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Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

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Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#191

Post by quattrofan »

shakezula wrote: post #4

I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube but it wasn’t as predominant. Now…

And why most is utter dross. People still buy millions of classic albums from the 70's and 80's, in 30 years time very few artists will have that same comfort.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#192

Post by arthurofbabylon »

As my musician friend told me -> “In music, you don’t get to update your songs. Once it’s out, it’s there for the world to see.” (Or something like that.)

It’s not like software where we can iterate/improve as we learn. In music, you capture a moment, a sensation, an experience - and you had better capture it as intended, even if that means an extra month in the studio.

This same musician told me that the increased ubiquity of singles is intended to speed up iteration/feedback/ship cycles.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#193

Post by bmitc »

bobthepanda wrote: post #22
shakezula wrote: post #4

I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube but it wasn’t as predominant. Now…

Korean pop music has been doing this for a while too. This group has pretty rapid releases, 5 singles a year, and 10 EPs and 3 albums since 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_discography

While I enjoy Kpop, I don't feel it's necessarily a great model for artistic expression. It's an industry where fake is the status quo. Kpop is not selling people music per se. It's selling people this idea that you could be an idol or be friends with an idol or be a partner of an idol. It's an emotional hack like a carrot being dragged in front of you.

I personally like a lot of Kpop for the strange music production that comes out of it with bands like Red Velvet, Mamamoo, Stellar, Lim Kim, Dalsooobin, Dal Shabet, etc., but that is really more of a side effect of Kpop's main product.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#194

Post by Bjorkbat »

gwd wrote: post #81
quacked wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. Man, that's depressing.

>> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. > Man, that's depressing. If the CEO of an open-source company said, "Software isn't our product, software is our marketing", would you feel the same way?

I wouldn't.

But I think that's because open-source software development companies are the exception rather than the norm. No one expects you to open-source your software and then hope someone hires you for your services or buys one of your t-shirts. It's still the norm in our industry to write something and sell copies of it.

Plus, software pays more. Software developers generally don't get squeezed. Musicians, on the other hand, never seem to catch a break.

EDIT: Or, even better, it's the norm to sell a monthly right to use what we wrote.

Also, freemium games have business models very similar to music. Yeah, there are some successful freemium games out there, but in general it's pretty brutal and depressing.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#195

Post by jakelazaroff »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #119
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musicians can do whatever they want. They can, but only as long as they don't care about money. But musicians also need to pay rent.

How much money? Enough for personal private jets or enough to make a living? If the bar is to simply pay the rent then I still think that musicians can do what they want.

It's just one data point, but here's a fairly successful artist (50k+ monthly listeners on Spotify) that still needs another job: https://twitter.com/HeartAttackMane/status/12886231366410362...

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#196

Post by ecocentrik »

oblio wrote: post #131
avidphantasm wrote: post #116

Don’t people write and listen to entire albums anymore? When I listen to music, I almost always listen to entire albums, not individual songs.

Not really. Most people hated getting and paying for whole albums, out of which most stuff was garbage. Few artists have whole albums worth listening to.

We must listen to very different genres of music.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#197

Post by JAlexoid »

e1g wrote: post #121
guyzero wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reminded of the story about ceramics students being told that half would be graded on quantity and half would be graded on the quality of a single piece of work. https://excellentjourney.net/2015/03/04/art-fear-the-ceramic... It turns out that the students who were just churning out pots ended up making the pots that were ultimately better. I think there's probably something to be said for constantly creating.

Just FYI this story originally was about photography as clarified by the author at https://jamesclear.com/repetitions In photography, you can get lucky. When I come back from holidays and review a thousand of random snapshots, a couple of them look great. Take 200 shots of a single thing, and one of them might be pro-level due to pure chance. Yet I'm not sure how well this "randomly great" percentage would translate…

It definitely works for the "writing a song" bit.

A lot of things can be said and some expressions of the same thing are just better...

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#198

Post by afterburner »

quacked wrote: post #12
shakezula wrote: post #4

I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube but it wasn’t as predominant. Now…

> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. Man, that's depressing.

And the most common business tactic for content creators is to gain a loyal following and milk them forever.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#199

Post by fallingfrog »

Kalium wrote: post #151
alchemyromcom wrote: post #139

I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. The way tech com…

Would you be more open and accepting to commentary if there was more kindness, more love, more empathy and compassion in discussions of how the old normal is gone? Expressions of admiration and awe coupled with opining that the old multi-year release cycle doesn't work anymore, and legions of hard-working humans making sacrifices for what they love may need to change? Thank you for sharing. The world is always a bett…

Platitudes about humanity coupled with inaction. You should run for Congress.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#200

Post by ketzo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20
wldcordeiro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, not just the monetization scheme but Spotify and others just push the music listening experience to playlists and singles and have very little room for albums and collecting a library of music you refer to.

I’m not a music aficionado, and I have no interest in albums. I love the singles/playlist format, and consume far more music now that I can easily ignore the 9 out of 10 songs I don’t like in an album (back when CDs were still a thing). I also find it easy to have a library of singles that I like.

And, from everything I've seen (or else Spotify wouldn't be so big), you are in the vast, vast majority of music consumers.

Complaining about the death of the album is one thing, but the reality is that people like listening to singles and playlists.

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