How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop • Hacker News Board

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#181

Post by goosejuice » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #168

goosejuice wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the problem is globalization? What do you mean by regional music? Genres span borders now. Look at the Midwest emo / mathrock scene and how it made its way to Japan and Taiwan. We can romanticise the old days of radio but local scenes aren't dead and these little genres are still going and new ones are popping up.

> Local scenes aren’t dead. I might just be out of touch, so show me the innovation. Rap simply didn’t exist in the 60’s. What’s around today that wasn’t in the late 90’s? Not just minor evolution but new ideas. It’s been 25 years any other stretch of that length since 1900 had several radical new ideas.

You can say this about innovation for all art forms. Art evolves it doesn't just come out of thin air. The consumer also has to evolve.

Even if you just look at popular artists: Mk.gee, Collier, Domi and jdbeck, Beyonce are some examples of mold breaking.

What exactly are you expecting, cantina jizz? If so there's no shortage of extremely out there stuff.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#182

Post by fallinditch » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

ekam wrote: post #157

fallinditch wrote: post #79

There 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?

It's interesting, Schur (artist name) hasn't had anyone ever review his music as far as I can tell, none of his tracks have ever got much traction on YouTube, none of his releases are even listed on albumoftheyear.org, low traction on SoundCloud too. He said he gets fans via Instagram (34 k followers). He's not on TikTok. Looks like he's not on any official Spotify, or other popular, playlists.

Schur's music does have a very catchy and upbeat vibe, I like his stuff. I guess it's possible he could have had a track featured on a TikTok video that went viral, without being aware of it.

So for him his best channel is Instagram. I noticed that he's using Insta ads, I'm getting them in my feed, but I follow him too.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#183

Post by bane » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 9:42 PM UTC

svnt wrote: post #137

goosejuice wrote: post #114

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.

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…

Nice analysis, but maybe still missing some things. e.g. it's not clear that "DJ" here is professional radio-DJs vs dancehall/wedding etc. which tend to be small single-person businesses in an entirely different function.

A good radio-DJ might be hired to fill a key block of time in a major metro. They may select to play a local band's new song during evening rush hour and suddenly 3 million new people know about it instantly moving them up the charts. They were just as much a part of the tastemaking stream as the labels and often provided interesting color commentary, local community info, places for meet and greets, upcoming concert info, and so on.

I live in a top-10 metro in the U.S. and I think it's very telling that the FM dial mostly plays pre-2000 music, with very little commentary by DJs if any between commercial breaks. They may as well just be a streaming internet feed pumped through an antenna. Some stations just play the same songs I remember from middle/high school decades ago and they aren't even advertising themselves as "classic" or "nostalgia" in any way.

Once the big consolidation events happened, it seems like the ability for popular music to really get ahold of the zeitgeist died with it and now tastemaking seems to be almost as much a function of push by labels and artists/influencers than a pull-and-present by people sitting in curation seats.

Music has become "flatter" in a sense which in theory is good. But if everything is unknown, it's much harder for utterly unknown geniuses with bad marketing skills to break through.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#184

Post by Retric » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

goosejuice wrote: post #181

Retric wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Local scenes aren’t dead. I might just be out of touch, so show me the innovation. Rap simply didn’t exist in the 60’s. What’s around today that wasn’t in the late 90’s? Not just minor evolution but new ideas. It’s been 25 years any other stretch of that length since 1900 had several radical new ideas.

You can say this about innovation for all art forms. Art evolves it doesn't just come out of thin air. The consumer also has to evolve. Even if you just look at popular artists: Mk.gee, Collier, Domi and jdbeck, Beyonce are some examples of mold breaking. What exactly are you expecting, cantina jizz? If so there's no shortage of extremely out there stuff.

I’m expecting something to add to this sort of list:

Rap, Country, Electronic, Funk, Hip hop, Jazz, Latin, Pop, Punk, Reggae, Rock, Heavy Metal, Soul music and R&B

I’d even take Polka. My argument is we’re missing the kind of regional cross pollination that gives rise to such things.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#185

Post by fallinditch » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

fallinditch wrote: post #182

ekam wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your neighbor share with you what worked for him?

It's interesting, Schur (artist name) hasn't had anyone ever review his music as far as I can tell, none of his tracks have ever got much traction on YouTube, none of his releases are even listed on albumoftheyear.org, low traction on SoundCloud too. He said he gets fans via Instagram (34 k followers). He's not on TikTok. Looks like he's not on any official Spotify, or other popular, playlists. Schur's music does hav…

I think for Schur it really is the 'vibe thing' that works for him - he makes music that resonates with people. Spotify makes it so easy to like songs and every time someone likes a track it becomes more likely to be featured in the algo playlists and so the vibe snowballs.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#186

Post by bazmattaz » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:13 PM UTC

nluken wrote: post #60

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 understand it’s trendy these days to shit on Spotify but when I read about this practice it kind of seems like a non-story. Spotify are adding low cost tracks to their curated playlists (which are usually quite boring) to save themselves some money. If you don’t like this practice just don’t listen to their curated playlists. There are so many better user generated playlists out there.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#187

Post by rdedev » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:27 PM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #43

spinach wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lofi music is a really popular genre to listen to as background music, I wouldn't say it's a tired genre. Perhaps for creators it is, but for listeners it's not.

How much background music do you realistically need though? If there's a few thousand hours, would you notice if it repeated at some point? (Assuming the general style of the genre is staying similar and you don't listen to specific songs you discovered but just put on some collection of songs from the genre.) Is there new elevator music being composed all the time too?

Atleast for me the repetition is the point. It's calm enough when I'm working but I get a little jolt of joy whenbi recognise a groove I really liked before

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#188

Post by devilbunny » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

Gud wrote: post #109

bane wrote: post #101

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…

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…

Since you are, I assume, Swedish, this has essentially no relevance to your life, but if you get bored, and you have some way to access it, Mississippi Public Broadcasting made a movie ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31805076/ ) about an FM station that broadcast from 1968-81 in the modest-sized market of Jackson, Mississippi (uh, about 250-300k people at the time).

Because of the way a lot of stuff around broadcasting works, a small-ish life insurance company ended up with a 100 kW FM station (along with their existing TV and AM stations), a lawsuit challenging their AM, FM, and TV licenses over their (implicitly and explicitly racist) behavior, and as a result, a bunch of very diverse DJ's, mostly in their 20s, with almost no oversight.

When the station was sold, the new owners immediately switched to country, which AFAIK it still is. The fact that local bands at the time wrote songs about it should give you a hint. Yes, the movie is a big late-Boomer/early-GenX reminiscence-fest, but there's a lot of interesting detail there. The DJ's partnered up with producers, bringing big shows to a relatively small city. Some started a record store. One ended up in charge of organizing group tours to concerts in near-ish cities (still 3 hours away in any direction) because, as he put it in the movie, he had a better weed connection than anyone else at the station and so could actually bring enough for everyone.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#189

Post by pcthrowaway » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

rappatic wrote: post #29

The first two albums by Nujabes, the "godfather of lo-fi," are some of the best I've ever heard. Metaphorical Music and Modal Soul.

Nujabes tragically died in 2010, at the age of 36.

Another Japanese producer I like who straddles "lo-fi hip-hop" (but perhaps with more classical and vocal elements) is DJ Okiwari. Here's the track "Brighter Side" which draws on the vibe of '90s uplifting progressive hip-hop / R&B - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l23qmgf51z0

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#190

Post by goosejuice » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 11:09 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #184

goosejuice wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say this about innovation for all art forms. Art evolves it doesn't just come out of thin air. The consumer also has to evolve. Even if you just look at popular artists: Mk.gee, Collier, Domi and jdbeck, Beyonce are some examples of mold breaking. What exactly are you expecting, cantina jizz? If so there's no shortage of extremely out there stuff.

I’m expecting something to add to this sort of list: Rap, Country, Electronic, Funk, Hip hop, Jazz, Latin, Pop, Punk, Reggae, Rock, Heavy Metal, Soul music and R&B I’d even take Polka. My argument is we’re missing the kind of regional cross pollination that gives rise to such things.

All of those genres can be linked to one another and you can continue on down to extreme levels. Rock, punk, metal, funk, country, soul, and reggae alone barely touches on the diversity of string instrument based music. Is this a naming problem for you?

Every noise at once attempts to show the extremes to which music can be classified if you haven't seen it.

I don't see any signs that this evolution has ever stopped or will stop. Artists are obviously limited by physics, what sounds pleasant to us, the instruments that are available, and what is currently in fashion. That we'd have more unique music in a more isolated world seems like a pretty crazy claim to me.