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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”

#481

Post by jbritton »

nsl73 wrote: post #396
ng12 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The existence of that medium of music doesn't make sense in the current year given how people actually go about consuming music. I'm not convinced. The standard 3-4 minute pop song came about because that's what could fit on one side of a 78. Albums came about because an LP (33 1/2) could fit roughly 40 minutes of music, or 10-12 of those songs. These formats proved to be a popular and effective even though the tec…

Over 80% of my music listening is full albums, even though I haven’t played a record or CD since 2015. I really hope the medium of the album survives, because I much prefer listening to a coherent and deliberate group of songs than any other method.

I love the album format. Long live albums.

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

#482

Post by ryandrake »

grawprog wrote: post #390
zjaffee wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what the CEO is saying, and it has been an increasing trend in music for a long time now, is moving even further away from large LP releases every few years. The existence of that medium of music doesn't make sense in the current year given how people actually go about consuming music. The way to keep fans engaged involves releasing EPs and Single on a regular basis, releasing a whole album only really makes…

LP's or long form collections by artists capture a moment in that artist's creative point. Typically, the cycle was release a record, tour a bunch, write new music, and repeat. This meant by the time that next LP came along, the collection of songs on there could sound fairly different as the artist changed, got better, heard new songs and got inspired etc. Then there's the recording and engineering challenges around…

These full-length albums have long turned into the exception though, which is kind of sad. Zeppelin IV, Sgt. Pepper or Dark Side of the Moon would never become hits today under these artistic limitations.

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

#483

Post by anticsapp »

BosunoB wrote: post #102
Alupis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest. The amount Spotify/Pandora/et al pay the majority of musicians per stream is far more than they'd make selling CD's. The overwhelming majority of music is unknown, has few fans, and will never "go platinum" nor sell out stadiums - ie, most musicians are not Taylor Swift. For all those artists... access to millions of potential listeners from around the world is an amazing advancement. The number of a…

This might be true if Spotify's monetization was distributed fairly, but instead it's basically redistributive to the biggest players. In short, instead of splitting a person's premium payment equally among all the artists they listened to, it's split among all artists on the platform. E.g. if Lady Gaga is 2% of all Spotify plays in a month, they get 2% of the money, even if you personally didn't listen to Lady Gaga…

As it should be. In aggregate it makes total sense. The distillation to a single user's streams is a distraction from the critique having no merit.

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

#484

Post by coldtea »

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…

>Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle.

I'm more than willing to listen to raw demos, even a single guy with a guitar or a synth and a drum machine.

Instead we get over-produced turds...

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

#485

Post by grawprog »

ryandrake wrote: post #482
grawprog wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LP's or long form collections by artists capture a moment in that artist's creative point. Typically, the cycle was release a record, tour a bunch, write new music, and repeat. This meant by the time that next LP came along, the collection of songs on there could sound fairly different as the artist changed, got better, heard new songs and got inspired etc. Then there's the recording and engineering challenges around…

These full-length albums have long turned into the exception though, which is kind of sad. Zeppelin IV, Sgt. Pepper or Dark Side of the Moon would never become hits today under these artistic limitations.

Only with certain kinds of music. Dance and club music has always kind of been like that. The whole culture of that music is around singles and EPs. I think the thing is, that kind of music is the 'popular money making' music these days.

But even amongst that music, you can still find some albums, being produced as such, with the intention of it being an album. It's harder to find and I doubt it makes money through services like Spotify, but on places like bandcamp, or independent label storefronts you can find plenty of albums in a wide variety of genres.

The best thing we can do is support those artists and keep buying that music if that's what we want. As long as there's a market for it, it can keep existing despite Spotify.

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

#486

Post by laughinghan »

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…

I'm sorry that people dismiss the work it takes to make good art, that must be frustrating.

It's silly to compare the ease of making "working software" with a "hit record". Just like probably most of the music you worked on as a sound engineer, most "working software" made little money and got few customers, look at the long tail of apps that aren't hits in the iOS App Store, Google Play Store, etc.

Even comparing "financially successful software" to "financially successful music" makes no sense. Far more musicians have made six figures or more from a song that took tens of hours to make, than indie software developers have made six figures from an app that they only spent tens of hours on. Is that because music is easier? Yet far fewer technically competent musicians are able to make a living using those skills than technically competent software developers. Is that because music is harder?

It's almost like two things can require different talents, have different factors that go into their financial success, and still both be hard.

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

#487

Post by tropdrop »

recursive wrote: post #472
tropdrop wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (implicit) point was that software can be optimized for one factor, which is usefulness. By evaluating usefulness, we can evaluate whether a piece of software is "good" or not. However, use-value makes for a very poor metric for evaluating music (I am ignoring arguments about the "usefulness" of music when it's played on a factory floor, making workers slightly more productive). So what must we use to evaluate its…

Usefulness of software is not universally objective. Perhaps a paint-mixing simulator would be very useful to me. Probably most people don't care. In the same way, everyone likes different music. It's just that some music is "harder to like" than others. Just as in software utility.

I am speaking of the usefulness of software in a much more general sense - does it work?

Adobe Photoshop and GIMP are two competing softwares for a specific task - editing photos. Not everyone needs to edit photos. Those who do are voting with their money, because Adobe Photoshop worked faster and more easily at the same task than GIMP. (This can change, with the recent subscription-model only Adobe is pushing that is irritating its core users, but that's a different topic)

Let's return to dance music. Let's say we create a category on spotify and call it - "does it make you dance"? Well, for a swath of youth, EDM makes them dance. But for a swath of Latin-speaking users, bachata music makes them dance. Let's say they are of equal number in the population. You can see here that even averaging based on the category of "does it make you dance" will produce some rather unfortunate results (a combination of half-EDM-half-bachata that will fail to tug at the heartstrings of anyone at all, but might be vaguely palatable vaguely dance-y playing in the background of a grocery store). However, this kind of music - the one that can vaguely capture both audiences - is exactly the one that will get the most people to listen to it, and based on Spotify's model of quantity over quality, it is the one that will get most rewarded.

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

#488

Post by dragonwriter »

pier25 wrote: post #44

Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art. It takes time to grow as a person and cultivate new ideas. It may not be possible to do that if you don't get in and out of whatever it is you're doing. Imagine telling Hemingway he has to release a new blog post every week instead of a book every couple of years.

> Imagine telling Hemingway he has to release a new blog post every week instead of a book every couple of years.

In his prime writing period he was closer to the former than the latter; between 1923 and 1933 he published, it looks like, at least 49 short stories, 10 poems, 3 novels, and two nonfiction books. At least one of the novels was initially released in serialized form over 6 months of magazine issues.

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

#489

Post by jonplackett »

The problem with Spotify is how they allocate royalties.

If I pay my £10 a month and only listen to whatever 5 indie bands I like, I’d expect them to get £2 each from my listening.

But they don’t. Lady Gaga will get most of my money despite me never listening to her music, because all they do is put everyone’s money in a big pile and divide it up depending on who got the most listens.

They have to do that because otherwise Lady Gaga wasn’t put her music on Spotify.

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

#490

Post by pier25 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #160
pier25 wrote: post #44

Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art. It takes time to grow as a person and cultivate new ideas. It may not be possible to do that if you don't get in and out of whatever it is you're doing. Imagine telling Hemingway he has to release a new blog post every week instead of a book every couple of years.

Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art. He's not telling bands how to be successful artistically, he's telling them how to be successful financially in the modern music world. If the band is only interested in promoting their art, they can do anything they want. If they want to earn a living too, they need to provide the market what it wants.

You think Spotify cares about artists being financially successful?
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