Stoned Jesus - I'm the mountain
Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#32I've about had it with these "Has X killed Y?" headlines.
My clickbait detector is tingling.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#33[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-albu…
That's great to hear (heh). I haven't used those services because I buy albums and listen to college radio. But when Pandora first came out I was pretty blown away.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#34If anything there's more purely instrumental music now.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#35I 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.
Yeah, I've been loving Bandcamp quite a lot for this. Finally there's a truly dignified way to buy and sell copies of albums. I'm free to reencode, batch modify the tags, add replaygain tags based on EBU R128/ITU-R BS.1770, copy freely to all my devices, stream it anywhere.
It's always sad to me when a band moves off the platform, because generally speaking it means that I will not buy their album at all, except maybe on CD, or if they have a similar website which allows me to get an archive of the whole disc in FLAC.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#36I do instrumental exclusively, unless you count weird vocal synths. Maybe the author of this study shouldn't have constrained it to the top 10...
There's a huge world of music out there. The most popular stuff is a tiny little sliver meant to appeal to the greatest number of people. For me, things have only gotten better since discovering a bunch of weird niche stuff in the '00s, especially since Bandcamp and Soundcloud gave indies a place to find an audience without investing in the infrastructure needed for streaming and sales.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#37I haven't bought a physical album or digital song in years. Most of my friends haven't either. I am always shocked whenever I see an album sell over 1 million in the first week. These labels have to be buying their own music, there is no other explanation.
I've started buying CDs again for my car. I have bluetooth on my phone but don't want to be distracted by it and I find the built in controls on my player nicer to use. Also I see it as a way to more directly contribute to the artist vs streaming on spotify.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#38I recall reading that the push for shorter intros and 3 to 3.5 minute songs was radio, pre-streaming.
It was for singles for radio, pre-streaming, but not every song on an album would be a radio-featured single, only a couple; these acted, for the album, the way that trailers for a movie work. (And, often, those radio singles were edited down from the album version of the song.)
Now (more, I think, because of pre-streaming iTunes and the like than streaming) the unit being sold and listened to by purchasers is more often the single, rather than the single being a tool to sell an album.
Personally, with unlimited streaming services, I listen to albums more than I have anytime since everything was purchased on physical media (and more than even then, because for me streaming has almost entirely displaced radio, so less of my music time is constrained by a medium which doesn't really allow listening to albums), but I don't know how common that is.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#39[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…
Spotify is not a popularity-based radio. It includes that feature, but in my opinion the product is more suited for selective listening. Maybe you meant to say Pandora?
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#40[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've sold about 12 albums (though most are closer to traditional EP length). Never sold a single. I remember seeing some data that said that was the norm on Bandcamp. I think albums are doing fine, but maybe the amalgam of loosely connected musical product that most albums are is not working anymore.
All the albums I've sold have had a clear narrative thread going through it, while all the random assortments I did early on never sold.