The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
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The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
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Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#2I don't quite see what is "fake" about the "fake artists". They appear to be real artists. Did I missunderstand something?
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#3I don't quite see what is "fake" about the "fake artists". They appear to be real artists. Did I missunderstand something?
No, you are right, at the end of the article:
>Even the term fake artists doesn’t really do justice to the scope of the situation—because, as we have seen, it’s not the musicians, real or otherwise, who are at the root of the situation, but the dominant players in the industry.
and there is another article linked to from that one:
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/an-mbw-reader-just-bl...
where the matter is explained, point #5:
>At the end of the day, fake artists are of course real songwriters, instrumentalists and music producers with varying degrees of talent.
The "fake artists" is one of those "way off" names the media invented, these people are likely paid peanuts for their work/music/playing, their real names are not publicized and the "record label" gets the most of the streaming royalties.
It would be like you paid $10 once to someone on fiverr for - say - an Excel template , get the IP of it, attribute the creation to an invented name (belonging to your "label") then by using some clever SEO or whatever, sell it a few thousand times.
They should be called "invented name artists", there is nothing fake in them if not the names, sort of "ghost writers", possibly "ghost artists" would be suitable.
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#4Muzak. see Norman Spinrad's "Little Heroes"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/719900.Little_Heroes
Once (and still, probably, in some small places) radio DJ's were valued as editors of playlists. Could it be we jsut need a way to recognize and encourage curators now? Make their job public instead of some "black box algorithm" or more likely middle management committee subject to bribes as is currently done with mass market radio.
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#5Interesting points raised about discoverability, financial incentives of curators, and treating music as "content", but the "pseudonymous artists" bit seems like a pointless distraction.
For example Richard D James, more of an "artist" than a "content creator" released music as:
- Aphex Twin
- Phonic Boy on Dope
- Q-Chastic
- Blue Calx
- The Dice Man
- Gak
- Power-Pill
- Bradley Strider
- AFX
- Caustic Window
- The Tuss (comprising both Brian and Karen Tregaskin!)
- user18081971
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#6If generic jazz can easily substitute "important" jazz it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it, especially not in the context of "things for background music."
I don't think this is saying anything about more active music consumption where people are actually listening to it. I personally get annoyed if more than 20% of a mix is songs I haven't already upvoted so there isn't a lot of room to bring in weird knockoff artists into my streaming--in fact I saw a recent article that talked about the current problem with streaming is that 90% of profits come from titles older than 18 months so it is harder to break through with new songs (the opposite of radio-driven sales where most profits came from new albums). That seems to be the opposite of "no one cares what they listen to so spotify can just redirect profits wherever they like."
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#7If generic jazz can easily substitute "important" jazz it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it, especially not in the context of "things for background music." I don't think this is saying anything about more active music consumption where people are actually listening to it. I personally get annoyed if more than 20% of a mix is songs I haven't already upvoted so there isn't a lot o…
" it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it" that's one hell of a stretch.
Failure by a broader audience to understand a genre (or only want to casually consume one part of it passively) doesn't invalidate it's canon. By that measure Kenny G should have usurped John Coltrane as the saxophonist of note, and by any standard except coffee shop and elevator back ground noise he's done no such thing.
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#8Interesting points raised about discoverability, financial incentives of curators, and treating music as "content", but the "pseudonymous artists" bit seems like a pointless distraction. For example Richard D James, more of an "artist" than a "content creator" released music as: - Aphex Twin - Phonic Boy on Dope - Q-Chastic - Blue Calx - The Dice Man - Gak - Power-Pill - Bradley Strider - AFX - Caustic Window - The T…
"but the "pseudonymous artists" bit seems like a pointless distraction."
I think what matters here is motive. RDJ used/s pseudonyms to suit an artistic purpose not unlike what Fernando Pessoa did with his heteronyms in literature a century ago.
What's happening here looks less like artistic license and more like marketecture designed to game DSPs for streams.
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#9Fake? By what attribution?
> Note that one of the Hara Noda tracks has almost four million plays—that’s more streams than are attributed to most of the tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are, which just won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
The author seems to get mixed up in the process of legitimization. There is both no reason a Grammy should legitimize an artist nor why someone should want to delegate the process of legitimization to The Recording Academy. It simply isn't a useful ontology. Ontologies should provide epistemic clarity. Instead the author is left with confusion. The solution is simple: find a new ontology.
Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms
#10If generic jazz can easily substitute "important" jazz it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it, especially not in the context of "things for background music." I don't think this is saying anything about more active music consumption where people are actually listening to it. I personally get annoyed if more than 20% of a mix is songs I haven't already upvoted so there isn't a lot o…
Music historians note that the creation of the "cannon" of classical music occurred when public orchestral concerts arose around the early 19th century (and often paired with the rise of the middle class). Prior, you'd need an invitation to a private concert put on by a noble.
Mostly "old" music was played at these concerts. A public concert had to at least cover its cost from ticket sales, so eliminating commissions for new works was necessary, if a big break from tradition (most music was written expecting little more than a single performance). Because the pieces that kept getting played at concerts became part of a standard orchestral repertoire, a cannon emerged which became harder to update. A commonplace that circulated when I was a music student claimed that Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (1943) was the last thing to make it into the standard orchestral repertoire.
Maybe there's a similar underlying process at play in which any commercial process naturally tends to promote a smaller "cannon" of block-buster crowd-pleasers (why would you not promote your best-selling widget?). Our own listening (now) prefers not only music we already know, but the exact performance we already have heard.