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Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

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Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#91

Post by vineyardmike »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #44

An aspect here is that a lot more people are primarily on social media services like YouTube and twitch. The people they follow cannot play popular music because of DMCA take downs. The result is that a natural avenue for discovery music is cut off. Consumers will not associate the experience of the thing they're enjoying with the music as has traditionally been the case with TV, movies, and bars. The setting has a l…

> a lot more people are primarily on social media services like YouTube and twitch. The people they follow cannot play popular music because of DMCA take downs.

Pretty sure tons of people discover music through Tik Tok

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#92

Post by canofbars »

Animats wrote: post #8

There's an inherent upper limit for streaming music. You can only listen to one stream at a time.

You can be streaming while not listening though. I tend to leave my music streaming on after I leave the room because there is something quite enjoyable about walking inside and hearing music.

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#93

Post by morlockabove »

arcturus17 wrote: post #90
grawprog wrote: post #49

Streaming music sucks. It might seem weird but I don't like it. The first music I ever 'owned' myself personally were songs I taped off the radio. After that I started pirating music the same way I would collect songs on the radio, after that I started buying CD's, today I buy songs and albums from artists and producers directly. Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection…

Except maybe vinyl, I've gone through it all: taping songs off the radio, burning minidiscs and CDs, Napster, eMule, Pandora, iTunes, etc. I love Spotify and the actual way of consuming and discovering music. Some say that music taste stagnates as we age but I come from a metal and rock background and I have been making escapades into electronic music (including EDM), funk, soul, and more in my late twenties and earl…

Just download all the music onto your home (bunker) server and stream from that!

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#94

Post by friendlybus »

grawprog wrote: post #49

Streaming music sucks. It might seem weird but I don't like it. The first music I ever 'owned' myself personally were songs I taped off the radio. After that I started pirating music the same way I would collect songs on the radio, after that I started buying CD's, today I buy songs and albums from artists and producers directly. Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection…

Yeah I agree there's a barrier between the endless eight ball of streaming songs and the music you've downloaded onto your computer. Once you've plucked a song from the internet and put it into your collection it becomes reliable, you know why you saved it and what playlist it belongs and what activity you want to pair with it and what frame of mind you were in when you saved it.

Streaming/youtube is so ephemeral, even with history and playlists it's difficult to remember what you found so groovy about a piece when it could all be gone tomorrow. I rarely develop a fixed memory of a song until I've saved it.

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#95

Post by Melting_Harps »

Or you know... a large part of small business who once used this service in their stores/shops no longer exist, and the 25%+ of unemployed people, and God only knows all over the World, had to make cut backs to non-essential expenses.

Streaming services like Spotify never really made sense to me as business model, for the artists it could be a double edged sword at best if they get the desired exposure and total waste of time at worst since they get paid nothing and are lost in total obscurity.

Most artists make money from touring and performances, and unless you're a mainstream artist you're never going to make anything on record sells. Bandcamp cut its fees during the pandemic, and it kept some artists afloat for a while, but it wasn't long after that when you saw the patreon crowdfunding model needed to prop things up.

Having DJ'd and been around a lot of musical talent in clubs throughout the last 14 years its clear most had to have day jobs in between gigs and supporting their own labels on top of living expenses. I doubt many had much or anything in savings and I fear with so many clubs and venues going under its going to take another generation of an underground rave scene to brings things back to what it was 10-15 years ago for many of the music scenes I still went out for. Which may be a good thing, but its still hard to see so many artists talent get wasted due to COVID.

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#96

Post by friendlybus »

Bayart wrote: post #50
wolco2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try listening to older music. It's less boring and tries to bring out an emotion. A lot of the newer music has proshopped out any real emotion.

Music has always been extremely formulaic. That's its very nature : using tropes we're accustomed to to provoke an emotional reaction. But it certainly is less formulaic now than it was a few centuries ago.

Less formulaic now? Pop music is becoming more repetitive. [0] People like Max Martin producing an amazing amount of hit pop songs leads me to think it's more formulaic.

[0]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_tjFwcmHy5M

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#97

Post by dag11 »

kortilla wrote: post #84
dag11 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music. This complaint confuses me, as an avid Spotify user. A few times a week when I discover an artist I like, it's one click to look at their entire back catalog, listen to it sequentially, browse the artist bio, click through to the artist's social media to see what projects they're up to, right click and view who p…

> I enjoy most on vinyl for higher fidelity active listening Vinyl is not “higher fidelity” than what you pay for on Spotify, at least not in the audio quality sense.

It's higher fidelity than 320 kbps. Not remotely higher fidelity than FM or CD quality audio. But I've A/B tested songs I know inside and out on the same equipment using both vinyl and 320 kbps mp3 and I can hear the difference night and day.

But the main reason I listen to it is not that it's better than Spotify, but that it's a physically beautiful medium with artwork and is still high quality while promoting active, intimate listening.

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#98

Post by arcturus17 »

josephg wrote: post #60
grawprog wrote: post #49

Streaming music sucks. It might seem weird but I don't like it. The first music I ever 'owned' myself personally were songs I taped off the radio. After that I started pirating music the same way I would collect songs on the radio, after that I started buying CD's, today I buy songs and albums from artists and producers directly. Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection…

I hear what you’re saying, but Spotify solves a problem I never managed to solve with CDs: it solves discovery. I used to go to music shops and browse albums, and I had no idea which CD would be worth my money because I couldn’t listen to them and find out! Even from a band I like I would often buy their other albums then get home and be disappointed because they didn’t work for me. In comparison, spotify will find a…

Like I said in a sibling comment, I love Spotify but I think its recommendation and discovery mechanisms are really subpar.

They're merely "good enough" IMO. I can go to "Song Radio" or "Artist Radio", and browse through related artists and the like. But the latter still requires a significant amount of effort on my part, and the autogenerated radio playlists are nothing to write home about. I think it's fine that things like the "related artists" features exist, they emulate to some extent the old ways of discovering music, but they're also obvious and they would be part of a music service MVP nowadays. What I miss are solid automatic recommendations, more intelligent than those that are available.

As I remember, Pandora blew Spotify's automatic recommendations out of the water as far back as the mid-2000's. The idea of analyzing the song itself is so powerful and I think Spotify barely does it or weighs it way too little, favoring instead social aspects (such as the preference of other users). I discovered insane amounts of music with Pandora when I was able to use it, like dozens to hundreds of songs per week. Whereas with Spotify I go through these bad droughts that last weeks where I'm not discovering anything new that really clicks. I'd definitely pay for Pandora if it was available here in Spain.

It's weird to me that Spotify being the kingpin is so far behind Pandora in this regard. Is it that they don't care because users don't know any better or demand it? Or that what Pandora did was a technical miracle and can't be replicated at Spotify scale? Maybe it's some business model decision (eg, intelligent recommendations would stray users too far away from Taylor Swift)?

Maybe someone on HN can shed some light on this. And if anyone has any ideas for music services with intelligent recommendations available in Spain I'd be sure to give them a try.

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#99

Post by john61 »

grawprog wrote: post #49

Streaming music sucks. It might seem weird but I don't like it. The first music I ever 'owned' myself personally were songs I taped off the radio. After that I started pirating music the same way I would collect songs on the radio, after that I started buying CD's, today I buy songs and albums from artists and producers directly. Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection…

The Best thing to do with music is play or sing it for yourself. That is hard, but also very rewarding, because it takes time, patience and love.

Re: Streaming Is Stalling: Can Music Keep Up in the Attention Economy?

#100

Post by probably_wrong »

intricatedetail wrote: post #85
einpoklum wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not necessarily in order of importance) 1. Direct voluntary payments by their audience (one-off/recurring). 2. Live shows. 3. Payment by various entities to sing something. 4. Organizations (the state, corporations, philanthropic bodies) which sponsor artists to work on their art without having to also do the work of financing themselves. Still, it's quite possible that would fund less than are funded today. To that…

1. How is that different from begging?

Because begging is asking for help with no expected return - either you give them money, or you don't.

If an artist you like asks you for money, it is implied that this money will go towards funding their next project. It is more of an investment.

Patrons of the arts have existed for a long time. Donating to your artist is just the distributed version of that.

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