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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”

#521

Post by bondolo »

Based on the Spotify revenue model my favourite artist might make a few dollars off me over our entire lifetimes. This is not enough to sustain all but the biggest artists. I am happy to contribute more to smaller artists I appreciate. Seeing them on tour, buying CDs, buying merch, patreon type models and even straight up contributions on paypal and venmo. I've been buying a couple hundred bucks worth every bandcamp Friday since the start of covid. It is not just Spotify, none of the streaming fremium music subscription services provide me an effective way to support the artists I like.

Cory Doctorow points the way in Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free talking about future models for artists to make a living. It might superficially seem like the Spotify CEO is saying the same things but this is just cover for the gatekeepers to keep an unconscionable share for themselves.

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

#522

Post by kroltan »

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.

Same here, I won't even listen any music at all if I'm not sure I'll have time to finish the album.

None of my peers do it, though.

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

#523

Post by bmitc »

meheleventyone wrote: post #514
bmitc wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Videogames are software products though so are a prime example of software products that are art. Did you think about or read what I described? Because I specifically addressed how I think video games being art does not make software products and code art. You aren't elaborating and then just restating an opinion I've already discussed. If video games being art means that software products and/or code is art, then…

Videogames are software products and are art. So my initial point that some software products are art was correct. Yay!

I didn't say that. And just repeatedly stating something doesn't make it true, especially if others disagree and you refuse to elaborate, discuss, or explain.

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

#524

Post by tossthere »

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…

This is controversial for some reason, but I don’t think there’s ever been a significant demand or market for music production. The entire notion that musicians get paid to make music is a false premise.

There was a market for records, not for music. What people were actually paying for was the technology to play music, and the distribution of music. When that became digitized, no significant market formed around music production for reasons that seem pretty obvious to me: 1. It is absolutely impossible for the market to ever reach a state where new music is not produced, regardless of the existence or absence of any monetary factor; and 2. I will be just as happy regardless of what is produced because my brain naturally adjusts that emotion to the scale of whatever I am perceiving.

There was a huge market around distribution and licensing and technology related to music, and a lot of that went away. But that doesn’t mean musicians are entitled to a 50-billion-dollar industry around music production that never existed to begin with.

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

#525

Post by hootbootscoot »

Spotify are effectively parasites. They pay poorly. Dominate the market. Force everyone to accept their poor treatment through their market domination. (Go watch some Youtube tutorials on paid spotify placement services) And thus, this youthful tech CEO is speaking from a position of extreme privilege with an eye towards what is good for HIS business, but bad for musicians. I hope Spotify goes away, but it probably won't. The consumer side is pretty good/enticing etc. The musician side is 2-tiered. The vast majority of the POOLED streaming revenue goes to large labels who manage global pop stars. Indie artists can just go die under a rock... ermmm "try harder"

I don't really want to read 20 hackernews' argue about how hard it is/isn't to make a hit album. Quality music takes more effort, training, and skill to make than low-quality music, and this is not about the production alone. Expert-level musicians are generally disregarded by Joe Q. Public in favor of Joe Q. Publics "favorite" musicians, training and knowledge and compositional skill notwithstanding. The limiting factor is Joe Q. Public's musical listening skills, which certainly will not improve in a world that is racing to achieve cheaper mass-produced conformist "music" that likely will be replaced by algorithmic generation in the near future.

I am hardly a great composer, but even I could describe formulaic "genre music" in such a manner that a decent music AI could iterate it nonstop.

The subject of people "liking genres" rather than following individual artists of talent across their works as they explore all genres, etc... that's a different topic for a different day.

I will also contend that grooming a public to like simplistic rhythms that are easy to program on 16-note step sequencers is not accidental.

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

#526

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #415
aczerepinski wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sad and feels to me like a dumbing down of everything due to short attention spans. I still prefer to listen to full coherent albums, and one of the highlights of my week is my Sunday run, which gives me time to listen to an album start to finish with no interruptions. I hope some of my favorite musicians will continue to conceptualize albums that have a 45+ minute arc, even if market pressures mean that they…

Even before streaming music, I don’t think many people listened to whole albums. I distributed a lot of custom CDs to people in high school because they wanted various singles off of different CDs and I had access to a CD burner and could rip and record them in custom mixes. I personally find it too tedious to even work out the lyrics of the song because most of the time I can’t figure out what the singer is saying,…

I listen to whole albums. I still buy CDs primarily because I don't want piecemeal "hits" when there's gold in the material that will never see wide promotion. You'll never hear that without buying an album. Live albums in particular don't work at all in the streaming era where tracks are discrete units that can't flow into each other. When I rip a CD I know with 100% certainty the gaps will be seamless.

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

#527

Post by partiallypro »

The secret to modern music isn't releasing full albums, but to release singles throughout the year. That is the future. I've even seen some (small-mid size) musicians simply have Patreon subscriptions to get new music, and then release the best on Spotify, etc. (I live in Nashville, so I feel like I'm near the cutting edge)

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

#528

Post by LoSboccacc »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #411
nsl73 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don’t understand how an album wouldn’t survive if singles survive. An album is a collection of single songs.

a proper album is not a miscellanea of song, it's crafted on a theme or with a specific journey in mind

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

#530

Post by silasdavis »

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…

Tell us why (it is so hard). It's possible we won't be able to imagine but let's give it a go.
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