The top-40 is killing me, so it only seems fair.
Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
141–150 of 266 posts
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is astonishing when you realize it. Since the MCM times, we’ve transferred music bands from sound to image, and we noticed the commercial drums (and repetition on radios in particular) produced linear return in investment, and music characteristics hadn’t much to do with it. To the point that today, any music will do. It’s much easier for the labels, since they can pimp anyone among the 1-10% of the population who…
You can even see the difference with individual artists in their studio vs live performances. For some unknown reason I’ve been geeking out on Miley Cyrus lately. Her studio releases have that glossy, overproduced sound of too many cooks in the kitchen. Her live performances on the other hand rely on the power of her vocals and a really tight band that has been together for a stretch now. Just compare the studio rele…
Then there's Katy Perry, whose studio releases sound fine but on stage, she sounds like someone strangling a cat.
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I haven't much been in a car, thus haven't heard the radio, in 7 months. What's the connection between being in a car and listening to the radio? Do people not generally have radios in their homes where you live? And you must have a phone or laptop to be typing this where you could listen to the radio!
> Do people not generally have radios in their homes where you live? No. > And you must have a phone or laptop to be typing this where you could listen to the radio! Do I need an RTL-SDR?
No I mean every radio station I know streams over the Internet as well.
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is music supposed to challenge you? Music can be whatever it wants. But music having complex melodies, varied lyrics, telling stories, and having social or political commentary has very much always been a thing. Plenty of that music still exists and is still being made, but it's not really found on modern pop stations (although older pop stations have slightly more complex work). Just walking by a radio today bothe…
So if you listen to Bad Guy by Billie Eilish, Chun-Li by Nicki Minaj and thank u, next by Arianna Grande. You would say all of these women sound the same and have the same instrumentals?
I can tell Nicki Minaj from them, but I can't tell Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, or Ariana Grande apart and they've been looping on the radio for years. I can point out a specific song that I've heard before and looked up who it was, but whenever a new song pops up, I can't tell them apart. They've completely merged into the same media personality with the same music.
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I haven't much been in a car, thus haven't heard the radio, in 7 months. What's the connection between being in a car and listening to the radio? Do people not generally have radios in their homes where you live? And you must have a phone or laptop to be typing this where you could listen to the radio!
Radio just works. Someone else is choosing the playlist and you kinda hear the music in between the ads and annoying hosts. At home, I can select what I want to hear. I don't need to keep my attention on the road.
Do you not have radio stations where you value how the host selects, curates, and gives the background to the music for you?
What about the current affairs, plays, comedy, history?
I can’t imagine going without the radio!
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Rock and roll" is an explicit reference to the sex act and "jazz" the usual male contribution to same. Mick Jagger couldn't "get no satisfaction", the Beatles asked "why don't we do it in the road", Nina Simone wanted "some sugar in my bowl", one-not-really-a-hit-wonder Hillary instructed listeners to "drop your pants around your ankles" ( https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wu9Zps8vnEY ), and then there's pretty much every…
Also folk music[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24130589 (peasants with little to no agricultural surplus aren't interested in freemartins, neither four- nor two-legged. Compare "we also have a ‘big’ cycle of generations" in https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they... ) I'm not intending to watch WAP until I must in order to understand a parody. There's certainly no shortage of other musi…
The theme goes way back:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Sol...
(By no means the earliest.)
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
WAP.
I got curious and listened to it, and after listening to that load of rubbish, I simply don't feel connected with society anymore. Do people actually listen to this and like it, or is it just the perceived shock value that counts?
I think it's an insightful look at today's society, and I'm fond of it. It's a result of the ongoing sex pride and positivity movement in the US.
Anecdotally, recent generations have been raised with sexual repression and frustration. The most obvious example is announcing yourself as gay and being very literally banished from your family household, but it is layered quite deeply -- I can go into detail, but in general, sex continues to be an unspoken and embarrassing topic that you figure out yourself in private.
Since these urges are natural and part of the human experience, the whole treatment is odd and is often seen as uncaring. If you experience it, it puts you in an odd place: The repression forces you to either build a fiercely negative connection with sex, or develop a positive connection while having a struggled and inauthentic relationship with your family.
There is a growingly open sentiment that it is healthy and natural to want to have sex, and to have it safely, and perhaps with multiple partners over the course of your life if it suits you, and perhaps with multiple partners at the same time if that suits you too, and to tell all your friends about what a great (or awful) time you had afterward.
The novelty and "shock value" of this song, if you will, is being able to discuss these topics without consequence. And it reinforces something that is newly ingrained in society: To be more open and encouraging of safe sex for all is aligned with an active social movement that is making a difference to a lot of people, one that brings us closer to inner desires previously repressed.
This song is especially fun for a few reasons but putting the silly absurdist humor aside, I see people get hooked because it strikes this social chord really hard, demonstrating this generation's cultural shift in a comically honest way. A progressive household has both partners happily and willfully cooking and cleaning regularly, so to be a more desirable partner there's pressure to offer something else extraordinary -- "I don't cook, I don't clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring".
On a meta level, it's a comfortable beat for the bedroom and it sets a mood that is more primal. On another meta level, there's also a novelty that this song could only get to this level of popularity right now, realistically. It's not a song you can play on the radio or in stores.
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#148Spotify has definitely changed how I listen to music over the years. I have my core segments, but I'd say that 33% of my time on Spotify is just stuff that I bump into for random of reasons: a music beef between artists I don't listen to, stories from friends with different tastes in music, a news article about a band in the 50s, etc. I find myself listening to the music to give context to the stories I bump into. An…
>Wrecks havoc on my music suggestions though Netflix and spotify have definitely not solved suggestions yet. I still struggle to get either service to get me what I want.
With Netflix, their catalogue is small enough that I can find what I want regardless of what they suggest. They seem to have nailed the "more of the same" algorithm which is mostly looking at their weird notion of genre. For me that means it recommends me stuff I've already decided that I'm not interested in watching because they've been recommending it for months and I've declined to watch it. This seems in general a problem with recommendation algorithms: they struggle picking up on negative signals and get stuck in t a perpetual more of the same shit loop.
Spotify recommendations vary depending on the context. Their profile of me is probably very confused because I listen to a lot of different things and what I listen to is mostly dependent on context and what I'm in the mood for, which spans 5 decades of music and quite a few genres. I gravitate to a lot of alternative stuff but only the good stuff (for my personal very narrow definition of good). Spotify never figured out that sweet spot. So, I've been ignoring their radio feature because I find it a mix of "I already have that in a play list" or "I hate that song, which is why I don't have it in a playlist". It only very occasionally suggests something I haven't heard that I actually like.
However, I love their "users that listen to X also listen to Y" section. For me that's a main tool to discover new things. They also suggest adding songs to playlists. I've rediscovered a few tunes from the eighties that were somehow stuck in my head but that I struggled to name this way. The eighties were of course the glory days of the top 40 and I listened to it while doing my homework back in the day. I stopped listening to that stuff in the nineties when alternative music became a thing.
In any case, I prefer these non personalized type of suggestions over the more of the same stuff that passes for artificial intelligence peddled by many websites. I hate how you get stuck in recommendation bubbles that way. This also dominates news websites these days, which is something I hate because it's gotten quite hard to get an overview of what is happening in the world with news websites increasingly biased by what works as click bait with shoddy AI algorithms rather than telling me what is happening.
And it's a reason I like HN because here the feed is dictated by shared interest of a technical audience rather than any of our personal preferences or political opinions. That's why it works. No AI recommendations here. That's why people come here.
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#149I hope so. Top 40 lists are constructed not observed. They seem to have no relationship to what music is favored by listeners, just what is being pushed on pop radio. A self satisfying loop.
On the other hand, music has historically been a very social thing that have brought people together. The decline into a sollipsist "service" has been gradual since the dawn of recorded music, but Spotify et al are definitely making it worse than ever. My 11-year old daughter loves music but she and her friends all listen to different things, there is no music that they all know. I may have hated top40 stuff in my day, but at least we all knew it.
Re: Is Spotify Killing the Top 40?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got curious and listened to it, and after listening to that load of rubbish, I simply don't feel connected with society anymore. Do people actually listen to this and like it, or is it just the perceived shock value that counts?
I don't like the song much. It feels, as a straight guy, like a record label is manipulating me - using my sexuality as lever to increase their stream count. On the other hand - it's just bawdiness. Humorous role play. It's not as if it's a new invention
> like a record label is manipulating me - using my sexuality as lever to increase their stream count.
You mean the same way James Bond movies are "manipulating" you to buy tickets?