It’s no wonder that Fela Kuti (though legendary) and Antibalas have never gone mainstream with most songs being purely instrumental for a good five minutes or more before the vocals start.
Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
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Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#72Contrarian view: Instrumental intros weren't ever that popular, we just didn't have an easy way to skip them 2 or 3 decades ago.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
On still the other hand though, an awful lot of people these days just cue up some music style or artist as opposed to choosing what specifically to play. I know that's what I tend to do. I think it's hard to argue against the idea that the album concept has mostly declined in relevance since its heyday.
I'm sure lots of people do that, but it's actually easier with the streaming services to listen to an entire album than it was a few years ago when iTunes 99c/song was the dominant model.
Pay-per-song encouraged playlists and "greatest hits" type mix CDs, but didn't encourage anyone to purchase B-sides or interstitial tracks. At least with services like Spotify et al, you aren't paying per track, so you have the option of listening to a whole album as a single body of work.
Of course, not everyone wants to do that, which is cool.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was going to say something similar but not as harsh. I definitely think that the internet has made finding niche music that less of difficult a thing, but when the set you normalize over is the set of popular music rather than all music, his argument is sound. An interesting question (and more difficult one to answer) would be whether access to niche music has increased and more people pursue niches in general toda…
I would think you'd have to argue that the answer is more. The crux being that mega companies no longer have absolute control over a limited number of distribution channels (e.g., traditional radio). That has to have led gaps for other genres to edge in. Look at EMD a couple years ago. That, I don't think, was driven by top down marketing dollars. I think you're likely talking about less accessible genres, but I thin…
EDM? The resurfacing of 90's Eurodance? Is there anything more commercial? Maybe that's my European viewpoint, so please elaborate if I am wrong.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#75Radio DJs have been cutting out intros for at least 50 years. When I was a kid I didn't have enough money to buy albums and got all my music from the radio. When I finally did start buying music I heard all sorts of intros I never knew existed.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#76I run a record label[1] and for our music that we think could have a broad appeal we are at pains to ensure there isn't too much of a instrumental intro for the reasons this article describes. It makes me a little sad that this is the case, but it is. We can watch the drop off stats after a long intro-ed song. [1] Records On Ribs - http://recordsonribs.com
Yep, I hear it all the time. "No, that song is boring! No, not that one either!". Daughter with friends trying to find good hardrock songs, listening to Nightwish and such. They are 9 years old. Parents cringe and have a lecture in intros.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#77It’s no wonder that Fela Kuti (though legendary) and Antibalas have never gone mainstream with most songs being purely instrumental for a good five minutes or more before the vocals start.
I love Fela's long intros! They're long enough that you start to think they're the song. And then here comes this whole other groove and THAT'S actually the song.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#78I 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 Soundcl…
Yeah I would definitely say electronic dance music, at least how it exists in Europe, is a definite counter example. A dance track will always have a intro and a outro for mixing purposes and will probably be between 5-7 minutes in length, regardless of weather its uploaded on Soundcloud or a limited press on vinyl.
As far as pop music goes, it seems only natural that music which was for decades made for radio will change once the primary medium changes. The main purpose of intros seems to be for the radio DJ to talk over it.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#79I 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.
I'm the same way.
For a brief period in my teenage years I would put my entire pirated music collection on shuffle and listen to whatever came on, but at some point I just started listening to entire albums, start to finish.
I think it began when I started listening to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson when I was 15. As artists they tended to release concept albums or at least albums that told a story from start to finish, with one track bleeding into the next effectively.
Since then listening to whole albums is all I do and when first listening to a new artist i listen to whole albums starting with their first release and working through them chronologically.
That gives me the full taste of what they are about as artists and also lets me experience their evolution as musicians over time.
Re: Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this were true, wouldn't radio have had the same affect?
You didn't have much choice back then. A few songs were released as single tapes, but a full album wasn't much more expensive, plus many stores did not carry singles, or if they did, the selection was often small. There was no concept of a single CD.
Not to jump on, but there were definitely single CDs - the singles charts (Top 40) were compiled from the sale of CD Singles (and Cassingles, as the cassette versions were called). A #1 hit was determined by who sold the most CD singles, not albums - which is why pop music dominated the Top 10 singles charts, but rock bands would dominate the Top 10 albums. In Australia, a CD single cost $5 up to $10, while an album cost $30.
Also, CD singles were collectors items, because they would often come with bonus tracks that weren't available on the album or anywhere else. Sometimes they were just live recordings, but sometimes they were fully produced studio recordings that didn't quite make the cut for the album, but were still amazing. (Nirvana's "Even In His Youth" jumps to mind, as well as The Prodigy & Tom Morello collaboration "No Man Army".) I still remember my local 2nd-hand CD shop selling a rare Nirvana CD single for $100, and as a kid wishing I could afford to buy it.