Definitely an "oh, fuck off" headline.
Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
771–780 of 861 posts
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#772Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever composed music that others have liked? I strongly doubt so, otherwise you would refrain from comparing developing a hit app to a hit song, to save yourself the shame of looking like a fool. apple-to-oranges, as you said.
Last year the founder of Shazam told his story at a conference. That‘s a hit app. The effort that went into it is mind boggling. Far more than ever could possibly go into a single hit song.
I'm not talking about complexity but about the creative process, which is totally different. You can't apply SCRUM to the composition of a song. You can't set a deadline to it. You can't hire a junior musician and have him write parts for you. It is a much less rational and plannable process than software dev. Hence apple-to-oranges.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#773Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except this very model has prevented hip hop from evolving and instead we ended up with mumble rap which feels like a step backwards in multiple ways. Music has become all gimmick, fueled by celebrity gossip and social media bullshit. It's samey as hell and stagnant and lacks innovation.
New Yorkers said the same thing about all southern rappers decades ago and now many of those artists and songs they panned are considered classics. Rap doesn't have to fit some narrowly defined category where all artists are doing the same style during a given period. You can also like conscious rappers calling for social change and still enjoy a club banger asking women to shake their butts. They aren't diametricall…
>Rap doesn't have to fit some narrowly defined category where all artists are doing the same style during a given period.
And yet thats where it's at right now, with some exception.
Hiphop used to have diversity of sound.
Now, as far as popular rap goes, it's all homogenized.
Same beats. Same cadence. Same flow. Voices indistinguishableffrom each other.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#774Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything mumble rap is a devolution. Add auto-tune to this and you are left with a worthless corpus of shitty rap, hip-hop and also pop music. It is samey, because everybody does the same thing. You can’t really differentiate music by different performers anymore. Each song is the same. There used to be a cost to producing music; you needed a studio, producer, physical copies of the samples you wanted to use (in c…
You’re just saying the same things older people have been saying about new music since time immemorial.
Generalizing criticisms as the same as past criticisms is a sidestep rather than a point.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#775Earlier quoted context omitted.
The medium is the message. This is the equivalent to amazon kindle self-pubbers needing to crank out 3-5 books per year to make a living.
Do you have links on articles on how many books are needed to make living and how much of a living it might be expected at median and high ends? I'm interested in the subject and your offhand comment makes me hope you have more insight into it than I do.
If you’re interested in kindle self pub, there’s a pretty vibrant community on the kboards (kboards.com) forum. Tons of info on producing volume as a marketing strategy but people are definitely making a living. It’s not my approach but I’ve certainly considered it.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#776Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not comparable - music is art.
Musician and software developer here, and I'm calling BS on that. Here's a transcript of a talk I gave last year on "code as art" (apologies if this sounds like self-promo). You can skip the first half and scroll down to where it says "Which leads me back to code as an artform". There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that code IS art, and this was just a quick 5-minute overview of the subject. Cheers! https://www.joh…
Art is one of the words nobody really agrees on the meaning of. You can only answer "is code art?" given some meaningful definition of "art".
According to Duchamp an urinal can be art. Presumably code can also then, but it doesn't really confer any addition prestige on code and developers.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#777Earlier 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. If the CEO of an open-source company said, "Software isn't our product, software is our marketing", would you feel the same way?
Kinda, yeah. I think it's a little sad that you can't write some great software that solves a problem for people and get paid for it anymore. Or at least not as easily as in the past. The changing business model has a lot of negative externalities, too. Like the temptation to monetize user data instead of monetizing the value of the software directly, and the temptation to push the line on privacy.
> I think it's a little sad that you can't write some great software that solves a problem for people and get paid for it anymore. Or at least not as easily as in the past.
I think that you're ignoring the fact that you were actually getting paid for solving their problem, not for great software per-se.
Just because the constraints on different parts of the value chain have changed, altering where the convenient bottlenecks are for extracting payments, doesn't make the past environment any better overall, just different.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#778Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your friend was absolutely right. I never cared if people pirated my bands music (or later the bands that I was managing) because the real thing I wanted was them showing up at shows, buying merch, posting us on facebook, asking events to bring us on, etc... At a certain point, Taylor Swift and larger artists _do_ make a good chunk of change from their actual music sales, but it isn't a feasible strategy to rely on t…
The model breaks down for people who write purely electronic music and are thus composers, not performers.
Or just bedroom musicians.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#779The way in which Spotify (and other streaming services) hurts the development of music isn’t what most people say. The problem with per-stream plays is that it is based on pop music logic: more streams equals more money. Fair! But many recording artists made a modest living by releasing music that you might not want to listen to over and over and over. This music is often labeled ‘art’ or ‘experimental’ or whatever,…
Streaming services (music, movies, books, etc.) are completely user-centric. It’s one place for you to consume your content. Discovery was never great there.
Spotify is actually pretty good for music discovery. For example, I routinely find new artists and songs from their daily mix and other generated playlists. It's miles ahead of what Apple Music could come up with even with way more listening data to analyze and is an exception amongst services like this.
Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”
#780Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything mumble rap is a devolution. Add auto-tune to this and you are left with a worthless corpus of shitty rap, hip-hop and also pop music. It is samey, because everybody does the same thing. You can’t really differentiate music by different performers anymore. Each song is the same. There used to be a cost to producing music; you needed a studio, producer, physical copies of the samples you wanted to use (in c…
You’re just saying the same things older people have been saying about new music since time immemorial.
How about from other established rappers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0OdmRtuQew
Admittedly they are now "older" :)