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Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

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Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#161

Post by darkerside »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #97
tobr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say “music characteristics hadn’t much to do with it” but then you list a number of specific characteristics that make music more likely to work on radio. That suggests the opposite of “any music will do”. Only music with very specific qualities will do. Or maybe you just meant to say you don’t like pop?

It means pop has turned into a social psychology experiment designed to maximise the return invested in production, and not an individually expressive art form. The obvious end point will be AI-generated muzak which tweaks all the right receptors but is devoid of any disturbingly non-optimal fleshy surprise.

Have you listened to the album Artpop by Lady Gaga? It plays with this idea in an intelligent and musically interesting way. IMHO.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#162

Post by austhrow743 »

sjwright wrote: post #139
jcims wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top 40 was born in an era where a large part of the economic equation in music was album sales. The tribal signal helped overcome the activation energy required to shell out the equivalent of a half day’s labor for a teen at the local music store. Streaming services have killed the album, so the top 40 really has no calling.

It hasn’t killed the album, it’s just changed the rules of the game for marketing “popular” music by reducing the power of radio and increasing interest in the long tail.

Streaming didn't kill the album, but something did.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/

Looks like piracy did it in.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#163

Post by fnord123 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #148
ImaCake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wrecks havoc on my music suggestions though Netflix and spotify have definitely not solved suggestions yet. I still struggle to get either service to get me what I want.

With Netflix, their catalogue is small enough that I can find what I want regardless of what they suggest. They seem to have nailed the "more of the same" algorithm which is mostly looking at their weird notion of genre. For me that means it recommends me stuff I've already decided that I'm not interested in watching because they've been recommending it for months and I've declined to watch it. This seems in general…

>With Netflix, their catalogue is small enough that I can find what I want regardless of what they suggest.

How is that even possible? They barely have anything!

> Their profile of me is probably very confused because I listen to a lot of different things and what I listen to is mostly dependent on context and what I'm in the mood for, which spans 5 decades of music and quite a few genres.

This is not unique. Probably most people are like this.

If you add shared devices like Alexa into the mix then it's even more all over the place.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#164

Post by squiggleblaz »

freyr wrote: post #140
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means pop has turned into a social psychology experiment designed to maximise the return invested in production, and not an individually expressive art form. The obvious end point will be AI-generated muzak which tweaks all the right receptors but is devoid of any disturbingly non-optimal fleshy surprise.

Has "pop music" ever been anything other than this? Since the beginning, it has typically been manufactured by producers and songwriters for mass appeal.

Not only that, but it's such a young form of cultural expression that saying it isn't what it used to be is kinda pointless. For thousands of years, we had people singing songs badly in pubs. Maybe someone could afford an instrument.

And then someone invented the wireless and the record player. According to the myth, it quickly reached its optimum time when some fashionable person was in their youth. And it has been degrading ever since.

Now, as for me, I would think all commercial music is worse than all traditional music. If you can talk, you can sing. But here someone in this thread has suggested that perhaps as little as 1% of the population can sing well enough to be autotuned! (This is insane. The proportion of the population who can sing well enough to be autotuned is much closer to 100% than to 90%.)

Someone else might say that commercial music has done quite well, and it keeps doing better. Certainly there's more and more detail added to it.

But the fashionable story is that at some point, probably in the 1960s, music became brilliant, and then all these grubby gen-xers and millennials got their grubby hands on it and turned it all into the most dreary computer driven sounds imaginable.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#165

Post by newen »

bad_user wrote: post #51
29athrowaway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many conspiracies can be just explained through emergent behavior. For example, there could be demand for that music, and the labels are just creating content to respond to that demand... without any ethical considerations about what they're promoting, that is. But to be honest, a conspiracy of some kind could be an explanation, who knows. For some people, there are substantial tangible, material benefits to dumbing…

> conspiracy of some kind could be an explanation, who knows Actually we do know. It’s safe to say that conspiracies involving a lot of actors are mathematically impossible. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Snowden’s leaks were about a conspiracy that involved many more than a 1000 people and it lasted for years. You get reports about one government program or another that’s been kept secret for decades. These are conspiracies.

Statistically improbable is different from mathematically impossible. It’s also much less improbable when the people involved have to join through rituals like government classification designations.

Again, government programs regularly involve much more than a 1000 people and are known to be kept secret for decades. These programs are clearly conspiracies.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#166

Post by ehnto »

tobr wrote: post #85
laurent92 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is astonishing when you realize it. Since the MCM times, we’ve transferred music bands from sound to image, and we noticed the commercial drums (and repetition on radios in particular) produced linear return in investment, and music characteristics hadn’t much to do with it. To the point that today, any music will do. It’s much easier for the labels, since they can pimp anyone among the 1-10% of the population who…

You say “music characteristics hadn’t much to do with it” but then you list a number of specific characteristics that make music more likely to work on radio. That suggests the opposite of “any music will do”. Only music with very specific qualities will do. Or maybe you just meant to say you don’t like pop?

I think they mean pop music lacks musicality, most of what they listed were to do with sonic tricks that are not really tied to musicality or musicianship. Anyone with even a vague understanding of music can write a song on the same level as a pop song. Every now and then a great musician makes it into the pop scene, and you get interesting chord progressions, melodies and rythms. So it's not the pop style that's bad. But most of the time it's the same four chords, a riskless melody, and four to the floor percussion.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#167

Post by ehnto »

rahoulb wrote: post #155
ehnto wrote: post #53

I hope so. Top 40 lists are constructed not observed. They seem to have no relationship to what music is favored by listeners, just what is being pushed on pop radio. A self satisfying loop.

I'm in the UK and in my 40s. For me the Top 40 used to be one of the few places where you could hear stuff that wasn't just pop radio - because in the UK it was a sales chart, not an airplay chart and genuinely represented what people were listening to, not what the pluggers and labels had successfully pushed. However, since streaming, that equation has totally changed.

We have the same thing here with JJJ hottest one hundred. It is still mostly local underdogs so that is rad, but like you noted, the tides are changing thanks to streaming and every year gets a bit more mainstream.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#168

Post by darkerside »

svantana wrote: post #149
ehnto wrote: post #53

I hope so. Top 40 lists are constructed not observed. They seem to have no relationship to what music is favored by listeners, just what is being pushed on pop radio. A self satisfying loop.

On the other hand, music has historically been a very social thing that have brought people together. The decline into a sollipsist "service" has been gradual since the dawn of recorded music, but Spotify et al are definitely making it worse than ever. My 11-year old daughter loves music but she and her friends all listen to different things, there is no music that they all know. I may have hated top40 stuff in my da…

Don't worry, they still rally together around songs as they go "viral". Music has always had a big social component and always will. It's wired into us.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#169

Post by ehnto »

awalton wrote: post #88
jimbob45 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re right and I’d argue that American Idol proves that there is a surplus of talent for labels to choose from, allowing them to be picky in regards to secondary requirements (ethnicity, backstory, work ethic).

The difference being that American Idol contestants are often actually quite artistically good - they only managed to get where they are because of skill and looks and luck, instead of just the latter two. (This isn't universal; it's often the case they pick someone up who is actually pretty awful but is interesting for the whole mechanics of the show, either being very attractive or standing out in some other way...…

I think it's going to be better for it in the long run. I know it's hard for bands to make ends meet off album sales now, but on the other hand it doesn't cost 100k to produce and distribute anymore. Some people don't even have to spend a dime, it can be home produced and still have an audience.

Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?

#170

Post by darkerside »

kjakm wrote: post #121
toyg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They say nothing, make me feel nothing, and make me think of nothing. That's because you're not their target market. The industry as a whole targets teenagers. It's been the same model since the '60s: turn teenagers into faithful consumers of acts (which are really just brands) and ensure they will buy for the rest of their life just to reminisce. Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish speak to teenagers. All teenagers do…

I take your point but I would argue you could remove 'me' from my statement and it would hold true. I think the pop stars mentioned make people 'feel' more through their social media and image than their music. Maybe I'm just an old man now but the lyrics to Bille Eilish's 'Bad Guy' surely can't resonate with anyone...

If you're so old it's probably time to learn that the things that resonate with other people don't necessarily resonate with you, and vice versa. And that's ok. It's cultural diversity. You may at some point "get it" and start to like Billie Eilish (I'm mostly indifferent). You may not. But believing that nobody possibly could is the mark of an incomplete theory of mind.
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