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Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

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Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#471

Post by WA »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #445
tomphoolery wrote: post #429

I don't see the lie here. :) Many of us in the music industry have been doing more single-based releases than album-based, because there really is no point to albums anymore. If you have a couple of tracks that all fit together, by all means, release them at once. But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been for a very long time.

>But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been for a very long time. This is exactly the problem: the technological advances changed the music consumption and music, unfortunately, follows. So instead of empowering the artists with more creative freedom it forced everyone to follow the same route. It's appalling.

I don’t know. Even back when CDs where still a thing, I never listened/liked the full album of any band. I think the most was like 50%. Maybe the technological advancements only make visible what was there before: only a minority listens to everything by one artist. Most people prefer a song or two and skip the rest, but they aren’t forced to buy the whole album anymore.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#472

Post by recursive »

tropdrop wrote: post #460
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software, actual usefulness. A word processor that's trending on Twitter but which makes it hard to actually edit documents is not useful. A graphics driver that actually renders my screen is useful even if nobody's ever heard of it (although I grant that below a certain size maintenance issues might come up). For music... I'm far less qualified to say, but there's still a notion of (subjective) quality, which is…

My (implicit) point was that software can be optimized for one factor, which is usefulness. By evaluating usefulness, we can evaluate whether a piece of software is "good" or not. However, use-value makes for a very poor metric for evaluating music (I am ignoring arguments about the "usefulness" of music when it's played on a factory floor, making workers slightly more productive). So what must we use to evaluate its…

Usefulness of software is not universally objective. Perhaps a paint-mixing simulator would be very useful to me. Probably most people don't care.

In the same way, everyone likes different music. It's just that some music is "harder to like" than others. Just as in software utility.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#473

Post by thephyber »

prox wrote: post #341
alchemyromcom wrote: post #139

I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. The way tech com…

I think what he is really saying is : if you want to make money, you have to be on the clock, produce every month,week, day. Welcome to the newest rat race addition (which works wonders for creativity /s ) Just as we are pivoting away from unsustainable energy, we need to pivot away from unsustainable value structures. We have the tech, we have the brainpower, now we need the will to work on that.

> we need to pivot away from unsustainable value structures

I think it's a category error to expect the CEO of the music distributor to be the one that stands up for the sustainability of music artists. Even if you did get a "benevolent dictator" figure in that position, it would likely crumble to a competitor who is focusing more on optimizing the value+experience for the listener.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#474

Post by pier25 »

voldacar wrote: post #422
pier25 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was not that artists need a long or short time to produce something, but rather that they need to pause and reflect on things between projects.

Pop music and everything surrounding it makes much more sense once you realize that it isn't art, and the people making it aren't artists

I agree, it's entertainment.

But do Pop artists generally spend years to publish an album?

I honestly don't know, I don't follow that world anymore.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#475

Post by lucb1e »

I don't get the fuzz about this. He can claim whatever he wants but fans will continue to listen to whatever they want. Artists can cater to it or not and all of it is outside of this CEO's control. It seems to be meant to discredit Spotify when I really don't think the alternatives are much better; even if alternatives currently pay artists better, they don't charge significantly more, which is the only way to pay artists more in the long run. Someone else said it somewhere in a subthread: charging subscribers enough to pay all those artists a livable wage just means they lose subscribers, go bankrupt (they're already not profitable), and end up paying artists zero in a few years.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#476

Post by claudiawerner »

xwdv wrote: post #314
alchemyromcom wrote: post #139

I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. The way tech com…

> Have some appreciation--even awe--for the art you enjoy. Haha, no. Artists aren’t some gift from God here to bestow the world with joy from the heavens that we should all marvel at. They are people who chose to learn a skill capable of outputting something suitable for consumption as entertainment. As such, it is their job to be putting out these works regularly, just like everyone else. Appreciation is nice, but d…

>As such, it is their job to be putting out these works regularly, just like everyone else.

This framing of human creativity purely in terms of "outputting", "consumption", and mere "entertainment" ignores possibilities outside the sphere of the market, and outside production-for-sale. Art may well suffer from the compulsion to "put it out regularly". I think the fact that art lived through patronage for much of human history is the only reason we have so much good art today.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#477

Post by [deleted] »

aczerepinski wrote: post #398
zjaffee wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what the CEO is saying, and it has been an increasing trend in music for a long time now, is moving even further away from large LP releases every few years. The existence of that medium of music doesn't make sense in the current year given how people actually go about consuming music. The way to keep fans engaged involves releasing EPs and Single on a regular basis, releasing a whole album only really makes…

This is sad and feels to me like a dumbing down of everything due to short attention spans. I still prefer to listen to full coherent albums, and one of the highlights of my week is my Sunday run, which gives me time to listen to an album start to finish with no interruptions. I hope some of my favorite musicians will continue to conceptualize albums that have a 45+ minute arc, even if market pressures mean that they…

[deleted]

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#478

Post by lotsofpulp »

nsl73 wrote: post #428
lotsofpulp wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how an album wouldn’t survive if singles survive. An album is a collection of single songs.

> An album is a collection of single songs. Releasing songs individually is a serial process. Releasing an album puts all of the songs published into the same context, and everyone’s first experience of all songs occur at the same time. A band that makes a successful album produces something greater than the sum of the individual songs inside the album

I meant that there’s no technical reason a musician can’t release multiple songs at one time and call it an album, meaning as long as there is demand for an album, they should exist.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#479

Post by chrisseaton »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #403
chrisseaton wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listen to a lot of music but I’d never go to a live show (can’t think of anything worse) and I’m not going to wear a branded t-shirt. How do they capture revenue from people like me in your model? Now I think about it I did once buy a video log of the production of an album. But that’s one artist from the thousands I listen to.

>How do they capture revenue from people like me in your model? It's not like bands stopped selling CD's/BluRays's, collectible box-sets, stickers, pins, access to behind-the-scenes videos and mailing lists. But the most someone like you can do for an average band/performer is promote their art through any channels available. The most valuable resource you have is your attention.

> selling CD's/BluRays's, collectible box-sets, stickers, pins

Hmmm... it's a shame they're trying to sell stuff like this. I want to support artists but the last thing I want is junk.

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