Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

tedium.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 128 posts

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#71

Post by andsoitis »

jrumbut wrote: post #67
andsoitis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That process sounds easily automatable! I can’t wait for that to be unleashed so that human pop song writers can delve deeper.

Yes, but can you automate being a record company executive's nephew?

nepobaby dynamics notwithstanding, yes I think you can simulate them for that particular role. Even if they’re given another position, because now the system has been improved / more optimized. You can never be rid of the nephew, but that was never really the goal to begin with. The goal isn’t to get rid of the nephew per se, but to replace human labor with something more efficient and effective so that we can … have leisure time?” Whether that role was previously occupied by the nephew or someone unknown. The incentives of capitalism drive optimization (at some level, not globally necessarily).

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#72

Post by samdafi »

refuse wrote: post #57

I happen to know someone in the music industry. Not huge, but you might have seen them on MTV and you've probably heard their hits. They say modern songs get written by a huge group of songwriters in hotels. Individual words and phrases will earn credits. They go through the list of everything floating in the songwriters' heads and whittle it down on a huge whiteboard and anything put up there and put into the song g…

This seems to be a corporate version of what I’ve witnessed: large groups of people getting together in vacation rentals or studios at writing camps and breaking off into small groups, each writing around a theme and passing ideas around fairly democratically, in a messy, creative, communal way. Then sharing and layering later. That leads to lots of contributors to one work of art, as they all reach for the best way to tell a story and fit it to a musical vibe that enhances it (or the other direction, it takes all kinds of approaches).

Never a whiteboard, so if that’s literally true I guess that environment would make me sad and disillusioned too, and I’m sorry your friend was dealing with it. But it’s certainly not the only model!

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#73

Post by ipaddr »

yamtaddle wrote: post #6
genewitch wrote: post #5

The answer to the question the article poses, FTA: Because the definition of "songwriting" has changed since the 1960s, and not just due to "sampling." It's still a decent read, but if you want to argue the nuance, this is what the article says.

Can't pull the tricks from The KLF's The Manual: How to Have a Number 1 the Easy Way to get free and uncredited songwriting work out of people anymore, then?

Never heard of it before but it is worth sharing:

https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEas...

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#74

Post by ipaddr »

andsoitis wrote: post #62
coldtea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking through history art has always been commercial - it's just the audience that changes. Well, not exactly in the same way. Commercial is not about "catering to an audience", it's about catering to mass audiences, and the compromises that entails. For example, an "artistic" indie group catering to just a tiny minority is not just "as commercial" as a pop production, unless we stretch the term beyond recognitio…

> For example, an "artistic" indie group catering to just a tiny minority is not just "as commercial" as a pop production, unless we stretch the term beyond recognition). But that indie band is not necessarily more artistic.

Authentic is the correct word here. Authentic bands offer a realism that is opposite of the collective market driven mass media song writing.

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#75

Post by zupreme »

jrumbut wrote: post #67
andsoitis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That process sounds easily automatable! I can’t wait for that to be unleashed so that human pop song writers can delve deeper.

Yes, but can you automate being a record company executive's nephew?

This has existed in tech for a long time. We call it the “Pet Project”.

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#76

Post by mofreelumch »

jrumbut wrote: post #67
andsoitis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That process sounds easily automatable! I can’t wait for that to be unleashed so that human pop song writers can delve deeper.

Yes, but can you automate being a record company executive's nephew?

Based on various published conversations with Sydney, it seems AI may have already achieved this level of thought.

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#77

Post by hammock »

refuse wrote: post #57

I happen to know someone in the music industry. Not huge, but you might have seen them on MTV and you've probably heard their hits. They say modern songs get written by a huge group of songwriters in hotels. Individual words and phrases will earn credits. They go through the list of everything floating in the songwriters' heads and whittle it down on a huge whiteboard and anything put up there and put into the song g…

It’s called a writers room. Get a few songwriters you like in a room and jam together for a few hours. Typically everyone in the room splits the credit even if you were just breathing the air and lending a vibe.

Writers rooms and all the writers credits don’t begin to scratch the surface of ghostwriting, though.

Many popular songs are picked up from ghostwriters who are paid a flat fee and don’t even get a songwriter credit. Many songs

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#78

Post by dbalatero »

themadturk wrote: post #43
bodhiandphysics wrote: post #17

So there’s an interesting prehistory to all this. The us music industry began in the late 19th century… and this is before the record! music publishing and songwriting was literally publishing… of the sheet music. The standard form of this was as a piano score, and that’s the form that songwriters generally had copywrite on. Now if you were to perform this you would obviously need an orchestration, and this was subje…

Many Hollywood composers outsource orchestration as well, often due to time constraints. John Williams is perfectly capable of orchestrating his work, but often doesn't. I understand he leaves very detailed notes for those who do, however.

Yeah, he mentions his orchestrator in this documentary on Empire Strikes Back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT4_ERNVx3Q

Given the time constraints on getting the film scored it makes a ton of sense to have help in that department.

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#79

Post by Scoundreller »

andsoitis wrote: post #60
refuse wrote: post #57

I happen to know someone in the music industry. Not huge, but you might have seen them on MTV and you've probably heard their hits. They say modern songs get written by a huge group of songwriters in hotels. Individual words and phrases will earn credits. They go through the list of everything floating in the songwriters' heads and whittle it down on a huge whiteboard and anything put up there and put into the song g…

That process sounds easily automatable! I can’t wait for that to be unleashed so that human pop song writers can delve deeper.

I mean, I just threw "write me a song that britney spears would sing." into chatGPT and the result could have fooled me. I won't bore you with the result. Even included some rhymes without prompting that.

Re: Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

#80

Post by dmitriid »

forevergreenyon wrote: post #37

call me old school, but it doesn't make sense to me that people get to live off the work done once, then repeated (recreated or reproduced by technology) while the 'creator' in practice whomever owns the 'licenses' continues to collect payment for what the technology does (namely: machine-based repetition/reproduction) I guess this is the way NFTs can make real sense: when whomever owns the NFT receives auto-blockcha…

> it doesn't make sense to me that people get to live off the work done once, then repeated

> whomever owns the NFT receives auto-blockchain royalty payments for the underlying asset

It doesn't make sense for someone to do work once, then get money all the time that's why you want to automate the process of doing the work once and then getting the money all the time in perpetuity

Post reply on HN