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Most-streamed track of the day by country

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Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#192
post #165
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would've thought we'd at least be "over" the auto-tune thing by now, but it's more popular than ever!

Auto-tune is like special effects in movies, virtually every movie has special effects but they're only noticed when it's badly done.

I like to remind people the brilliant CGI work in Jurassic Park and Toy Story was contemporary to the cheeseball CGI in made for TV movies. People can guess what's made on a computer in Toy Story, but they never knew the well-done stuff trying to be realistic was done in part or in whole on computers.

The late '90s were especially big here because computers and tools were getting so cheap. The same tech that let big space battles happen in Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5 also made stuff that...did not age so well.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#193

Some assorted notes / points of fascination: - With the sole exceptions of Brazil and Argentina literally all of the "green" countries in Latin America have top songs with the Same. Exact. Beat. "One and-Three Four, One and-Three Four..." all throughout. And interestingly Spain, Italy, France, and Turkey have a very similar feel, albeit with some deviation. Not that I mind that beat (it's perfect for the club), but i…

How many beats do you expect there to be?

I mean, most popular music is in 4/4 time, some of it is in 3/4 time. You have some oddball songs like "Solsbury Hill" is 7/4 time.

Reggae is an interesting one: it's four beats to a bar like 4/4 time but often they don't play the one beat at all. It comes out like: _ 2 3' 4 _2 3' 4

This is called the one drop rhythm. I'm glad most of reggae is one drop, it gives it a laid back 'cut time' sort of feel.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#194
The mere exposure effect means that merely being exposed to something cause us to prefer it almost automatically.

So if you hear "Rockstar" a bit more than the other songs, then you start to prefer it. It's like the olds saying in radio: If they don't like a song now, just keep playing it till they love it.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#195

I think if I look at this any longer I might slip, fall down and break a hip! Embarrassing how old I am when pretty much ALL of these songs sound like absolute trash to me. Repetitive auto-tuned, formulaic, mysoginistic, materialistic, mundane, simple-minded steam pile of fermenting dog poo.

I have a theory about this. I think the song format is conforming to the needs of advertisers. That’s why every top song is just a person talking over a beat, usually with the same kind of vocal style, usually the same kind of beat. It’s really hard to sing the word “Lamborghini” and have that fit into the lyrics and be heard clearly and have the brand image positioned correctly. It’s also a waste of advertising spac…

I dont think advertising plays a role even slightly. Nor do I think that rapper's fans are an important target market for lamboughini.

Run DMC never got paid for my adidas.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#196

I think if I look at this any longer I might slip, fall down and break a hip! Embarrassing how old I am when pretty much ALL of these songs sound like absolute trash to me. Repetitive auto-tuned, formulaic, mysoginistic, materialistic, mundane, simple-minded steam pile of fermenting dog poo.

I have a theory about this. I think the song format is conforming to the needs of advertisers. That’s why every top song is just a person talking over a beat, usually with the same kind of vocal style, usually the same kind of beat. It’s really hard to sing the word “Lamborghini” and have that fit into the lyrics and be heard clearly and have the brand image positioned correctly. It’s also a waste of advertising spac…

I think it comes down to the allure of spoken accents. Since the times of at least John Lennon's apologetically English elocution in the '60s, or perhaps Sinatra's brutish crooning decades earlier, popular music has been dominated by artists who affect a peculiar accent. This sets the artist apart as distinct while sounding new and exotic to the listener.

In hip hop, we have a genre which strips away almost everything except the vocalist's accent. What you really have is an audio sample of the interesting way a person pronounces words.

I believe the benefits of this are two-fold. First, I believe listeners from the same region subconsciously identify with certain key signifiers in the vocalist's pronouncation, providing a core fanbase. Second, I think other listeners who are high in openness are intrigued by the new way of talking.

I think this model works for both hip hop and country music. Other types of pop and indie music also seem to feature bizarre forms of singing. For instance, that dance monkey song that was #1 for a while. Contemporary indie-rock and new-folk musics seem to focus on sounding like an alien.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#197

Something to keep in mind: the top track in the world right now is ROCKSTAR, with about 5 million streams per day. The song lasts about 3 minutes, which means the song was streamed for 250k hours around the world. Spotify streams an average of 234 million hours per day, though, which means the number one song represents about 0.1% of the total. We have an unprecedented level of access to all sorts of different genres…

By definition, a popular thing will appeal to the lowest common denominator. I don't mean this in a derogatory way; not "to the average dumb person" but "to something we all share". I think as a consequence of that, popular music will be simple, easily consumable, have very little impact on an individual, and be easily forgotten / make room for the next one.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#198
post #187
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ, at least for the genres I have some attachment. Kids that are into hip-hop still listen to 90s hip-hop, now called golden era. On the other side 90s electronic music has great stuff, but the field has much advanced in quality and depth.

Everyone remembers "I'm Blue," an electronic music classic, but everyone tries to forget the music video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgV1O0X4uXI

Never seen the video. Was watching and waiting for a Crazy Frog (aka The Annoying Thing) to pop all of a sudden with its ringdingding. Thanks for posting.

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, just because it's popular doesn't mean that people actually prefer that lifestyle. It reminds me of the opening scene in Office Space where a white man listens to rap during traffic on his way to a typical 9-to-5.

Some rap songs have very interesting lyrics but the whole environment attached to this genre makes it complete trash: all that hood style, bling bling, idiotic oversized cars,money,drugs,etc. Oh,and visible underware too.

I for one agree with you. There are some hip-hop artists, some of whose tunes seem interesting and deep. But I am turned off by the braggadocio, weed shoutouts, and the tendency to simply rap about rapping found in these artists' work and across the genre in general.

In searching for hip-hop without braggadocio etc., I have repeatedly been told by hip-hop aficionados that these tropes are inherent to the genre and it would be unreasonable to seek hip-hop without them, just like oldies rock was inherently about dancing or sweethearts, and country music about personal woes and drink.

It is a shame, because the genre seems to have the potential for more lyrically. Hip hop is now a global phenomenon with innumerable performers. Is there really no hip-hop out there with a more abstract lyrical approach, like for example Climate of Hunter-era Scott Walker?

Re: Most-streamed track of the day by country

#200
post #64
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure you'd say that about songs from whatever decade you grew up in, if those could be sorted by "most listened to" as well. Top40 is already pablum, but it still has some tiny amount of curation (and therefore elitist dictation of taste) driving it. This chart, meanwhile, represents pure populist sentiment—it's "what the people want to hear." And populist sentiment has always been pretty much all of those thi…

From a quick spot check of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_number-one... I’d say the quality of “most listened to” music peaked in the 80’s, with each decade that followed being the worst ever. Most of my favorite artists are from the 90’s-2010’s, with a few exceptions scattered in the 40’s, 70’s and 80’s. It could be that music got more diverse in the 90’s, and the billboard chart stopped bei…

My point was that top40 (“most broadcast” + “most purchased”), and Spotify’s “most played” (i.e. “most listened to”) are distinct concepts. For the past, we only have access to the former, not the latter, because nobody can know exactly what songs people were listening to the most (e.g. which records/wax cylinders were purchased and then played more times in total; or, even further back, which pieces of chamber music were performed more times; or, even further back, which folk songs or hymns were sung more, rather than transcribed more.)

To focus on only the recent past: we only know about radio plays (determined by cronyist industry dealings) and about record/8track/cassette/CD/iTunes sales (where a record sale could represent a purchase due to virality—i.e. a purchase for status-signalling/watercooler-conversation/joining-a-subculture reasons, but where nobody actually listens to their purchase more than a few times; or it could represent a song everyone loves and puts on repeat all day every day. And a purchase could represent a fad that fizzles out; or a classic in the making.)

We can talk about what the top40 billboard charts were doing back then, but what people were “most listening to” is very likely a wholly different list with little intersection to the billboard chart. Just like this Spotify most-played list is actually an almost-entirely-distinct list from the current radio top40!

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