121–130 of 237 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, can't wait to go back to Sony installing rootkits on my playback device to make sure we don't pirate their CDs.
A DRM scheme from 20 years ago is not the one and only alternative to Spotify.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "post-radio" world is a weird one. An algorithm selecting songs for streaming audio just isn't the same as the kind of curated-for-genre/channel experience that radio used to provide. Sure songs would get overplayed, but radio also did a pretty good job of keeping that absolute tripe off the air. Good radio stations would also surface good local bands and cater to regional tastes. As much as I love the fact that…
Do you have any proof that radio DJs are less prevalent now than in the past? I'm having trouble finding evidence of that.
https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2...
When I was a kid in the 1980's I used to call the DJ and request songs A LOT. When I was a teen I used to call in to win contests. Now when I listen to a 'I<3Radio' station in the garage, its clear all the DJ segments are pre-recorded and everything is automated. Its all soundbites. Its all garbage. Its all advertisements. Its the same ~30 songs on rotation.
I would highly recommend that folks read Liz Pelly's Mood Machine , which is referenced here via the Harper's excerpt, not just because it shows artists' perspectives on the long tail model that tech pitched to them, but because it can be read as an indictment of the platform model that increasingly dictates how we engage with art and society at large. Pelly's account really gets to the heart of the problem: these pl…
I will read that but... I'm so tired of this anti-Spotify crap. Artists and listeners are free not to use it, just as they are free not to use Tidal, SoundCloud, bandcamp, YouTube, etc. It's a platform and the market is free. If it's not working out for you find a different way to market yourself. It's not like top 40 or the Grammys are fair either. Art isn't a fair industry and never will be. How many amazing artist…
Historically, we retrospectively recognize the seminal importance of scenes that had virtually zero participants, and rather than regretting that those scenes were so tiny and demonizing the distribution networks that served less-seminal music to the vast majority of listeners, we romanticize the marginality of those scenes.
But when we see the same thing playing out contemporaneously, with creative niche music reaching tiny numbers of listeners and not getting traction via the distribution networks that serve the vast mainstream, we treat it as a crisis.
Lofi Girl still has an active audience. >100k for each video. GameChops has a channel as well with >5k & The Musician's story adds to the vibe. If someone can relate to the creator, it helps to create more connection with the audience than a pure algorithm. The human curated/generated animations seem more coherent...even if it's on a loop. I like some of the new AI animations for being novel...mostly futuristic. Thou…
Surely there are many genuine, human Lo-Fi artists, and I'd love to know who they are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money flows to the things people want. The real housewives, the view, twilight, etc. Hell people make millions simply playing video games on twitch. But nobody is owed an income for doing something they love. The question you should be asking, is how do you increase demand for the things you value? How do you make people want the thing you have to offer. Musicians, comedians, and other artists who figure out that ans…
> Money flows to the things people want. The real housewives, the view, twilight, etc. Hell people make millions simply playing video games on twitch. But nobody is owed an income for doing something they love. It's not about love. Tons of creatives work jobs they loathe just as much as any other profession, but it's what they're trained to do. It's their specialization, one honed over their entire lives, which can b…
As others have mentioned, we have gone through this in human history before, say when looms became automated and huge employers disappeared overnight. Things change, and those that come after us, wont miss the things that disappeared; nobody is calling for the destruction of automated looms today in order to restore those manual jobs.
To my mind, the problem is one of expectations, and wildly out of control governments which empower corporate monopolies. It has disempowered small, local communities to trade and lift each other up, in small and simple ways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dilla is still the greatest to ever do it.
Debatable - is Pete Rock not up on that same level? What about DJ Premier?
We're left to wonder about his potential.
I would highly recommend that folks read Liz Pelly's Mood Machine , which is referenced here via the Harper's excerpt, not just because it shows artists' perspectives on the long tail model that tech pitched to them, but because it can be read as an indictment of the platform model that increasingly dictates how we engage with art and society at large. Pelly's account really gets to the heart of the problem: these pl…
And by "they", it was a few executives in those corporations - it was never a meritocracy and those people never cared about music they peddled either.
So what exactly did it change here except the fact that now we're not at a mercy of a megapublisher to actually ship tapes/CDs across the world to hear a smaller artist?
> For Japanese soundtrack producer Nujabes, the “lofi” sound wasn’t an aesthetic choice. It was an artifact of creating such forward thinking music with the dusty equipment from 20 years ago. I trying to figure out where the author got this from? Audio hardware/software hasn't changed that much in 20 years, and Nujabes' lofi aesthetic seems intentional. According to Wikipedia, it originated from an effect button on R…
> I trying to figure out where the author got this from? I laughed at this too. Oh yeah, back in 2005 there was no way to get good sound from that dusty old equipment. I mean, some of the best sounding albums of all time are 50+ years old.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't disagree more. Most radio stations only played the most blandest junk music, even from great artists. Seems they would rotate the top 3 songs even from the absolute most popular musicians. I must have heard Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden >500 times on the rock stations in Stockholm. The Prowler? 0. Maybe some 3am DJ could play some cool songs on occasion, like you said. There was always very little variet…
yeah it's a hilarious complaint seeing as most radio stations have been a playlist on shuffle with algorithmically determined tracks and no real DJ for over twenty years. It's not different at all from most terrestrial radio. (shout-out to KEXP and KUTX for bucking the trend)
You could time-travel into the future by moving your radii from somewhere else to a musical cultural center like New York or Seattle. People would pay for subscription services to listen to radio stations from those areas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any proof that radio DJs are less prevalent now than in the past? I'm having trouble finding evidence of that.
Clearchannel (which became IheartRadio) owns most radio stations (>850) in the US. They fired hundreds of DJ's in ~2011. https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2... When I was a kid in the 1980's I used to call the DJ and request songs A LOT. When I was a teen I used to call in to win contests. Now when I listen to a 'I<3Radio' station in the garage, its clear all the DJ segments are pre-recorded…
I mean just look at boiler room and club culture in general. The amount of tastemaking DJs out there is pretty vast.