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The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

tedgioia.substack.com

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Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#31

Post by Animats »

scantron4 wrote: post #6

If generic jazz can easily substitute "important" jazz it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it, especially not in the context of "things for background music." I don't think this is saying anything about more active music consumption where people are actually listening to it. I personally get annoyed if more than 20% of a mix is songs I haven't already upvoted so there isn't a lot o…

If generic jazz can easily substitute "important" jazz it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it, especially not in the context of "things for background music."

This is a modern version of Seeburg background music. Seeburg was a jukebox company, and as a sideline, they also sold a background music system. This used a special purpose record changer that played a stack of records over and over.Seeburg made their own records, recorded by their own orchestra in Chicago, and distributed them through their own jukebox dealers. So they didn't have to pay anything to record companies. It was a subscription service; every few months, subscribers got a new set of records with 1000 songs, and the old set was taken back to Seeburg. The records were not copyrighted, which cost money back then. Instead, they were 9 inch diameter, 2 inch center hole, 16⅔ rpm, 420 grooves per inch, 0.5 mil diamond stylus, all of which were incompatible with record players of the era. They were not sold, just rented, although often nobody bothered to ship them back to Chicago for crushing, so many have survived. DRM, the early years.

You can listen to them here.[1]

[1] https://streema.com/radios/RadioCoastcom

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#32

Post by nikanj »

brundolf wrote: post #16

What makes them "fake"? I kept waiting for the author to explain how people are taking others' music and re-packaging it as their own to collect royalties, but it doesn't sound like that's what's happening. SEO-optimized music is not "fake music". It's an interesting phenomenon, and maybe even a bad one, but framing it this way is disingenuous and alarmist.

Sounds like the complaint boils down to ”people on the playlists are not celebrities”.

Which I see as a positive thing.

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#34

Post by prova_modena »

h2odragon wrote: post #4

Muzak. see Norman Spinrad's "Little Heroes" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/719900.Little_Heroes Once (and still, probably, in some small places) radio DJ's were valued as editors of playlists. Could it be we jsut need a way to recognize and encourage curators now? Make their job public instead of some "black box algorithm" or more likely middle management committee subject to bribes as is currently done with mas…

Listening to various DJs has been my primary form of music discovery for the past 10 or more years. The diversity of and access to interesting DJ sets has literally never been better than now.

AM/FM radio is mostly irrelevant to this phenomenon, except as a precedent. Like you said, some small stations may be playing interesting stuff but the vast majority is over-commercialized, repetitive and/or boring. However, the internet has opened up tons of possibilities for DJs to curate and share music. Platforms include internet radio stations, Youtube channels, Twitch channels, and purpose-built sites like soundcloud and mixcloud. There used to also be a huge DJ blogging scene but that was mostly dismantled with DMCA takedowns in the 2010s(?).

For example, one of my favorite resources is NTS radio (https://nts.live/). They are a continuously streaming internet radio station that plays a wide variety of music. Every show they stream is archived for on-demand listening and organized by DJ name and genre tags. They also brilliantly address the demand for Spotify-style "background music" with their Infinite Mixtape feature, with music chosen by resident DJs.

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#36

Post by tonguez »

“Can you really reach a larger audience by getting on a background jazz playlist than taking home the most coveted Grammy? I hate to share the bad news, my friends, but the world has changed.”

wow what an amazing insight. some dead awards show for geriatrics where disney child actors always win musician of the year or whatever. it’s truly shocking that nobody cares about that

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#37

Post by slfnflctd »

scantron4 wrote: post #6

If generic jazz can easily substitute "important" jazz it just means your important jazz doesn't have the value you ascribe to it, especially not in the context of "things for background music." I don't think this is saying anything about more active music consumption where people are actually listening to it. I personally get annoyed if more than 20% of a mix is songs I haven't already upvoted so there isn't a lot o…

> I personally get annoyed if more than 20% of a mix is songs I haven't already upvoted

I am at the complete other end of the spectrum-- I prefer to hear music I've never heard before at least 80% of the time, provided it fits with my taste (which is broad but picky). There is so much great music I will never hear, I want to be exposed to as much of it as possible rather than going over familiar ground all the time.

I have a feeling I'm in the minority on this, but my point is that there are definitely those of us who appreciate algorithms which bring in more "weird knockoff artists" to our streaming mixes. Another factor is that it opens up greater possibilities for seeing live shows.

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#38

Post by Marazan »

The thing the article alludes to but doesn't outright state is that the streaming platforms themselves are not just putting together "hand curated" playlists for popular search terms but are filling those play lists with songs owned by the platform.

It's Payola but where the streaming platform is paying itself.

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#39

Post by autarch »

FabHK wrote: post #30
nescioquid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music historians note that the creation of the "cannon" of classical music occurred when public orchestral concerts arose around the early 19th century (and often paired with the rise of the middle class). Prior, you'd need an invitation to a private concert put on by a noble. Mostly "old" music was played at these concerts. A public concert had to at least cover its cost from ticket sales, so eliminating commissions…

Shostakovich is not considered "standard orchestral repertoire"?

His most played works are (I think) symphonies 5 and 7. The 7th was written in 1941. That said, I've seen a bunch of his later works performed too.

But this is just nitpicking. Without a good definition of "standard orchestral repertoire" and a good dataset of orchestral performances we're just making things up.

Re: The fake artists problem on streaming platforms

#40

Post by prova_modena »

jaclaz wrote: post #3
mathgenius wrote: post #2

I don't quite see what is "fake" about the "fake artists". They appear to be real artists. Did I missunderstand something?

No, you are right, at the end of the article: >Even the term fake artists doesn’t really do justice to the scope of the situation—because, as we have seen, it’s not the musicians, real or otherwise, who are at the root of the situation, but the dominant players in the industry. and there is another article linked to from that one: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/an-mbw-reader-just-bl... where the matter is exp…

Record labels have been doing similar things since the 1950s, building musical acts on-demand by combining skilled, anonymous "session musicians" with an attractive, marketable image or performers that fit the current trend. The most famous example from the 1960s is the Monkees, but this dynamic played a huge part in the development of a surprising number of famous pop bands and musical personalities. Massive public backlash against the perceived inauthenticity of this approach caused record labels to be much more cautious from the 1970s onward, but it's never gone away. Spotify's main "sin" here seems to be that they aren't as skilled as the big labels in manufacturing authenticity/buzz around their most promoted artists.
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