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Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

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Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#21

Post by pradn »

dhimes wrote: post #10

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.

I think that was true for the iTunes years before Spotify and other streaming services came along. Before, you had to pay for each song so you picked just a few you liked. Now, it's just as easy to play the whole album as to play one song. (In facts, it's easier to queue up an album than to play one song at a time since you have to choose what to play fewer times per time interval.)

Anecdotally, we've seen whole-album concepts become big hits in recent years: Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, Kanye West's Life of Pablo, Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book, etc.

On top of that, almost all hip-hop songs these days have intro tags (which producers worked on the song.) Not instrumental of course, but non-song content none-the-less.

Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#23

Post by JKCalhoun »

dhimes wrote: post #10

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.

I feel like the long intro-outro are better reserved for the live performance and I thought this long before digital singles.

Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#24

Post by viraptor »

mc32 wrote: post #6
pwinnski wrote: post #3

I recall reading that the push for shorter intros and 3 to 3.5 minute songs was radio, pre-streaming.

I think in the "45" era, it was common to have under 3 min songs. Elvis, chuck berry, etc. The graver thing for me is the awful lifting of the volume floor, so everything is loud. Apparently this became a thing in the mid to late eighties and persists. It's said MJs Thriller which has a couple remasterings shows the effect in action as the later remasterings up the effect.

3-4 minutes is also a very common / desirable length of music for dancing. Not sure if it's common now because of the 45 era, or the other way around, but at least in those genres, it would be close to optimal time for DJs.

Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#26

Post by cyberferret »

nxsynonym wrote: post #16

I think it comes down to personal preferences. I love listening to entire albums. I don't have favorite songs, I have favorite artists. If I like the artist, I listen to an entire album by them. I have never once in my life paid for a single song. If and when I buy music, it's by the album and not by the song.

Glad to hear this. I thought I was one of the few people left in the world who bought entire albums and listened to them in entirety.

A lot of my most favourite songs are the lesser known or unreleased ones on an album.

Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#28

Post by drb91 »

dhimes wrote: post #10

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.

I suppose there’s more emphasis on streaming and singles, but when someone actually aims for an album, it’s as good as ever.

If you want to avoid this, just don’t listen to popularity based radios like spotify. EDIT: Apparently it's not popularity based. I still find it's difficult to avoid single-oriented contemporary music. Ironically I've found pandora to be pretty good at this.

Just ordered two new vinyl LPs this month :)

Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#29

Post by cyberferret »

saghm wrote: post #4
pwinnski wrote: post #3

I recall reading that the push for shorter intros and 3 to 3.5 minute songs was radio, pre-streaming.

This is purely anecdotal, but there are a bunch of songs I can remember hearing on the radio growing up (15-20 years ago, although the songs were much older than I was) that had extended instrumental intros that were almost always cut out; offhand, "Jump" by Van Halen and "Fly Like an Eagle" by Steve Miller come to mind, although I'm sure there are others I can't quite recall (technically the intro to "Jump" was list…

I was flabbergasted when I discovered the The Knack's "My Sharona" was cut down considerably for radio play. When I finally got the album back in the day, I was blown away by the extra bit (including the whole second guitar solo) that I had never heard before.

Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

#30

Post by cjsuk »

dhimes wrote: post #10

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.

Streaming allows you to pull the whole album rather than making arbitrary choices though which is a good thing.

It has however wrecked my attention span which I’m trying to fix. I bought a CD player with a monitor output and some CDs and some nice headphones. I can actually enjoy my favourite albums now.

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