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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”

#331

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

tropdrop wrote: post #299
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the CEO of an open-source company said, "Software isn't our product, software is our marketing", would you feel the same way? Yes, absolutely, 100%! By all means care about image and marketing, but if your actual product isn't good (software, music, or anything else), then who cares?

What defines "good"? Marketability to the lowest common denominator?

For software, actual usefulness. A word processor that's trending on Twitter but which makes it hard to actually edit documents is not useful. A graphics driver that actually renders my screen is useful even if nobody's ever heard of it (although I grant that below a certain size maintenance issues might come up).

For music... I'm far less qualified to say, but there's still a notion of (subjective) quality, which is only loosely correlated to marketing. I suppose we could say "good" music is that music which people enjoy, which still is driven by the actual music and not marketing.

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

#332

Post by hoorayimhelping »

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.

It's also not universally true.

Some of Steve Albini's interviews are really on point with regards to this stuff. Really worth listening to if nothing more than to provide contrast to comments like the one above (which seem pretty reductive and flippant): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRAc3hx5pok

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

#333

Post by s17n »

enumjorge wrote: post #227
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…

Yeah the CEO’s take reminds me of Jobs’s “you’re holding it wrong”. So it’s not that Spotify is not paying artists enough, it’s that artists aren’t working hard enough. And even though artists have been complaining about the money they make from streaming for years, “in private” some of them are happy. Sure.

I don't think he was saying that artists aren't working hard enough, I think he was saying:

1. Albums don't maximize artist income - musicians should be steadily releasing new tracks. (Ironically, this is how things used to be up until the 70's, when a new technology, the LP, changed the dominant form of artistic expression.)

2. Nobody reads rolling stone anymore, mtv doesn't play music anymore, if you want a successful career you have to actively market yourself.

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

#334

Post by jimbokun »

shakezula wrote: post #319
mortivore wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still listen to Metallica's music, and their music still ends up in movies. I don't really think all new music is bad, just most of it. The same could be said for back in the day though. Metallica is a bad example for you to use cause they are still widespread because they are really good. There are other bands you haven't heard of from the 70s and 80s.

I like Metallica just as much as the next guy, but they're not relevant anymore. They've been laughed out of the music industry ever since they got upset about their music being pirated - which is actually a great example of how the music industry has changed and left them in the dust. Do they still sell records? Sure. But that's not what I'm talking about. Would I listen to their opinions on modern music industry tr…

> Do they still sell records? Sure. But that's not what I'm talking about. Would I listen to their opinions on modern music industry trends? Absolutely not.

I bet they feel just terrible to only be making money off of people buying their music, but not paying attention to their opinions.

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

#335

Post by JAlexoid »

xwdv wrote: post #314
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…

> Have some appreciation--even awe--for the art you enjoy. Haha, no. Artists aren’t some gift from God here to bestow the world with joy from the heavens that we should all marvel at. They are people who chose to learn a skill capable of outputting something suitable for consumption as entertainment. As such, it is their job to be putting out these works regularly, just like everyone else. Appreciation is nice, but d…

I agree that "art" isn't some kind of a uplifted thing.

Certain pieces of art are uplifting. Art itself is just human expression.

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

#336

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

alexilliamson wrote: post #308
lucb1e wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this subthread is any use when you're just speaking of "musicians" at large being able to pay their rent. You can't put Rammstein in the same league as my friend who would like to make a living in music but realizes that it's unlikely he'll ever make pay-the-rent kind of money from that, simply due to the sheer volume of competition and luck involved (while their music is as good as any song I've heard…

I'd just like to take a second to appreciate that your example of a band with money is Rammstein. Rock on!

Unrelated to the topic at hand, but I've always been curious how much it costs Rammstein to do their shows. Their most recent tour took ~60 hours per stop to set up the stage and equipment brought in by a convoy of 18 wheelers. Then they have a bunch of complicated pyrotechnics, crazy amounts of lights, costumes, props, gigantic screens, and they perform in the largest venues available. The amount of resources and people it requires is staggering to me.

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

#337

Post by comprev »

stephencoyner wrote: post #123
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…

This is very true. One of the first artists I noticed doing this was a rapper, Curren$y. All the mixtapes were free on Datpiff.com (major throwback) and the tours / Merch were the $$$ makers. This also allowed artists to go fully independent and keep all their profits. Added into the mix now are independent vinyl / cd / tape makers who the artists partner with on Physical music releases. Yes, physicals are back in a…

Even without physical media, I'd rather pay for a copy of the music I can "own" (I.e. like a physical CD) from Bandcamp as the revenue the artist gets is _significantly_ higher than a dozen streams of the same album on Spotify.

At the end of the day, I want the artist to continue producing music, and prefer to find a channel by which they get the most revenue.

IMHO Bandcamp is one of the best things to happen to the music industry in the last decade. Love it!

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

#338

Post by jongold »

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…

Absolutely agree. I've been playing music for basically my whole life, and am now, finally working on producing my first record of solo singer-songwriter material.

Every time I thought I've been "close" over the past 18 months it turned out I still had so, so far left to go. My "scope" is creeping, sure, but it turns out there's so, so, so much work in-between "recording & mixing one voice & one guitar" and "having a really well arranged song with just the right musical details" etc.

I've done a bunch of big, original projects in tech over the years, but I've never worked as hard at anything in my life as I have on this music.

And I'm still barely scratching the surface of where I want my music to go long term, and I know that the closer I get to recording the music that's in my head, the more ambitious my future records will be.

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

#339

Post by redis_mlc »

burntoutfire wrote: post #289
andybak wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artistry != Singing in tune In fact art != artistry It's entirely possible for somebody relatively lacking in technical ability and/or any great insight into their craft to produce something wonderful.

> It's entirely possible for somebody relatively lacking in technical ability and/or any great insight into their craft to produce something wonderful. 100% that. Thom Yorke (Radiohead singer) has composed dozens of godly songs without even being able to read the notes (in fact, his band members are calling him the idiot savant and are asking him NOT to learn the notes at this point, as it might spoil the magic). Tri…

> without even being able to read the notes

Most pop/rock musicians historically have played (and composed) by ear without notation or formal music theory.

It's only in the past 20 years or so that large numbers of pop/rock musicians went to music school.

Even so, virtually all pop/rock is composed by ear today, even for music school graduates. Typically composers start by humming or singing a melody, "transcribe" that to an instrument by ear, and then embellish that further if they know music theory.

You can see from above why most pop music consists of the same 4 chords, with the addition of audience/gatekeeper familiarity (don't mess with a formula that works.)

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

#340

Post by mortivore »

jimbokun wrote: post #325
quattrofan wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. We are only listening to the best stuff from the 70s and 80s, and in 30 years people will only listen to the best stuff from today. Now, I think a major difference will be the "best" music people will be listening to will be very different from each other. 30+ years ago the popular musi…

I agree with this. There's definitely way more available today, and in many more niche genres than there was available in the 70s and 80s. Arguably there is also a higher proportion of trash because of the ease of entry, but because the fanbases can be so segmented people can find stuff they really like that's more geared toward their specific tastes. Plus, there are greater search tools than before, like Spotify.
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