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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?

#171

Post by 4dregress »

thrav wrote: post #167
randomsearch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re projecting your free time / dedication to discovery on other people and that’s unfair. Spotify’s discovery tools for example are a real boon to many. That said, I do feel the same as you about the “good old days”. Owning music was a very different experience. It doesn’t help that streaming apps haven’t worked out the UX yet (god knows why, they’ve had long enough). But... flip side... if I could time travel ba…

I think this has more to do with our culture making everything about the individual. You can’t name bands anymore, because explosive popularity is the realm of the individual artist. Even massive individual artists, disappear into relative obscurity when they move into a band format (John Mayer). Kanye, Taylor, Nicki, Lizzo, Justin, Drake, Ariana, Billie, Miley... Even hip-hop, which seems like a distinctly individua…

I think its more about Culture being driven buy corporate profits. Pop music made by people who don't own their masters seem to be slaves of streaming. If you like underground music or music by people who do own their masters then the experience is very different.

For example Greg Pucaito is killing it. Amazing debut album doing really well in all the charts. 100% in control of his and can anything he wants like his recent "Fuck Content" event

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

#172

Post by indigochill »

Kye wrote: post #123
arcturus17 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Pandora repeated the same five songs no matter how many times I skipped them the last time I tried it.

Yeah, this was why I stopped using it as well. It would fall into musical ruts and just repeat the same handful of songs forever. It wouldn't work to thumbs-down those songs because I did like them, but I also wanted to hear new recommendations.

Spotify by comparison will also often recycle stuff I've already heard, but there's still always some new stuff in their weekly recommendations. Sometimes it's a hit, sometimes not, but at least it's something I haven't heard before.

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

#174

Post by indigochill »

m463 wrote: post #76
mackrevinack wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I miss owning my music collection" there's nothing stopping you from having both! I havnt done this yet but im thinking about cancelling my spotify subscription soon and only signing up for a few months out the year just to discover new stuff, then put the rest of the money I would have given spotify that year towards buying the music I want to keep. I won't have to worry about songs disappearing anymore or my playl…

> there's nothing stopping you from having both! Actually it seems the entire music industry including the distributors don't want sales - they seem to prefer streaming. I remember when apple music came out and I couldn't listen to my music anymore

Bandcamp admittedly exists to be an exception to this rule, but yeah, they're definitely a buy-music-oriented platform. They're also the most artist-friendly platform there is (among other things, they've been doing "Bandcamp Fridays" all this year where they've foregone their cut of sales to help artists make it through the year).

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

#175

Post by mytherin »

foepys wrote: post #51
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…

They absolutely can play popular music. They just don't want to pay for it. All popular YouTubers and streamers are businesses which is a part that is often forgotten. They are all acting like they are friends with their viewers but in reality they are businesses just like a car wash, restaurant, plumber, etc.

The system is not set up for this. You cannot play copyrighted music in a stream or YouTube video without jumping through hundreds of hoops with licensing. Especially if you are listening to a variety of songs (e.g. Spotify or a radio) this is a nightmare.

You are right that many (not all) YouTubers and streamers are businesses, but pinning this on streamers for being cheap/greedy and not wanting to pay ignores the reality of the situation. If this was in any way realistic you would see a certain percentage of streamers pay and legally play popular music. Instead, that percentage is zero.

There is no reasonable path to pay for playing popular music, and that is entirely the fault of the record companies.

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

#176

Post by toper-centage »

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 don't want to scavange the Internet for music and I don't want to own a bunch of music files that I'll forget about in an aging drive. I'm totally fine with music as a service. But I totally agree that we can't let go of the possibility of owning music files.

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

#177

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

> Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection.

If you aren't pirating, it is a lot cheaper. Whenever this topic comes up, somebody boasts about their 2000 album collection or whatever and simple math demonstrates that you'd get like 100 years of streaming services for that price.

> When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other.

This feels like "yells at cloud" to me. I don't buy the "worse product forces appreciation" argument in any circumstance. I am far more able to appreciate a wider range of music now than ever before, in large part because it isn't a $15 dollar commitment to listen to an album and decide if I like it.

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

#178

Post by UncleMeat »

schwartzworld wrote: post #138
josephg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Funny that you say that because I have long thought Spotify kills discovery. In the 90s, I discovered a lot of great music because it was playing at a listening station at a record store, or because I was browsing through the ska-punk section and liked the cover art, or by flipping through a friend's CD collection. A lot of my early tastes came from gems I found in my parents old records. It was also really common to…

Cover art has virtually nothing to do with quality (and is accessible on spotify). How much money did you pay for records that you ended up not liking?

It is so easy to expose yourself to new music on spotify. Far easier than relying on whatever handful of records happened to be in the listening station.

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

#179

Post by syshum »

thrav wrote: post #167
randomsearch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re projecting your free time / dedication to discovery on other people and that’s unfair. Spotify’s discovery tools for example are a real boon to many. That said, I do feel the same as you about the “good old days”. Owning music was a very different experience. It doesn’t help that streaming apps haven’t worked out the UX yet (god knows why, they’ve had long enough). But... flip side... if I could time travel ba…

I think this has more to do with our culture making everything about the individual. You can’t name bands anymore, because explosive popularity is the realm of the individual artist. Even massive individual artists, disappear into relative obscurity when they move into a band format (John Mayer). Kanye, Taylor, Nicki, Lizzo, Justin, Drake, Ariana, Billie, Miley... Even hip-hop, which seems like a distinctly individua…

Where you see over valuing of the individual, I see a massive about of Tribalism, and collectivism. Maybe not in music I admit I am not following music culture very closely but just about every other aspect of human society today (and I suspect music is as well) is deeply steeped in the tribe/group/collective

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

#180

Post by ubercow13 »

awild wrote: post #132
arcturus17 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, more depressing than anything, in the sense that it confirms that Spotify relies very heavily on preferences of other users and creates filter bubbles like Youtube. It's a vastly inferior method to Pandora's song analysis method IMO. I'd definitely use Spotify more if it had that, maybe significantly more - I can use it for 6 hours on a given day but then I often give it breaks because I'm on a discovery rut. Ma…

To me Spotify has this vibe of musical ignorance all over it. A friend and I joked about their ceo wearing a t-shirt that had something to the effect of "I love music" on it. Which IMHO no-one that deeply likes music would wear. He also made snide remarks about how musicians should adapt to their platform wrt to publishing more music more often (instead of adapting Spotify to the needs of the musicians) The story I l…

I think this is an interesting take.

People who might in the past have gotten their new music from such deeply passionate music lovers and experts as John Peel, or any number of other DJs, are now often using algorithms in their place. And there is a sense that those algorithms are created by people with no real love for music or personal investment in it as part of our culture, which is kind of sad.

I think this is a big part of why music discovery through Spotify feels so soulless, especially compared to something like Bandcamp Weekly.

I guess their next step would be to start creating the music itself with algorithms. You would simply turn on Spotify and it would start playing a continuous stream of algorithmically created music to match your profiled tastes.

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