71–80 of 128 posts
The unique true service that can centralise everything is still Kodi + plugins
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You're talking experience rather than economics. The consumer experience of Spotify is certainly much more convenient and pleasant than the experience of P2P piracy. And it turns out that can be true even while the economics of buffet streaming services simultaneously effect the drastic cuts in first-order revenue that piracy brought directing it instead to distributor and label.
Short-term experience anyway. Long-term experience requires remaining a subscriber ad infinitum. I admittedly come from the perspective of someone who prefers to own music that I care about. Which, in turn, is very influenced by the fact that I had a very large digital/digitized music catalog before streaming came along so incremental purchases aren't very expensive.
I gladly pay HBO and Netflix as well, but it seems no matter what I pay, I cant get the same movie/series coverage that Spotify provides for music.
It's interesting how different types of music have thrived through the streaming economy. Hip hop is huge on Spotify, where it struggled for radio play and sales before because commercial radio is so conservative (in the sense of risk-averse). Then there's the whole Billie Eilish thing: huge on Spotify, almost no radio play at all. On the other hand, there are Billboard 100 artists who are more or less absent from th…
Spotify has had a severe and negative effect on musicians who make what I term 'peak experience music'. Amazing music, but not something you listen to every day. Say you listen once a month or even just a few times a year. Before: 2 listens = dealer price of a CD in UK = about £7.5 (on a good UK indie that's split 50/50 with the artist). Now: 2 listens = income from 2 streams on Spotify = about £0.0006 I'm thinking o…
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What’s interesting is that these algos are trained on human feedback. What does that say about our revealed preferences in music?
As an anecdote I have left Apple Music after it had been suggesting to me at least 3 heavy metal playlists for 30 days. And this is the one genre I do not listen to. I had been clicking 'I don't like it' buttons hoping the AI will get it but no luck. So after 30 days I had enough and moved on back to Spotify. So much for human feedback.
(Just kidding, but this kind of thing will be more common in the future, especially as we learn more about how little the brain knows about its own desires and motivations)
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I don't think Spotify (streaming services) are influencing the composition of new music – listening habits are mostly unchanged since popular music in the 50's. The 3-minute song with the initial hook is a product of 50's AM radio. Whereas Radiohead/Sigur Ros/Slowdive artists with long builds do so intentionally, and their listeners enjoy that about them. But.... what has changed is the frequency in which artists nee…
> what has changed is the frequency in which artists need to release content So, the album is dying? Could something like Pink Floyd's The Wall be released today? It's a two CD package with gapless songs.
But yea, you can still do a concept album like The Wall or Sgt. Pepper's. Kids doing drugs and laying around listing to weird noises for an hour+ is still a thing these days.
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> Nothing will ever stop people from making music The funny thing is how true this statement is, and yet how often it's deployed as if that means nobody needs to further consider or negotiate the present economics. How would one establish the idea that average person wasn't willing to spend money on music before the 20th century? Because I'd expect as long as there's been instruments and money, there's been some form…
The great musicians of 5he 19th century and earlier didn't make a living selling recordings and concerts. The price that would get butts in seats wasn't enough to cover the cost of living for all the performers, the composers, and the house. Back then, musicians fed themselves using a system of funds that has popped back up again now that selling records isn't economically realistic anymore: patronage. Back then, mus…
Actually they did, certainly in the 19th century which was the era of the concert hall. Without recording technology, music had to be performed to be enjoyed. The market for live performances was much, much bigger. Because the market lacked the 'winner-take-all' aspect of today, the opportunity to make a living wage as a musician was easier than today.
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> Nothing will ever stop people from making music The funny thing is how true this statement is, and yet how often it's deployed as if that means nobody needs to further consider or negotiate the present economics. How would one establish the idea that average person wasn't willing to spend money on music before the 20th century? Because I'd expect as long as there's been instruments and money, there's been some form…
Before recorded music, there was sheet music. It was a big business with "superstar" composers like Scott Joplin. It was common for a middle class house to have a piano in the parlor. And as I understand it, even before the recording era, there were predatory middlemen exploiting the sheet music composers.
You dare not whistle a tune before it had been published, lest someone steal it.
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I don't think Spotify (streaming services) are influencing the composition of new music – listening habits are mostly unchanged since popular music in the 50's. The 3-minute song with the initial hook is a product of 50's AM radio. Whereas Radiohead/Sigur Ros/Slowdive artists with long builds do so intentionally, and their listeners enjoy that about them. But.... what has changed is the frequency in which artists nee…
> what has changed is the frequency in which artists need to release content So, the album is dying? Could something like Pink Floyd's The Wall be released today? It's a two CD package with gapless songs.
People listened to ad-supported radio or they listened to records socially or borrowed them. That’s how it worked for about 80 years.
I’m not defending the music industry, its practices, or its stalwart backwardness. But suggesting music was inaccessible is plainly false.
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It's interesting, I've gone back to Spotify from Apple Music primarily because I can easily find more interesting playlists from curators. I don't think Spotify has any kind of special algorithmic sauce, they just make it easy for people create and share playlists. It amazes me how most of the other streaming services try to turn everything into an algorithm, via "special radio" stations, etc. And yet, the best way t…
I don't know if this is (still?) true, but I've heard that user-generated playlists are their special algorithmic sauce, at least for "Discover Weekly". It's designed to take songs you're familiar with, look for them in other peoples' playlists, and fill the gaps between songs you already know about with songs that other people have filled the gaps with in their own user-generated playlists, but that you haven't hear…
My sense is that is probably as good as it tends to get, unless you want to get incredibly creepy and start bringing outside personal information, e.g., associating that the 40-something living in Chicago may have an affinity towards Wilco. Personally, I'd rather deal with "meh" suggestions then have my music service track detailed demographic models of me.