first recommended songs to play when I've finished one of my regular playlists.
I'm not below the age of 25 but this seems like a really archaic statement. This is basically equivalent to "Kids these days have no idea what it means to have to watch commercials and shows you didn't want to watch to get to that show you were really looking forward to."
The patient had a TV in their room, so they handed the child the TV remote, and the child asked how can they fast-forward the current show.
I do think the act of buying (or taping) albums is a fundamentally different experience than using streaming services for the most part. I infrequently listen to entire albums these days. I'm much more likely to listen to some mix of either my own library or an Apple playlist.
It would be more like saying "kids these days have no idea about waiting for a dial-up modem" which would be true.
Or the prior generation saying "kids these days have no idea about the excitement of having a pen pal and waiting weeks for a response" which would also be true.
Or saying kids these days don't know the sense of accomplishment of being adept at reading a map. Also true.
Or kids these days don't appreciate having to memorize a friend's number and having to speak to their friend's mom first. Also true.
Or kids don't appreciate how when you used to travel to a foreign country for vacation, you were 100% gone and unreachable from your contacts back home. Also true.
Every generation feels this way. I don't see why anyone should get upset at this truth.
Yes, it's a totally different experience now, I don't know how old you are but I suspect we are both of the generation that straddles both models.
On the one hand, I do love the convenience, my phone can identify a song and I can have the artist's latest album a minute or so later. Amazing! But on the other hand music used to be a visual and tactile experience too, enormous amounts of effort went into creating album art and inlays (especially with records), you might study it as you played the music, run your fingers over the sleeves as you chose the next album to play, display your music collection in your living room for guests to browse, etc. Or you keep an old album that reminds you of a time or a place or a person. Or the hours spent with friends traveling to and trawling through record shops in the nearest big town looking for something. Nowadays that activity would be considered a complete waste of time but actually as a teenager those were some halcyon days.
I'm not going to say for anyone else if the new way is better or worse, but for me, something has definitely been lost in the rush to streaming.
Streaming in general has changed a lot of things. Probably for the better but can't make an omelette without cracking eggs and all that.
Video is the same way. We've mostly lost the collective cultural experience of Must See TV Thursday (or whatever). Or not. I haven't watched the series yet but Baby Yoda certainly made the rounds. Though there is a definitely increased cultural fragmentation of which at least some of the consequences are a clear negative.
In general it's all mostly a positive but some things get lost along the way. Time to play some Apple Music playlist :-/
This complaint confuses me, as an avid Spotify user. A few times a week when I discover an artist I like, it's one click to look at their entire back catalog, listen to it sequentially, browse the artist bio, click through to the artist's social media to see what projects they're up to, right click and view who produced the tracks to find similarly-produced tracks, etc!
> it was something you waited for
I follow many artists and look forward to their upcoming albums. Why should my wait be extended by manufacturing, supply chains, my schedule to go to a shop, or my own budget to own physical media?
And I say all this as both a heavy Spotify user and a listener of vinyl records. I always get the albums I enjoy most on vinyl for higher fidelity active listening and the physical visual artwork that accompanies the disk.
Vinyl is not “higher fidelity” than what you pay for on Spotify, at least not in the audio quality sense.
But the main reason I listen to it is not that it's better than Spotify, but that it's a physically beautiful medium with artwork and is still high quality while promoting active, intimate listening.
No it's not. SNR is at best 65dB, low frequencies go through processing before getting cut to account for limitations of the medium and channel separation is less than 30dB. Furthermore, there's wow, flutter and rumble. You also have issues with RIAA equalization (many preamps STILL can't get that right) and cartridge loading, that end up affecting high frequency response. The latter is also affected by stylus and record wear.
With vinyl being such a technically flawed medium, ofcourse you could A/B between that and a high bitrate MP3 file that most probably is transparent to a lossless source. MP3 reaches transparency at lower bitrates, as has been proven by ABX (not A/B, those are useless from a scientific perspective) tests conducted in many communities like Hydrogen Audio.
I love Spotify and the actual way of consuming and discovering music. Some say that music taste stagnates as we age but I come from a metal and rock background and I have been making escapades into electronic music (including EDM), funk, soul, and more in my late twenties and early thirties, and I expect this trend to continue into old age.
None of this ever happened when I was in my teens, where I would just buy the metal magazines, go to the metal record store, and speak only to metalheads. Part may be me, but another part is certainly Spotify / music streaming.
My only criticism is that Spotify's music recommendation algorithms are really subpar. When I like a new song, I tap "Go to Radio" and it shows a playlist of related songs, but it seems like it relies too much on the preferences of other users and on obvious connections between artists.
Pandora in the mid-2000's already blew it out of the water in this regard - I remember going through a personal golden age of music discovery thanks to it. I could not believe how spot-on the recommendations felt and how they could dig out superobscure stuff that resonated with me. I don't know what the state of the service is right now but if it was just as good as in the 2000's and it was available in Europe I would pay for it without a doubt. What's surprising is that Spotify's recommendation tech is so far behind, and that they don't seem to care.
Other than that, I can't think of a single non-essential service in my life providing more value than "$9.99 a month for unlimited music". The utility to cost ratio is off the charts since I use it for six or eight hours daily and it costs peanuts.
If there was a nuclear apocalypse and I had to listen to cassettes on my pipboy, I'd surely be nostalgic about the good old days of music streaming.
Streaming/youtube is so ephemeral, even with history and playlists it's difficult to remember what you found so groovy about a piece when it could all be gone tomorrow. I rarely develop a fixed memory of a song until I've saved it.
People are lazy. Automatic discovery works well enough so why bother unless music is something really important in your life?
Expert in field X disappointed that regular people are not experts in field X :-)
That said, I do feel the same as you about the “good old days”. Owning music was a very different experience. It doesn’t help that streaming apps haven’t worked out the UX yet (god knows why, they’ve had long enough).
But... flip side... if I could time travel back to being a teenager and say “for £10 a month (even in that money) you can have access to pretty much all music commercially released” I would have cried with joy at the thought of it. There are so many bands I probably wouldn’t have worked through the catalogue of because they weren’t on my radar or popular within my social circles - even major artists like Bowie or Queen - and Spotify has enabled me to work through most of the great 20th century pop/rock/indie music, plus explore a lot of dance and electro I wouldn’t have.
Problem is I think it’s (the?) jam today and bread tomorrow... I think popular music peaked just before the internet arrived. A good tell is the many festival line ups full of very old bands. If you make a list of the greatest bands/artists of the latest 10 years and compare it to any decade since pop music got going, it doesn’t compare. I don’t think that’s the commercialisation of music (that hasn’t changed so much) rather the financial incentives are no longer there. Appropriately for HN, a lot of kids dream of a building a startup instead of making music.
Ah, a classic meme: https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/
http://www.billyjamesmusic.com/erasongs.htm
This is an old meme because it’s been arguably been true since the 90’s.
According to that list, the sixties, seventies and eighties clearly beat the nineties in my biased opinion.
Part of it might just be a genre shift: The only rock songs that made the cut in the 90s were one each from Meat Loaf, Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, and Nirvana.
I think there’s a paradox where more excellent music is being produced every year, but genre fragmentation and the sheer diversity of it means the stuff that bubbles to the top gets more and more generic.
It’s like we used to get brie and roquefort, but now we have a larger vat, and velveeta is what floats to the top.
>I think there’s a paradox where more excellent music is being produced every year, but genre fragmentation and the sheer diversity of it means the stuff that bubbles to the top gets more and more generic.
This is very true and likely part of it. Streaming services and the proliferation of headphones probably exacerbate the effect.
I think the genre/taste aspect is significant. Yes, rock is a great genre, but maybe it is not really possible for a great rock band to achieve mainstream appeal or even critical acclaim just on the back of good songwriting and great musicianship today, because that is not novel or interesting like it was in the 70s.
Personally I find just the sound of Sia's voice makes her much more interesting than a lot of the more generic rock songs from the 70s in that list.
Even massive individual artists, disappear into relative obscurity when they move into a band format (John Mayer).
Kanye, Taylor, Nicki, Lizzo, Justin, Drake, Ariana, Billie, Miley...
Even hip-hop, which seems like a distinctly individual genre, used to be ruled by groups. NWA, Wu-Tang, Roots, etc.
Our current culture over-values individuals and loves the myth of the one wo/man show. Teams are boring. Give us someone to follow.
You see this with founders too. Even if the company was created by a team, there must be one figurehead.
I guess this is because so much of marketing is aspirational. Most people try to purchase the identity they want. It’s easier to sell an identity with an actual person.
People repeat it often, but it's not true, it can't explain Blankpink, BTS, Twice, Red Velvet, etc. It's probably just americanism to emphasize individuals, but big music is produced by teams (and not small teams) regardless whether it appears to look like an individual.
For example Greg Pucaito is killing it. Amazing debut album doing really well in all the charts. 100% in control of his and can anything he wants like his recent "Fuck Content" event
That is only true if you only use the Radio feature and never notice the suggested artists. Otherwise everything you listed is literally easier than it has ever been.
If you want to complain that other people are doing things wrong, then please stop. You have no control over other people.
There is nothing stopping you listening to the full albums, and platforms like streaming have allowed some unbelievably niche artists and albums to happen that would've never ever made it out of the studio in a traditional record label.
If you aren't pirating, it is a lot cheaper. Whenever this topic comes up, somebody boasts about their 2000 album collection or whatever and simple math demonstrates that you'd get like 100 years of streaming services for that price.
> When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other.
This feels like "yells at cloud" to me. I don't buy the "worse product forces appreciation" argument in any circumstance. I am far more able to appreciate a wider range of music now than ever before, in large part because it isn't a $15 dollar commitment to listen to an album and decide if I like it.
Almost every album in my collection has a linked artist bio or album review that lists influences. On top of that, there’s a list of “similar artists for each band, and it’s usually surprising and spot on.
I’m starting to branch out into more of their curated playlists too.
It’s basically everything I wanted a music store to be back in the day.
Nobody is stopping you from picking an album and setting it on repeat. Everything you could do before, you can still do, just without heading out nor opening your wallet.
The only thing that concerns me about streaming is that music might disappear in the future. Everything else is just your own nostalgia, I don't miss having to listen to my father's tapes on repeat.
The result is that a natural avenue for discovery music is cut off. Consumers will not associate the experience of the thing they're enjoying with the music as has traditionally been the case with TV, movies, and bars. The setting has a lot to do with growing attachment for that band or that song in the first place.
The record companies are shooting themselves in the foot here.
It's maybe a good thing - a new opportunity is open for a platform that allows a more permissive license. Artists that choose such would likely get a lot more exposure.
Maybe the Beatles of the future will finally be creative commons as it should be. Their music is, after all, is bigger than the band. All popular music is a reflection of our collective memory and a common ground to connect with others. After a certain point in popularity, it becomes our collective cultural heritage - no company should own that.
All popular YouTubers and streamers are businesses which is a part that is often forgotten. They are all acting like they are friends with their viewers but in reality they are businesses just like a car wash, restaurant, plumber, etc.
Instead they go to No Copyright Sounds or Kevin McLeod and grab their stuff instead because why are you going to sacrifice that money to license the music when you're small and starting out?
> why are you going to sacrifice that money to license the music when you're small and starting out
Does this also apply to utility bills?
Just use non-copyrighted music. If that isn't enough, you need to pay or just live with it.
Why should the streamer pay for the privilege of being basically an advertisement platform for a commercial product? And they don't, and thus there is less discovery. Hence what is meant by the music industry shooting itself in the foot.
I personally listen mostly to music I listened as a teenager and early 20's. Sometimes I learn of something new and nice from my friends, but otherwise I find discovering new music quite hard.
A new game comes out: Tons of reviews and letsplays and whatnot. Looks interesting, I'll buy. New music comes out: Its advertised maybe in Spotify but that's it. Making a review or analysis is not possible (without paying extra), so I can't encounter it. And thus I won't listen it.
If people could cut costs by using electricity that isn't from their local state monopoly then definitely.
\>Just use non-copyrighted music. If that isn't enough, you need to pay or just live with it.
The original post is complaining about a lack of discovery, and you don't seem to care about finding any sort of solution to the problem originally posed.
No one's going to pay to advertise your crap, thus no one is going to listen to it.
Do you know who to pay royalties to for a piece of music if it's broadcast in the US? In Europe? In Japan? It's not uncommon for a piece of music to be co-owned by multiple companies with weird things like "in the US the rights belong to Warner, in Europe it 27.5% Warner, 13% Sony, 1% the original production company that still exists and the rest goes to UMG"
Do Uber drivers have to pay a license to have the radio on in the car?
In the UK, yes, https://pplprs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/PRS-for-Music-Tariff...
If I want to DJ a livestream on Youtube, I can only play certain songs, regardless of my willingness to pay for the songs.
Certain music is prohibited from the platform.
It is not a business, I am not trying to sell ads or promote anything.
You are right that many (not all) YouTubers and streamers are businesses, but pinning this on streamers for being cheap/greedy and not wanting to pay ignores the reality of the situation. If this was in any way realistic you would see a certain percentage of streamers pay and legally play popular music. Instead, that percentage is zero.
There is no reasonable path to pay for playing popular music, and that is entirely the fault of the record companies.
In a world without licensing, the companies who make money off of art are the the ISPs.
Even though that musician enables free listening via Bandcamp, he does not distribute his work under Creative Commons or a similar license, which radically reduces the chance of lucky accidents where people like me stumble across his music.
I believe having more music distributed under CC or a similar license would immensely benefit musicians themselves, other content creators such as YouTube vloggers and Twitch streamers, and the end listener—everyone wins, except maybe for major labels and distributors.
(Note that CC license is different from public domain: the former mandates attribution, the latter doesn’t.)
The person maintaining GnuPG went nearly broke because nobody donated to this widely used project. Only because corporations stepped up, GnuPG didn't go unmaintained.
This is a constant issue and hardly anybody can survive on private donations alone. Government grants and corporate donations keep the lights on.
One can be appreciated by anyone for its own sake, answering fundamental human needs; the other can only be used by certain qualified technicians.
100% of people who heard my song in background of John Streamer’s Minecraft speedrun are capable of enjoying music for its own sake. (In fact, they may be more likely to listen to my song again and again than rewatch his speedrun. I have gained up to as many new listeners as John has had viewers.)
0% of people who used the app Kyle McDeveloper built on top of my web framework are capable of enjoying a web framework for its own sake. (In fact, 0% of humans are, and only a rounding error would know what it even is. I have not gained anything, so if Kyle is profiting off this I’d rather prefer if he sponsored me on GitHub.)
Why doesn't the streamer use their marketing power to promote independent musicians that don't have big record label deals then? That would be even better because successful independent musicians weaken the music industry and could lead to more competition.
Even if you have gotten a green light from the original musician, go prove this to a giant corporation that will never have a human representative speak to you. (Stories about people publishing their own music on YouTube only to get it taken down due to a false positive were posted even on HN, I believe.)
Thus, creators seem to use either 1) no music at all, 2) their own music, or 3) generic-sounding music from some royalty-free content platform.
I am wondering whether Bandcamp will finally do the next logical thing and streamline the process of licensing music for video creators directly from musicians (those who opted in).
[0] For obvious reasons, few good musicians are willing to publish music on those royalty-free commoditized music farms.
I think curation of music is a large part of the ultimate answer to recreating the relationship we used to have with music. If you think it's "stunning" I want to hear it!
https://robertrich.bandcamp.com/album/neurogenesis
Slow abstract soundscaping like this would not generally be my kind of jam, but my ear welcomes the lack of typical equal temperament inharmonies. I reckon this album is among the more accessible examples of just intonation and microtonality (title track puts JI on show especially).
I wouldn’t classify Robert Rich as someone who desperately needed my financial support, but I really liked the music and know a couple of people who could possibly appreciate it.
1. Direct voluntary payments by their audience (one-off/recurring).
2. Live shows.
3. Payment by various entities to sing something.
4. Organizations (the state, corporations, philanthropic bodies) which sponsor artists to work on their art without having to also do the work of financing themselves.
Still, it's quite possible that would fund less than are funded today. To that I would say:
1. It would still be a reasonable trade-off.
2. It would level the playing field somewhat between today's popular performers/artists and the vast majority of their peers whom, today, aren't funded.
3. Communities should motivate themselves, and organize themselves, to support local artists on the individual level, and to provide facilities such as music rooms, instruments, recording studios, professional training/lessons - for free or a symbolic fee, to local music artists (and ditto for other kinds of art) - so that at least people don't have to pay to engage in their art.
If an artist you like asks you for money, it is implied that this money will go towards funding their next project. It is more of an investment.
Patrons of the arts have existed for a long time. Donating to your artist is just the distributed version of that.
If two people are married but have separate bank accounts, and one of them asks their spouse to transfer some funds into his account because some joint expense will come out of it - is he "begging"?
When a member-funded NGO reminds its members to pay their annual dues - is it "begging" them?
You could claim the answer is "Yes", but then - the world has a whole lot of begging going on.
Pretty sure tons of people discover music through Tik Tok
Mixcloud seems to be the only live video streaming platform that has worked out licensing rights for DJs to livestream without ‘censorship’.
To me, the worst is not even the takedown, it is the partial ‘muting’ of the audio at some random point in the DJ’s set.
And just like most streaming providers, where the license will change on a whim, a video that was not censored, can wind up being censored months or years later, or vice versa, where a DJ set that was blocked, can now be uploaded again.
I have been lurking in reddit on the /DJs and /beatmatch threads, and the topic of how to livestream is very popular.
The current advice for youtube is to make a simple video of all the songs you want to use, upload it as a private video, wait for youtube to flag any ‘bad’ songs, then make your mix off of the allowed songs, then upload or livestream and hope the licensing rights of the music you used is ok with Alphabet.
I am not a FB/Insta user, but the advice for livestreaming DJ sets on those platforms seem to be don’t stream for longer than 45 minutes and don’t allow the livestream to be saved for later, or you could be banned/suspended.
Facebook and Alphabet are the gatekeepers of ‘longform’ pop culture right now.
I know this will sound harsh and obtuse, but if you notice, all 'dope' pop music now for kids is some variant of alternated trap-like rhythmic hihats and a really sloooow beats with a looong, bassy kick tail. to fill that huge nothingness pocket between the stuff, add some nice lush vocals (saying whatever, it doesn't matter much) and that's it.
or maybe i'm just getting old and cranky.
Quite likely. There are a lot of studies that show that we're "programmed" to like music we listened to as teenagers. Even though we like other kinds of music we listen to as adults, they don't trigger the same level of response in the brain.
if you take the medium bpm between the top 100 billboard tracks right now it must be somewhere between 69-80bpm and with the characteristics i mentioned above - and it's all a smear between "i'm depressed" and rhythm and blues.
i still can't quite confirm but yes, i am also getting old and cranky :)
but srsly, don't you feel music is just becoming a pasteurized smear of the 'same' ?
Yes, but only the 'popular' music that's forced on me at every opportunity. It's a great big smear that bleeds in and through itself unless it's just one big scab with slightly different colours in slightly different areas.
The music I choose to listen to, both old and modern, both the new to me and also the familiar, is widely varying. I feel like I have ADD when it comes to musical taste. In creating a 'playlist for right now' I'll get bored of a song that's up next because I've scrolled on to a different artist and already started playing their songs in my head and want to listen to them NOW instead of the song I choose three minutes ago. World music, rock, jazz, blues, electronic, psychedelic, I love music crossing all these boundaries and want to fit them all in.
As such, I truly don't understand the acceptance, by seemingly most of society, of the bland sameness (smear) of the 'top 40'. But it's human laziness and 'better things to do'.
'They' obviously don't feel it in their souls like I do, like we do. And I pity them what they're missing.
Maybe 2020 was just not a good year for energetic, uplifting music?
If a person only likes the music of their generation then they don't like music, they like nostalgia.
There's music I liked as I was growing up, loved in fact, but listening to it now is like listening to myself talking about "what I want to be when I grow up"; it's a child's narrow perspective of the world. Some music that I liked I'm embarrassed by, although I understand it was a journey to my musical appreciation of today, and so I'm deeply thankful for its part in that journey.
I'm not a particularly nostalgic person, so I'm immune to that effect of music, so I think I can offer a somewhat more objective viewpoint.
I think there's an additional dimension to it, which is the songwriting and composition itself. The lo-fi hip hop flavor that you note is part of the production style. However, you could just as easily produce a song with a different style and it will still be the same song.
Perhaps what you are irritated by is that there's no substance to the song underneath the style. That seems to be pretty common with pop music today, sadly. But while that is true, it was equally true one, or, two, or three decades ago.
Streaming services like Spotify never really made sense to me as business model, for the artists it could be a double edged sword at best if they get the desired exposure and total waste of time at worst since they get paid nothing and are lost in total obscurity.
Most artists make money from touring and performances, and unless you're a mainstream artist you're never going to make anything on record sells. Bandcamp cut its fees during the pandemic, and it kept some artists afloat for a while, but it wasn't long after that when you saw the patreon crowdfunding model needed to prop things up.
Having DJ'd and been around a lot of musical talent in clubs throughout the last 14 years its clear most had to have day jobs in between gigs and supporting their own labels on top of living expenses. I doubt many had much or anything in savings and I fear with so many clubs and venues going under its going to take another generation of an underground rave scene to brings things back to what it was 10-15 years ago for many of the music scenes I still went out for. Which may be a good thing, but its still hard to see so many artists talent get wasted due to COVID.
A bit of a tangent here. I remember the TV commercials by music labels in the early days of online piracy telling people: "If you download music you're killing the little music shops in your neighborhood!".
The moment labels moved to online streaming, the little shops in your neighborhood could go and f*** off.
The irony was never lost on me.As mentioned I came from a music scene that incidentally has its roots from pirate radio, literately guys climbing towers and hi-jacking frequencies in London to broadcast locally as well as online streaming, illegal underground raves so it was typical to see how this very same group of artists and DJs had their own labels to bypass the gatekeepers/middlemen as the sound was too 'strange,' but would eventually get coprorate backing after it became profitable and Red Bull even dcreated an academy for many of the pioneers.
I really thought we would have done away with large labels and middlemen in this Industry by now, because while I only know this 2nd hand touring catches up to you; especially as many went from being teenagers/20-somethings with no responsibilities to middle aged parents so touring becomes impractical and often detrimental to any chance of any work-life balance.
But, yeah it was clear they never cared about the mom and pop and it was always about protecting thier archiac business model. And I really think our DNB and Dubstep scene kept many independent shops and mastering/pressing afloat and it was a big part of the resurgence in vinyl in the 2000s we saw. Even now I get a chuckle of seeing the limited color pressing offers/pre-buys on Bandcamp as almost no one who DJs is on vinyl anymore, unless it's their gimmick, so when it sells out you know its just fans buying them up. So why do we need these people now that distribution and fees can be reduced to what they are now on bandcamp and PR/booking tours is no longer the only thing that made those relationships remotely tolerable?
If you haven't already done so, check out Grimes interview with Andrew Yang. It was kind of interesting hearing her view on things as Canada promotes its local talent and the State gives them grants, which is incredibly odd but kind of novel way of doing things if it generates local demand for events and record sales which they benefit from in tax revenue.
If we're making comparisons to the traditional music industry, the streaming services might not be the labels -- they could be the recording formats. Just as with buying a CD player vs buying a Minidisc player, very few people with go through the cost or effort to use many different forms of media.
The streaming services are more like a hybrid of radio stations and music retail stores; they are where people go to listen to and/or buy recordings.
Fortunately I've always been one to seek out more underground artists, and platforms like Bandcamp have been amazing. Not only do the artists get an order of magnitude more revenue, sellers can offer merchandise and physical media (vinyl, CD, cassette) too. These often include a digital copy.
Due to the closer connection between artists and fans I've received many signed/personalised records for the collection over the years. Artists can also gauge demand for future releases almost like crowdfunding.
To me Bandcamp has been the saviour of music in the streaming age.
TikTok relies on music and is popular enough now that they must have some license deal with the labels. I the amount per 30 second clip isn't much but I know people who spend hours on TikTok daily.
Tbis isn't some random thing Im saying https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/gene-simmons-r...
(though I dont agree with the reason he gives)
I think a lot of people just don't get exposed to a lot of great new music just because they avoid the electronic label over assumptions of what it will be. But that label means it could be anything and isn't much better than calling it post 2000s music.
And music isn't restricted to bland rock, hip-hop or EDM archetypes. The spectrum of possibilities is infinite, and the spectrum of what comes out reflects it pretty well. Especially if you dare looking out of your little cultural fishbowl.
https://delvonlamarrorgantrio.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-kex...
https://smallstone.bandcamp.com/album/the-heat
https://firebreatherdoom.bandcamp.com/
https://thesoftmoon.bandcamp.com/album/criminal
https://dakhabrakha.bandcamp.com/album/the-road
https://wizardrifle.bandcamp.com/
https://smallstone.bandcamp.com/album/our-birth-is-but-a-sle...
https://estastonne.bandcamp.com/album/internal-flight-remast...
https://mayflowermadame.bandcamp.com/
https://moonduo.bandcamp.com/album/occult-architecture-vol-2
https://hashiya.bandcamp.com/album/disfigurement
I clicked a few of those links they sound like any band from the last 20 years. New rock sounds for 60 years were mainstream music and accessible and progressive. That is no longer the case. Rock is not a major genre any more. Less people are getting into it. Guitar sales have been dropping, its not popular. For a genre to be healthy it needs innovation and new ideas.
Does it sound similar to what was made 20 years ago? Certainly not everything, but that's where I am with my tastes at the moment.
> The fact you are giving me band camp links only strengthens the point im saying.
I gave Bandcamp links because that's where I get all my music from, and because I think it's better for the artists to share Bandcamp links than to say Spotify.
> People arent going to go through everything on bandcamp to possibly find a gem.
That's why they have Bandcamp Weekly[1] and such, but of course there's lots of other ways.
> Rock is not a major genre any more.
Major as in there's not a lot of really big acts, ala say Kiss or Van Halen, then sure. Is that so surprising?
The affordability of audio recording and the internet means its much easier for smaller acts to find an audience. This leads to more variety, as people can make and find various niches.
Is that a bad thing?
This is what I mean, popularity of rock is dead compared to what it is has been. There is no innovation in genre, nothing is captivating. There is no new and modern sound to rock. Those bands did something different. There isn't an audience anymore to support that kind of band and there is nothing worth supporting like that out there.
If your going through bandcamp looking for indie bands that play 40 person bars with an audience of 3k likes on facebook, your not the typical listener. You seem to be either really into the scene or sound. metal fans might think there's new metal bands are good, but most people of have heard metal, the small differences between bands arent enough to captivate a new large audience.
Like for me, I don't want to hear another band that sounds like blink182, or nirvana or pink floyd or disturbed or anything other style I listened to death already. Rock now doesn't provide anything fresh.
> its much easier for smaller acts to find an audience. This leads to more variety,
Idk if you can make that assumption, there might be more punk bands then ever before but if they all sound the same, who cares?
> I think there's a lot of great music
I think your thinking of something different then I am. I'm not saying everyone out there are talentless hacks. Like jazz or like I said in the other post disco, some of it is even enjoyable and might have a gem or two. There are lots of talented musicians, but they're not really evolving the genre.
People will always be making music but that doesnt mean the genre is thriving. Maybe bands needs to go underground for a bit for a new sound to emerge. Or the 4 person band with a guitar and drums is going to go the way of jazz bands and younger generations grow up listening to rap and electronic.
> Maybe bands needs to go underground for a bit for a new sound to emerge.
I think this is what I'm trying to get at. The advent of affordable recording sessions and affordable world-wide distribution and marketing (internet) means the underground has become less underground.
Before acts would rise from the underground to the radio with a fresh new sound, but I'm pretty sure if you put them in the scene they came from you'd say "they all sound the same" as well.
They all sound the same today because the radio filter has been removed, and you can experience all of it in a way you couldn't before. So the gradual changes and differences don't get a chance to build up to a radical difference before people hear it.
IMHO this is great, as for me it means I can find a lot more music that I enjoy.
But it would seem it has made it more difficult for you to find the next stand-out thing to enjoy.
Or, to paraphrase something pithy a former boss of mine said: they made the best music back when I was most emotionally vulnerable, and now it seems to have gone downhill since then.
...actually, this isn't true. The reason older music is often seen as better is that time has filtered out the generic crap with no staying power. And so I second the recommendation to check out older music; it's easier to find quality stuff. And, like watching a TV series after it finishes airing, when you find something you like, you don't have to wait to check out the rest of it.
So if you are comparing top hits today with experimental rock of the 70s, and measure it in variance of chords, timbre and vocabulary. Yes it would be easy to show how music is becoming less varied. However if you establish the baseline during the late classical era (and limit your self to western music; as is often done) I’m sure you will find music today to be more varied.
If you sample randomly and make sure to include all of the experimental genres I’m sure you will find music today more varied then ever, and even if you go by top sales (and make sure you include music from around the word) I sure you might find that music is just as varied as it was back in the 70s.
Then there the question of how you measure musical variance. It is easy enough to do it by measuring (among other) the chord progression, or timbre, or proportion of the chorus, etc. but when people do this they often undermine many genres of music (e.g. minimalist music of the 80s and 90s) or hip hop, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin_production_discogra...
Have a listen to this, its one of the most amazing things I have listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCIXH6sb1ss
Nothing from the past is able to match this level of incredible stereo effect.
But, incredible stereo effects does not equal great music. Great music may or may not have great stereo effects. Music may be muffled and grainy, but that's a reflection of the available technology, it says nothing of the quality of the music itself.
1966, great music, Zappa was ahead of his time with production: https://youtu.be/girnJH7tvpM
[Edit - grammar]
I did this with books but it wildly helped my ability to enjoy music too.
Tetris and Quake 3 vs bots also work very well to calm my mind so that I can zone into the music itself. YMMV
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jScy-kdCY4M <- this song is beautiful and I hope it makes some of y'all feels some emotions like it does for me : )
Welcome to your claustrophobic terror: https://youtu.be/UMcFgMbhU1w
And something for the feels, this is the soundtrack to ones ascent to heaven: https://youtu.be/LO7x_T7JP9k
I’ve turned off all notifications on my phone. Made a habit of leaving the phone docked on the charger and not checking it every now and then.
Still suffer from HN addiction :-) though!
I realize that my having ADHD kinda throws the whole "relatable personal anecdote thing" off but still. There are plenty of things I can focus on even to the point of not sleeping or eating. But I can't focus on music at all. Even in the absence of other stimulus or distractions I will drift into my own thoughts. Music is relegated to a background activity because it has to be layered with something else for me to be able to listen and not get bored.
I just can’t find time for albums, and it makes me a bit sad. The latest “album” that I listen to regularly would be Thousand Suns by Linkin Park and the instrumental version of the Dalai Lama’s last album.
I have music on all the time, mostly Radio Paradise and genre playlists.
Why do you think the problem you are experiencing is the internet's fault?
2020 is unusual.
interesting error calling Dota 2 "Defense of the Ancients"
As for online services. Spotify is 100% pointless when it comes to monetization, bandcamp is a bit better if you can provide physical goods.
Could someone else confirms that. Because that is not the way how I know it works. Has this been changed?