I'd like to do a tangential mention of SomaFM, web radio that does electronic chill and mood music very well and has survived for a long time on donations.
How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
151–160 of 237 posts
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Debatable - is Pete Rock not up on that same level? What about DJ Premier?
Dilla is one of the best, but I think apart of why he's so highly rated is his early departure. We're left to wonder about his potential.
IMO it's more that his approach to rhythm truly was original and unique in contemporary music, and was so influential you hear it everywhere. In fact not only has it not faded, but it continues to grow in prominence year after year. Jazz drummers study dilla beats now. It's used in gospel music. It's very rare for a novel technique to so clearly originate from a single practitioner and then go on to be used as widely as that.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#153I 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'd still like to hear how is that exactly different or worse than the old "publisher" model, where everything is gatekept by publishing megacorporations and they decided what the taste of the decade was. 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'…
Influential DJs in influential markets could discover a band or even a group of bands and drag attention other DJs would follow.
Maybe I am out of touch but that dynamic seems fairly lost, and we only temporarily discarded the mega publisher dynamic, which seems to have returned.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this the result of consumers devaluing art? We want a $12 all you can eat plan, which tends to favor package contracts on the supply side. The direct-to-consumer model for music has been mostly rejected.
Did (most) consumers ever value art? There has always been the very wealthy that commission art, but it seems like throughout history more for less is the typical behavior.
Well, the 90s, I guess.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are 33k broadcast stations in the USA [0], and 11k people employed as disc jockeys [1] There were 12k broadcast stations in the 1980s [2] Given we can assume little to no automation, or at least a DJ human making sure the equipment didn’t break, and 8 hour shifts, that suggests 36k people were employed as radio DJs in the 1980s if we only count their time on air, assuming a 24 hour broadcast. If we include thei…
Excellent work. Doesn't touch on the great change that the internet brought, which admittedly isn't clear from my original question :( Wonder if those Zippia estimates include internet radio. Imagine it misses quite a bit given how difficult it would be to break down streamers on every platform.
If you are including streamers writ large, I would argue we are no longer really talking about the same thing. If we are talking about just internet radio, I would bet any paid, full time DJs there are intended to be included in the Zippia number.
There were essentially no video game DJs in the 1980s, though, so maybe what we seek from what media is just as responsible for the shift.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#156Earlier 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…
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…
Always extends before you were born and things used to be different. Even fairly recently the exceptions were awesome. Over 25 years ago a friend setup a fairly expensive satellite dish system specifically to be able to listen to WFMU. It’s a NYC station he loved that was being rebroadcast for people who left the area.
The station wasn’t something I was particularly into but nobody is doing that to listen to Clearchannel crap.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#157There seems to be a lot of anger around Spotify these days, often misplaced I reckon. One of the biggest impediments to new artists making a living from recorded music is not the existence of Spotify and other streaming platforms, rather it's the massive and growing library of existing music, some of which is excellent. But it's not impossible. My neighbor manages his music career himself. In 2024 he went from having…
Did your neighbor share with you what worked for him?
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#158I 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…
> the aesthetic flattening that results from conditioning the audience to listen to music passively
I disagree with this assertion and find it cynical. The golden age of radio was a far more 'aesthetic flattening' experience. And yet we wax nostalgic about it all the time. I think there are good things that come about from less than ideal situations. Back then there were next to zero ways for your art to get noticed, but on the flip side the shared experience of having only a handful of 'hit' songs still had its merits.
These days distribution costs have all but disappeared, so the barriers to being heard are far lower than ever before. Yes greasy corps like Spotify will continue trying to take their cut from every angle possible even if it dilutes the pool, but that's nothing new. So instead of making no money and being heard by no one, bands continue making no money but people actually have a chance of discovering their music. SoundCloud, YouTube, streaming services... it has never been easier to find and listen to music.
Consequently have we ever had a time of more diverse musical tastes? I don't think so.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excellent work. Doesn't touch on the great change that the internet brought, which admittedly isn't clear from my original question :( Wonder if those Zippia estimates include internet radio. Imagine it misses quite a bit given how difficult it would be to break down streamers on every platform.
If you are including streamers writ large, I would argue we are no longer really talking about the same thing. If we are talking about just internet radio, I would bet any paid, full time DJs there are intended to be included in the Zippia number. There were essentially no video game DJs in the 1980s, though, so maybe what we seek from what media is just as responsible for the shift.
The original comment was referring to human tastemakers in contrast to algorithmically generated playlists.
It's this segment that I would have high doubts to have decreased even with the prevalence of infinite playlists.
Edit: Basically I don't agree with the premise that the way we consume music today is any less local or curated. There's just been a shift in the way we consume.
Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Sure but there's so many internet and college radio stations out there. Even with mainstream consolidation I would find it surprising that there are less overall now than ever before. I mean just look at boiler room and club culture in general. The amount of tastemaking DJs out there is pretty vast.
Internet DJ’s can’t feed off each other to produce regional music. It’s all one big blob available anywhere which drowns diversity in a sea of mediocrity.
College radio stations aren’t dramatically increasing to make up for the vast consolidation that removed something like 80-90% of radio DJ’s.
40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s flowed into each other but the stuff was all very distinct in a way that 2000’s vs 2010’s isn’t.