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

At first I didn't really like this trend b/c I enjoy listening to the full album through on first listen. But I do understand why they are doing this to adapt to the streaming age.

Instead of releasing a 12-song album once every two years, they split that release into 3 every 6 months (5 song EP, 5 song EP, combined album + 2 bonus). As consumers we get the music earlier and more frequently. They get 3 release hype cycles for the same amount of creative work, which is what they need to be discovered in streaming platforms.

No more albums every 3/4 years means no more singles leading to the hype of an album nor more meaningful shows around one theme. No more albums means no more ways to put something on for an hour of development and feeling like you're (re)living something that has a beginning and an end while having consistency.

During this quarantine, After Hours by the Weeknd and The Slow Rush by Tame Impala have been my best partners. Sure I've listened to playlists, but the delusion of The Weeknd and the tempo of Tame Impala's album will stay in my mind as elements of this period, not single tracks. Asking musicians to constantly release is like removing the concept of books to only satisfy ourselves with news articles and tweets. Maybe it makes more money, but what a depressing artistic world.

In fact, having tremendous wealth and fame come with additional costs. You end up needing a mansion, not for the space per se but for privacy and security. You end up needing bodyguards. Etc.

One way to make services like Spotify make sense for "average joe" musicians and other creatives is to address the other half of the equation: The cost of living for the average joe.

We basically only build upper class housing these days. The average new home in the 1950s was about 1200 square feet and housed about 3.5 people. These days, it's more like 2400 square feet (or more) and houses about 2.5 people

We have also torn down a million SROs and we largely have done away with things like boarding houses, where you rented a room and got breakfast and dinner as part of the rent and you supplied your own lunch elsewhere. Instead, we default to expecting young people to share a house or apartment designed for a nuclear family with a bunch of strangers. Then we make horror movies about it, like Single White Female, and then fail to go "Huh. Maybe that's not such a wonderful thing to insist young, single people do."

Health care is another major issue in the US. It costs way too much and many other developed countries handle that better, so we have many other examples to draw from. It's not like we need to brilliantly design something that's never been done before to make this work. We just mostly need the political will and to take our heads out of our butts in this country.