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How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

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Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#231
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats because there is no answer. Marx and all of the people who developed his theories after him have exhaustively and scientifically proved this. That's really whats happening: its not that people dont have an answer is that they're not admitting to the exploitative nature of private capital accumulation. The main internal contradiction of capitalism leads to the system creating large amounts of wealth but also equ…

> The main internal contradiction of capitalism leads to the system creating large amounts of wealth but also equivalently large amounts of poverty. No it hasn't, the global poverty rate has been falling for 20+ years. 69% of people globally lived on You can also look at China and Vietnam, countries that have had drastic improvements to standards of living and collapsing poverty rates after abandoned communism. Or yo…

"capitalism solves this problem, just look at all the revolutions communists did that erased more poverty faster than at any time in human history"

i get what you're trying to say but ultimately it just seems like you're pointing at everything positive and saying "capitalism did that" without much effort or investigation. there's too much to cover in an HN thread but one thing thats interesting is that when this ideological sentiment is brought out no one ever seems to want to deal with the backslide in equity that happened across all measurements after the fall of the USSR. i think partially because westerners dont seem to be able to engage with the discussion without immediately whatabout-ing and claiming that doing the analysis is somehow stalin worship.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#232
post #109
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…

I couldn't disagree more.

It sounds like you were listening to top 40 stations exclusively.

Gotta check out the good stuff, stations like KBCO in Colorado or any of the more local, music focused stations

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#233

Does anyone ever comply with these "As listeners we must band together" things? I couldn't care less. I like the lo-fi sound myself and put on some Nujabes while in the kitchen. It's a good time. But whether any specific artist gets to play or not doesn't concern me that much. I've found that single artists rarely preserve the feel so much as ones in a genre.

It's a collective action problem, solving it through our own behavior is impossible.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#234
post #109

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…

I couldn't disagree more. It sounds like you were listening to top 40 stations exclusively. Gotta check out the good stuff, stations like KBCO in Colorado or any of the more local, music focused stations

But then it is no longer an apples to apples comparison. This is Spotify. Spotify is the embodiment of the top radio stations idea.

By that metric, Spotify is actually doing better than they did, if memory serves.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree more. It sounds like you were listening to top 40 stations exclusively. Gotta check out the good stuff, stations like KBCO in Colorado or any of the more local, music focused stations

But then it is no longer an apples to apples comparison. This is Spotify. Spotify is the embodiment of the top radio stations idea. By that metric, Spotify is actually doing better than they did, if memory serves.

Spotify is both in one.

The modern equivalent would be a curated stream, station, etc.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#236
post #109
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…

Most, but not all. There are still stations out there bucking those trends.

A local example is "Easy 104.1" here in Reno. I stumbled on it by complete accident about a month ago, and after said month's worth of daily listening I haven't heard a single song played twice. Everything from funk to R&B to alternative rock to adult contemporary to new wave and everything in between, from the 1960's to the 2000's. Songs I've never heard before, songs I've last heard years ago, songs that I last heard yesterday. Loreena McKennitt's "The Mummers' Dance" came on today and that's a song that'd been playing in my head for multiple decades with no idea whatsoever what it's called or any of the words in it (eliminating any possibility of looking it up); now I've finally found it thanks to some random radio station that plays everything that the other stations don't. And if that ain't enough, the "commercial breaks" usually are just one commercial - or hell, often half of a commercial.

Re: How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop

#237
post #122

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 guess Clearchannel/IheartRadio is sort of a private equity "success" story because it is still operating.
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