Well Spotify has run at a loss every year since it started - apart from last year, if I remember correctly. So, as they started with a nonsensical business model (all you can eat 24/7 for 10 bucks a month, or free with ads), perhaps this is how they're resolving it. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner they degenerate into a conduit for non stop AI created mush, the better- then perhaps the actual music fans will start looking elsewhere.
Where else should they be looking? I'm asking this honestly, as a Spotify user who mostly listens to whole albums (I don't use the playlists) and hasn't found a better alternative streaming service.
Yes, that's already a year ago. Until now no change at bc though. And given that, unlike spotify, they've always been profitable, maybe it will carry on that way.
They don't get paid for streams either. The limited streams you can enjoy there are free. But whenever fans actually pay for music they get about 20 points, and the sums involved, though modest for fans, are many orders of magnitude larger than anyone anywhere is paying for a stream. Basically they have a much fairer and more viable business model that assumes music has some value, rather than an exploitative one which ends up screwing everyone, and that's why they make profit.
Qobuz. I've yet to come across any generative music, they pay better rates to musicians, and have an integrated paid-download store where you get a significant discount if you pay their premium tier monthly subscription rate, which "pays for itself" if you buy a few albums of your favorite artists throughout the the year.
I've heard great things about Qobuz, but it is unfortunately not available in Canada yet. Apparently there are plans for its expansion to Canada (will believe it when I see it) and I may try it then.
I just received the email from Qobuz with the news and was writing a comment to let you know and looked down and saw this one. I hope it meets your needs!
So far so good. The sound quality is noticeably better than Spotify even with earbuds. It has liner notes. The catalogue looks pretty complete. Chromecast-ing is a bit wonky though, and I would miss the "Spotify Connect" feature. But I like the focus on music (not podcasts or videos).
I'll second that recommendation. Qobuz also features high resolution masters on a lot of albums - actual high res rather than whatever you want to call MQA.
Bandcamp. there’s a great weekly podcast of new releases and a constant feed of what people are buying that you can use if you don’t know where to start. It is great for music discovery but little mainstream or major label fare.
If mainstream is what you want but Spotify ain’t doing it for you, maybe YouTube premium account with YouTube Music. I don’t love it, but it’s passable and includes YouTube with no ads.
The rest is TLDR...
I think your question is totally worthy of a meaningful answer: it’s not obvious how people should consume music in 2023.
I’m late gen-x, so I grew up with records and tapes. I was also in bands and recording since I was in high school in the early 90’s, largely why I love Bandcamp so much. For my friends music was our identity and lifestyle. We had to dig and share to find new, interesting things and they were also more rare. Now, you pick a flavor of Soylent and a never-ending slurry of your favorite pap oozes perpetually from your earbuds.
Music is treated as if it exists solely for personal soundtracks. That was almost impossible in the 80’s and difficult in the 90’s. Listening to music was a thing one did, not the background for things one does. My sense is this is a fundamental difference in perspective between older and younger music consumers.
I don't know about "mainstream", but I'm listening largely to classical music and jazz. Many a day goes by when I don't listen to anything written in the last 50 years!
I'm in the same demographic as you, and understand your comments about listening in the background. The Walkman, later Discman, and then the MP3 player changed that for everyone.
Ah, totally get it! Discovering Classical and jazz definitely requires more digging than just stumbling upon stuff on Bandcamp. Regarding those genres I’d guess Spotify is very limited in what it offers and how it serves it up.
Spotify continually adds classical tracks, but they haven't solved the tracks vs albums problem (e.g., movements of a symphony are always played together in the same order, and don't get me started on opera).
Classical streaming alternatives include idagio (UI & search sucks, but bif catalog & keep tracks together). For TV listening, MediciTV & Stage+. YouTube also is a good place to find historical rarities, but sound sucks.
Have you tried Tidal? I use it and have not come across the problem that Ted wrote about with Spotify. My understanding is that they pay better rates to musicians, though I haven't verified that.
I have tried Tidal. I found the sound quality to be better than Spotify, but the app and website are very buggy. Lots of crashes, failed streaming attempts with CC Audio, etc.
Tidal has its own issues (especially the MQA format debate) but I've been quite happy with it. I haven't heard a better sounding streaming service tbh. There's also Bandcamp to support the artists directly.
I was about to post the same thing. The only thing that annoys me about Spotify is that when I pick "My Library" it defaults to playlists when I only listen to full albums. They have had albums selection available on the home screen two or three times previously after updates, but it's been a long time. I hate wasted time toggling through the damn thing every morning when I start the work day; those precious seconds are gone forever, and the older you get, the more you notice that. I'll deal with it...
Don't we have a moral (such an old-fashioned concept!) obligation to stop using services once we know they are corrupt? I see people continue to use Twitter, Spotify, Facebook, Tik Tok , and whatever else I'm missing, despite the revelations of the greed, dishonesty and banality of these services. Personally, I've never streamed music. I hear about new artists, or favorite artists releasing new music, and preview the album. Then I buy the album. I make a judgement, then a decision. I don't allow a judgement and decision to be made for me. And, whatever I pay for an album, I feel confident that the artist is getting the current appropriate share--although I wish they got a lot more!
Or one could use it subversively by repeatedly listening to music from real artists that one searches for, rather than listening to Spotify's suggestions and playlists. Create hours long playlists of real songs from real artists and loop them 24/7. When comparing different recordings/masterings of the same song from an artist, be sure to listen just over 20 seconds to each section before switching back and forth to the same section in a similar version to compare passages within the song. This practice guarantees a "play" for that artist every 21+ seconds. It's like going to the all you can eat buffet in Vegas and making sure you eat the most expensive items in amounts that mean they are loosing money because you ate food that cost them more than what they charged you, then walk out past the slot machines without dropping a single dime in them.
It is surely admirable to follow through on moral obligations. We tend to care more about some than others though. Some are more practicable than others. How moral was the device produced that you wrote your comment on? There is no right life in the wrong. We should stop directing blame at each other and together criticize the ones forcing bad decision on us.
My process exactly, or it was. What do you use to "preview?" Both Amazon and Apple have, almost simultaneously, cancelled their free access to 30-second samples, which had worked just fine for me. Is there an alternative?
On the other hand, this does give real musicians a little ray of hope from those stats about thousands of songs being released every single day. If a large chunk of these are generative garbage, then maybe that love song you slaved over writing and recording really isn't quite as quantitatively meaningless as the cynics say!
Yes but it’s buried in crap and therefore difficult to access or discover. Though more worrying is the effects that this can have on the musical tastes of young people, which are being chiseled by this mush. It’s no surprise that music means very little to younger generations; it certainly doesn’t mean anything like it did to my generation (X) in terms of identity, social differentiation, non-conformism etc
The "fake artists" issue is not as mysterious as people make it out to be . Epidemic Sound is a stock music library based, like Spotify, in Sweden. They buy the rights for tracks outright and split streaming revenues with the artists. PRO-affiliated composers are not eligible to sell their work to Epidemic, so presumably Epidemic keeps all broadcast revenues. Epidemic music dominates the official Spotify playlists of many different instrumental genres, playlists which are quite difficult to get on without a demonstrated amount of preexisting success - unless you happen to be affiliated with Epidemic or one of its many "subsidiaries". Epidemic and Spotify also happen to have a VC investor in common, which goes a long way to explain the economics of their arrangement. It also explains why "unknowns" like "saxophonist Mitch Coleman" and countless others can rack up huge numbers, because of their prominent playlist placement. The elephant in the room of course is that most of the Epidemic music and other Spotify insider material is polished and professional - and people appear to enjoy it well enough. It fills the function of why "most" people listen to music - it's background. Not art, but craft.
I've noticed this over the past month with Spotify, especially if you let it continue to play songs after listening to an entire album, especially if it's electronic music. Different songs, but generic sound, covers, weird artist names with only one or two releases to their names. Very obvious what's going on.
Reminds me of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and the problems they have with 'book stuffing' -- where someone fills an ebook with random text or the same chapter over and over but tricks a reader to hit a button toward the front that takes them to the end of the books and registers the pages as read, so the scammer gets paid. Now there's the threat of AI creating books and music.
The problem isn't that people will mistake AI-created content for human; AIs just aren't there yet. But, it's going to be harder for people to wade through the fake songs and stories, as evidenced by Adam Faze's experience with hearing the same song over and over. It will be the big platforms pushing this crap over actual art.
I have never, nor will I ever, read an e-book. I like print. I like reading in bed. I like reading in places where there's no wi-fi. I like holding a real book in my hands. I like turning pages, and dog-earing them if I want to.
Hopefully you never reach the physical stage (as I have) when large-print (or actually larger than printed large-print) text is a requirement. As you do, I prefer a real book, however e-books offer the ability for me to read the wide range of academic, scientific and popular literature I spend much of my day enjoying, even when without internet access.
That is one of their best features, and I'm glad you're able to use it! I also like being able to highlight passages in non-fiction for research and download all my highlights and notes for reference.
I much prefer a physical book, too, but you and I seem to be in the minority. 90% of my audience buys my books as ebooks and on Kindle Unlimited. Can't fight the crowd, I guess. :-)
Whatever happened to buying an album, listening to it over and over, savouring it and learning its nuances? I have albums that I've had for 45 years. Some I haven't listened to in decades, but when I do pull one off the shelf I find that I hear it quite differently than I did as a youngun'. That pleasure of discovery and rediscovery can't be there if you simply download playlists of random songs made by people whose names you don't even know.
Absolutely feel what you’re saying. My teenage years were mainly about lying on my bed with the cover of Quadrophenia, London Calling, Ziggy Stardust etc in my hands, rereading the lyrics and enjoying the cover art for the millionth time… It made me dream and, being in a small Southern European town, it put me in communion with kids all over the Western World who were also dreaming thanks to these artists. You couldn’t communicate with them like today, but you could feel them… “He played it left haand but made it too faaar… then we were Ziggy’s band… “
...and don't forget being able to go to live concerts by your favourite bands, not in stadia that seat 30,000 but in smaller halls that sat 1000 people. Old halls where the speakers made the floor and walls rumble, where no ushers cared if you got out of your seat to dance (although for most concerts at Melbourne's Festival hall there were no seats. In the late 70s, early 80s Australia had a plethora of extraordinary bands who all made their living doing the pub circuit. Sure, I was only in my mid teens, but hey, if you looked "old enough" you got in.
Again a very interesting topic. Earlier today I noticed a related ‘anomaly’ on Spotify. Since I’m reading the book ‘the most beautiful’ by the former wife of Prince I decided to take a deep dive in the catalog of Prince, starting with the album ‘For you’ (1978) and then chronologically listening to the other albums. Halfway the album ‘Dirty Mind’ (1980) I encountered what I now understand to be a dirty Spotify algo: in the middle of a song Spotify jumped to another song by another artist. I then went back to the Prince album to play the song I was listening too. The song didn’t play but what happened instead was the remaining songs of the album passing by on the screen without them being played. Spotify thus skipped the remainder of the album and then went on to play an unknown song by an unknown artist. I haven’t checked whether this artist is of the AI-kind or not since I wasn’t aware of the phenomenon until I read this article. Since I’m only in the year 1980 of the Prince catalog there is still enough material to test the thesis if Spotify is leading me towards artists that are better for the bottom line of the company. Also, since I’m a paying Spotify subscriber I am on a mission to tame this algo by continuing to listen to the rest of the Prince catalog. It will be a long road, wish me luck...
Mebbe it'd be...not polite to say you're a sucker for punishment... but "punishment" has to be a constant term for whatever phrase you want to substitute.
As for me, I have dabbled with Spotify from time to time, and these kinds of twisting the users' arm sort of tactics and the whole user experience with that platform have completely turned me off to it. Once I heard that they were cheating hardest out of decent money for their work, it just solidified my already Scooby sense that they are not worth my time.
I've never had Spotify play something other than what I've chosen. However, I have noticed that certain artists' catalogs or parts thereof may not be available on Spotify in every location. For example, I am unable to hear 95% of the Crusaders catalog on Spotify. No problem with their Jazz Crusaders records or Joe Sample records, just for some reason Crusaders albums appear on the app but are inaccessible.
As a musician myself, I don’t even plan to ever release my work on Spotify, it forces listeners to increasingly homogenous music.
It would not surprise me if it just evolves into the kind of AI-generated content Gibson describes on Neuromancer.
Even most established artists that have their work on the platform don’t really profit from it anyway, and make real money on shows, where Spotify works more like a showcase for fans to buy tickets.
People who complain about Spotify payouts without first-hand experience don't understand that the money is really not bad for what it is. For artists who don't already have a following, it all comes down to getting onto the official Spotify playlists or popular nonofficial playlists - which is hard but not impossible.
I never released any of my stuff to Spotify, but there some of it is. Brought to my attention by my Grandkid. I was trying to remember one of my tunes about a week ago & there it was, with those same strange names attached. Huh ?
Several decades back I worked (as a side job) in the what was called then the Commercial Art field. Mostly in a swiftly growing valley in the Cascade Mts. At the time I did most of the art out there for various business'. I did a T-shirt design for a local town's big summer festival. It was well liked & sold out every year - T-shirts / Hoodies / Etc.
Now, 25-30 years later, long after we have moved away, my daughter discovered my design being used everywhere in that town - T-shirts - Chamber of Commerce Logo . She even found commemorative plates & a Logo on the side of a city truck. Amazing ! Changed ever so slightly. She took pictures for me.
The original contract sits in a box in another state. When I go down there soon, I will be trying to find that contract, which states: very clearly what use was allowed.
Goes to show - Plagiarism didn't begin with Digital. But shows me - obviously I'm a victim of Pre & Post digital theft.
I wonder if this is related to the way performing rights association royalties are paid, in that each song play is allocated points and are tallied up against all the 'points' from every play during the month/quarter by all the artists. It'd have the effect of lowering the amount most artists get on average because those songs would both increase the amount of points and lower the $ per play for legitimate artists.
Spotify plays are not monetized on a point system like the airplay royalties administered by PROs; rights holders are paid per stream. It's more likely these entities are exploiting other loopholes in the Spotify structure.
This ties in with the piece cross-posted on The Free Press this morning, on the loss of trust in the world we live in. How long will it be before an AI is asked to create a ballad in the style of John Lennon, and clone his voice to sing it? The world portrayed in the Pixar hit WALL-E is looking less like a nice kid-friendly movie, and more like a documentary of our future.
This is truly horrific and totally predictable. There is one simple solution - don’t subscribe to these services. The only streaming service I subscribe to is the Neil Young Archives which for $20/year (not a misprint) I get access to Neil’s entire catalog streaming in hi-res. Trying to squeeze profits, manipulate audiences and screw musicians is nothing new in the muzak business. Ask any artist who’s tried to get their music out there with out selling their soul. In terms of how to access music there’s Tidal which streams much of it’s content in MQA format, platforms like HDTracks which sells downloadable Hi-res albums or good old fashion vinyl or CDs. And don’t get me started on the poor audio quality of mp3s, iphones and ear buds.
Dear Corporate Puppetmasters, Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. Been around for about a decade or so, laid many a poor soul to waste. I was there when Steve Jobs blew his stack and Mark Zuxckerberg sealed our fate. Took tea with Billy G and watched Dorsey sail off and leave a Musky T. Pleased to meet you, can you guess my name?
I’m buying property out of the country. I can’t tell you how many different listings and different price tags that come with the same listing, as well as those that have already been sold. It’s the wild west.
Every post like this makes me feel like I’m buying a house in Central America.
Music streaming platforms are also littered with unknown "albums" on the discographies of most classic jazz musicians. If you look up Wes Montgomery, or Freddie Hubbard, or the MJQ, the same album covers and vague titles show up, blowing up discographies of certain artists into over a hundred albums worth. For the MJQ on Amazon Music, you need to scroll through at least 50 albums before finding an official release.
This is because many of those recordings have passed into PD and anyone can, and many have, published actual physical LPs, cassettes, and CDs with that material on them. It's not just a Spotify thing. It was the same way at the used record stores in the 1980s and 1990s. For every official studio album by jazz artists from the 1950s and early 60s there would be dozens upon dozens of different compilations with different cover photos of their same handful of earliest recordings made at B-tier record companies under even more exploitative contracts than usual before they were well known.
You're right, and I remember this from record stores as well as having worked in them. The scale of this practice in the streaming era is just overwhelming and makes the study of an artist's output more work than it needs to be.
Yeah, but in the streaming era, you can study the output of literally thousands of artists without ever leaving your home or even getting up from your sofa. Or your car. Or wherever you are. So there's a bit of a trade-off when it comes to the convenience and depth of access, but to many like myself, it's well worth it.
I haven't personally encountered very much pollution in terms of duplicate content, but I have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of recordings done by certain prolific artists. Lee Konitz and Chet Baker spring to mind.
Konitz is a great example. His actual discography is huge, but looking at Amazon Music right now, and there are tons of irrelevant "albums", makes it harder to actually find his official recordings, not only in a discographical sense, but also for recording quality.
Well Spotify has run at a loss every year since it started - apart from last year, if I remember correctly. So, as they started with a nonsensical business model (all you can eat 24/7 for 10 bucks a month, or free with ads), perhaps this is how they're resolving it. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner they degenerate into a conduit for non stop AI created mush, the better- then perhaps the actual music fans will start looking elsewhere.
Where else should they be looking? I'm asking this honestly, as a Spotify user who mostly listens to whole albums (I don't use the playlists) and hasn't found a better alternative streaming service.
I use it too. I also use Bandcamp when an artist has music there ...
Bandcamp was recently purchased by gaming company Epic. I would expect to see similar things happening there eventually.
Yes, that's already a year ago. Until now no change at bc though. And given that, unlike spotify, they've always been profitable, maybe it will carry on that way.
Perhaps Bandcamp run at a profit because they don’t pay artists for streams?
They don't get paid for streams either. The limited streams you can enjoy there are free. But whenever fans actually pay for music they get about 20 points, and the sums involved, though modest for fans, are many orders of magnitude larger than anyone anywhere is paying for a stream. Basically they have a much fairer and more viable business model that assumes music has some value, rather than an exploitative one which ends up screwing everyone, and that's why they make profit.
Qobuz. I've yet to come across any generative music, they pay better rates to musicians, and have an integrated paid-download store where you get a significant discount if you pay their premium tier monthly subscription rate, which "pays for itself" if you buy a few albums of your favorite artists throughout the the year.
I've heard great things about Qobuz, but it is unfortunately not available in Canada yet. Apparently there are plans for its expansion to Canada (will believe it when I see it) and I may try it then.
.... And as luck would have it, Qobus just became available in Canada yesterday. Trying it out now.
I just received the email from Qobuz with the news and was writing a comment to let you know and looked down and saw this one. I hope it meets your needs!
So far so good. The sound quality is noticeably better than Spotify even with earbuds. It has liner notes. The catalogue looks pretty complete. Chromecast-ing is a bit wonky though, and I would miss the "Spotify Connect" feature. But I like the focus on music (not podcasts or videos).
I'll second that recommendation. Qobuz also features high resolution masters on a lot of albums - actual high res rather than whatever you want to call MQA.
Trying it out now. It literally just (as in, on 2023-04-19) became available in Canada. Sounds pretty good. The liner notes are a nice add.
Bandcamp. there’s a great weekly podcast of new releases and a constant feed of what people are buying that you can use if you don’t know where to start. It is great for music discovery but little mainstream or major label fare.
If mainstream is what you want but Spotify ain’t doing it for you, maybe YouTube premium account with YouTube Music. I don’t love it, but it’s passable and includes YouTube with no ads.
The rest is TLDR...
I think your question is totally worthy of a meaningful answer: it’s not obvious how people should consume music in 2023.
I’m late gen-x, so I grew up with records and tapes. I was also in bands and recording since I was in high school in the early 90’s, largely why I love Bandcamp so much. For my friends music was our identity and lifestyle. We had to dig and share to find new, interesting things and they were also more rare. Now, you pick a flavor of Soylent and a never-ending slurry of your favorite pap oozes perpetually from your earbuds.
Music is treated as if it exists solely for personal soundtracks. That was almost impossible in the 80’s and difficult in the 90’s. Listening to music was a thing one did, not the background for things one does. My sense is this is a fundamental difference in perspective between older and younger music consumers.
I don't know about "mainstream", but I'm listening largely to classical music and jazz. Many a day goes by when I don't listen to anything written in the last 50 years!
I'm in the same demographic as you, and understand your comments about listening in the background. The Walkman, later Discman, and then the MP3 player changed that for everyone.
Ah, totally get it! Discovering Classical and jazz definitely requires more digging than just stumbling upon stuff on Bandcamp. Regarding those genres I’d guess Spotify is very limited in what it offers and how it serves it up.
Spotify continually adds classical tracks, but they haven't solved the tracks vs albums problem (e.g., movements of a symphony are always played together in the same order, and don't get me started on opera).
Classical streaming alternatives include idagio (UI & search sucks, but bif catalog & keep tracks together). For TV listening, MediciTV & Stage+. YouTube also is a good place to find historical rarities, but sound sucks.
Have you tried Tidal? I use it and have not come across the problem that Ted wrote about with Spotify. My understanding is that they pay better rates to musicians, though I haven't verified that.
I have tried Tidal. I found the sound quality to be better than Spotify, but the app and website are very buggy. Lots of crashes, failed streaming attempts with CC Audio, etc.
That's unfortunate - I haven't had those issues. Best of luck to you on your search.
Tidal has its own issues (especially the MQA format debate) but I've been quite happy with it. I haven't heard a better sounding streaming service tbh. There's also Bandcamp to support the artists directly.
I’ve been using Apple Music from the beginning and it’s only continued to improve.
I was about to post the same thing. The only thing that annoys me about Spotify is that when I pick "My Library" it defaults to playlists when I only listen to full albums. They have had albums selection available on the home screen two or three times previously after updates, but it's been a long time. I hate wasted time toggling through the damn thing every morning when I start the work day; those precious seconds are gone forever, and the older you get, the more you notice that. I'll deal with it...
Tidal. https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/spotify-vs-tidal
You might have something here. Now that money isn't free any more, all the internet platforms actually have to make money....
Don't we have a moral (such an old-fashioned concept!) obligation to stop using services once we know they are corrupt? I see people continue to use Twitter, Spotify, Facebook, Tik Tok , and whatever else I'm missing, despite the revelations of the greed, dishonesty and banality of these services. Personally, I've never streamed music. I hear about new artists, or favorite artists releasing new music, and preview the album. Then I buy the album. I make a judgement, then a decision. I don't allow a judgement and decision to be made for me. And, whatever I pay for an album, I feel confident that the artist is getting the current appropriate share--although I wish they got a lot more!
Or one could use it subversively by repeatedly listening to music from real artists that one searches for, rather than listening to Spotify's suggestions and playlists. Create hours long playlists of real songs from real artists and loop them 24/7. When comparing different recordings/masterings of the same song from an artist, be sure to listen just over 20 seconds to each section before switching back and forth to the same section in a similar version to compare passages within the song. This practice guarantees a "play" for that artist every 21+ seconds. It's like going to the all you can eat buffet in Vegas and making sure you eat the most expensive items in amounts that mean they are loosing money because you ate food that cost them more than what they charged you, then walk out past the slot machines without dropping a single dime in them.
Right on!
It is surely admirable to follow through on moral obligations. We tend to care more about some than others though. Some are more practicable than others. How moral was the device produced that you wrote your comment on? There is no right life in the wrong. We should stop directing blame at each other and together criticize the ones forcing bad decision on us.
My process exactly, or it was. What do you use to "preview?" Both Amazon and Apple have, almost simultaneously, cancelled their free access to 30-second samples, which had worked just fine for me. Is there an alternative?
I do the same, Michael Raine.
One more reason not to pay for "music" on Spotify.
On the other hand, this does give real musicians a little ray of hope from those stats about thousands of songs being released every single day. If a large chunk of these are generative garbage, then maybe that love song you slaved over writing and recording really isn't quite as quantitatively meaningless as the cynics say!
Yes but it’s buried in crap and therefore difficult to access or discover. Though more worrying is the effects that this can have on the musical tastes of young people, which are being chiseled by this mush. It’s no surprise that music means very little to younger generations; it certainly doesn’t mean anything like it did to my generation (X) in terms of identity, social differentiation, non-conformism etc
The "fake artists" issue is not as mysterious as people make it out to be . Epidemic Sound is a stock music library based, like Spotify, in Sweden. They buy the rights for tracks outright and split streaming revenues with the artists. PRO-affiliated composers are not eligible to sell their work to Epidemic, so presumably Epidemic keeps all broadcast revenues. Epidemic music dominates the official Spotify playlists of many different instrumental genres, playlists which are quite difficult to get on without a demonstrated amount of preexisting success - unless you happen to be affiliated with Epidemic or one of its many "subsidiaries". Epidemic and Spotify also happen to have a VC investor in common, which goes a long way to explain the economics of their arrangement. It also explains why "unknowns" like "saxophonist Mitch Coleman" and countless others can rack up huge numbers, because of their prominent playlist placement. The elephant in the room of course is that most of the Epidemic music and other Spotify insider material is polished and professional - and people appear to enjoy it well enough. It fills the function of why "most" people listen to music - it's background. Not art, but craft.
I've noticed this over the past month with Spotify, especially if you let it continue to play songs after listening to an entire album, especially if it's electronic music. Different songs, but generic sound, covers, weird artist names with only one or two releases to their names. Very obvious what's going on.
Reminds me of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and the problems they have with 'book stuffing' -- where someone fills an ebook with random text or the same chapter over and over but tricks a reader to hit a button toward the front that takes them to the end of the books and registers the pages as read, so the scammer gets paid. Now there's the threat of AI creating books and music.
The problem isn't that people will mistake AI-created content for human; AIs just aren't there yet. But, it's going to be harder for people to wade through the fake songs and stories, as evidenced by Adam Faze's experience with hearing the same song over and over. It will be the big platforms pushing this crap over actual art.
I have never, nor will I ever, read an e-book. I like print. I like reading in bed. I like reading in places where there's no wi-fi. I like holding a real book in my hands. I like turning pages, and dog-earing them if I want to.
Hopefully you never reach the physical stage (as I have) when large-print (or actually larger than printed large-print) text is a requirement. As you do, I prefer a real book, however e-books offer the ability for me to read the wide range of academic, scientific and popular literature I spend much of my day enjoying, even when without internet access.
That is one of their best features, and I'm glad you're able to use it! I also like being able to highlight passages in non-fiction for research and download all my highlights and notes for reference.
I much prefer a physical book, too, but you and I seem to be in the minority. 90% of my audience buys my books as ebooks and on Kindle Unlimited. Can't fight the crowd, I guess. :-)
I do both--read print and e-books--and, gasp, I listen to a lot of audiobooks. All with no involvement from Amazon, thank you.
Whatever happened to buying an album, listening to it over and over, savouring it and learning its nuances? I have albums that I've had for 45 years. Some I haven't listened to in decades, but when I do pull one off the shelf I find that I hear it quite differently than I did as a youngun'. That pleasure of discovery and rediscovery can't be there if you simply download playlists of random songs made by people whose names you don't even know.
Absolutely feel what you’re saying. My teenage years were mainly about lying on my bed with the cover of Quadrophenia, London Calling, Ziggy Stardust etc in my hands, rereading the lyrics and enjoying the cover art for the millionth time… It made me dream and, being in a small Southern European town, it put me in communion with kids all over the Western World who were also dreaming thanks to these artists. You couldn’t communicate with them like today, but you could feel them… “He played it left haand but made it too faaar… then we were Ziggy’s band… “
...and don't forget being able to go to live concerts by your favourite bands, not in stadia that seat 30,000 but in smaller halls that sat 1000 people. Old halls where the speakers made the floor and walls rumble, where no ushers cared if you got out of your seat to dance (although for most concerts at Melbourne's Festival hall there were no seats. In the late 70s, early 80s Australia had a plethora of extraordinary bands who all made their living doing the pub circuit. Sure, I was only in my mid teens, but hey, if you looked "old enough" you got in.
Again a very interesting topic. Earlier today I noticed a related ‘anomaly’ on Spotify. Since I’m reading the book ‘the most beautiful’ by the former wife of Prince I decided to take a deep dive in the catalog of Prince, starting with the album ‘For you’ (1978) and then chronologically listening to the other albums. Halfway the album ‘Dirty Mind’ (1980) I encountered what I now understand to be a dirty Spotify algo: in the middle of a song Spotify jumped to another song by another artist. I then went back to the Prince album to play the song I was listening too. The song didn’t play but what happened instead was the remaining songs of the album passing by on the screen without them being played. Spotify thus skipped the remainder of the album and then went on to play an unknown song by an unknown artist. I haven’t checked whether this artist is of the AI-kind or not since I wasn’t aware of the phenomenon until I read this article. Since I’m only in the year 1980 of the Prince catalog there is still enough material to test the thesis if Spotify is leading me towards artists that are better for the bottom line of the company. Also, since I’m a paying Spotify subscriber I am on a mission to tame this algo by continuing to listen to the rest of the Prince catalog. It will be a long road, wish me luck...
Mebbe it'd be...not polite to say you're a sucker for punishment... but "punishment" has to be a constant term for whatever phrase you want to substitute.
As for me, I have dabbled with Spotify from time to time, and these kinds of twisting the users' arm sort of tactics and the whole user experience with that platform have completely turned me off to it. Once I heard that they were cheating hardest out of decent money for their work, it just solidified my already Scooby sense that they are not worth my time.
"Give me physical media or give me death!"
That should have read, "cheating artists..."
I've never had Spotify play something other than what I've chosen. However, I have noticed that certain artists' catalogs or parts thereof may not be available on Spotify in every location. For example, I am unable to hear 95% of the Crusaders catalog on Spotify. No problem with their Jazz Crusaders records or Joe Sample records, just for some reason Crusaders albums appear on the app but are inaccessible.
As a musician myself, I don’t even plan to ever release my work on Spotify, it forces listeners to increasingly homogenous music.
It would not surprise me if it just evolves into the kind of AI-generated content Gibson describes on Neuromancer.
Even most established artists that have their work on the platform don’t really profit from it anyway, and make real money on shows, where Spotify works more like a showcase for fans to buy tickets.
People who complain about Spotify payouts without first-hand experience don't understand that the money is really not bad for what it is. For artists who don't already have a following, it all comes down to getting onto the official Spotify playlists or popular nonofficial playlists - which is hard but not impossible.
I never released any of my stuff to Spotify, but there some of it is. Brought to my attention by my Grandkid. I was trying to remember one of my tunes about a week ago & there it was, with those same strange names attached. Huh ?
Several decades back I worked (as a side job) in the what was called then the Commercial Art field. Mostly in a swiftly growing valley in the Cascade Mts. At the time I did most of the art out there for various business'. I did a T-shirt design for a local town's big summer festival. It was well liked & sold out every year - T-shirts / Hoodies / Etc.
Now, 25-30 years later, long after we have moved away, my daughter discovered my design being used everywhere in that town - T-shirts - Chamber of Commerce Logo . She even found commemorative plates & a Logo on the side of a city truck. Amazing ! Changed ever so slightly. She took pictures for me.
The original contract sits in a box in another state. When I go down there soon, I will be trying to find that contract, which states: very clearly what use was allowed.
Goes to show - Plagiarism didn't begin with Digital. But shows me - obviously I'm a victim of Pre & Post digital theft.
Theft maybe, but how cool is it that they loved your designs enough to use them 25-30 years later?
When did we stop calling it Commercial Art, and why?
Yes, I agree. Regardless of the theft aspect, it has always been a nice thought that they dug it so much
"When did we stop calling it Commercial Art, and why?" I have the same question
I wonder if this is related to the way performing rights association royalties are paid, in that each song play is allocated points and are tallied up against all the 'points' from every play during the month/quarter by all the artists. It'd have the effect of lowering the amount most artists get on average because those songs would both increase the amount of points and lower the $ per play for legitimate artists.
Spotify plays are not monetized on a point system like the airplay royalties administered by PROs; rights holders are paid per stream. It's more likely these entities are exploiting other loopholes in the Spotify structure.
Mine is a crude and 'old timey' response, but 'when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.'
This ties in with the piece cross-posted on The Free Press this morning, on the loss of trust in the world we live in. How long will it be before an AI is asked to create a ballad in the style of John Lennon, and clone his voice to sing it? The world portrayed in the Pixar hit WALL-E is looking less like a nice kid-friendly movie, and more like a documentary of our future.
Just tried it. Sounded pretty convincing to me but then I don't really know Oasis's work.
This is truly horrific and totally predictable. There is one simple solution - don’t subscribe to these services. The only streaming service I subscribe to is the Neil Young Archives which for $20/year (not a misprint) I get access to Neil’s entire catalog streaming in hi-res. Trying to squeeze profits, manipulate audiences and screw musicians is nothing new in the muzak business. Ask any artist who’s tried to get their music out there with out selling their soul. In terms of how to access music there’s Tidal which streams much of it’s content in MQA format, platforms like HDTracks which sells downloadable Hi-res albums or good old fashion vinyl or CDs. And don’t get me started on the poor audio quality of mp3s, iphones and ear buds.
Oh this is great info! I had no idea. I was wondering what happened? Thanks!
Dear Corporate Puppetmasters, Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. Been around for about a decade or so, laid many a poor soul to waste. I was there when Steve Jobs blew his stack and Mark Zuxckerberg sealed our fate. Took tea with Billy G and watched Dorsey sail off and leave a Musky T. Pleased to meet you, can you guess my name?
I’m buying property out of the country. I can’t tell you how many different listings and different price tags that come with the same listing, as well as those that have already been sold. It’s the wild west.
Every post like this makes me feel like I’m buying a house in Central America.
Music streaming platforms are also littered with unknown "albums" on the discographies of most classic jazz musicians. If you look up Wes Montgomery, or Freddie Hubbard, or the MJQ, the same album covers and vague titles show up, blowing up discographies of certain artists into over a hundred albums worth. For the MJQ on Amazon Music, you need to scroll through at least 50 albums before finding an official release.
This is because many of those recordings have passed into PD and anyone can, and many have, published actual physical LPs, cassettes, and CDs with that material on them. It's not just a Spotify thing. It was the same way at the used record stores in the 1980s and 1990s. For every official studio album by jazz artists from the 1950s and early 60s there would be dozens upon dozens of different compilations with different cover photos of their same handful of earliest recordings made at B-tier record companies under even more exploitative contracts than usual before they were well known.
You're right, and I remember this from record stores as well as having worked in them. The scale of this practice in the streaming era is just overwhelming and makes the study of an artist's output more work than it needs to be.
Yeah, but in the streaming era, you can study the output of literally thousands of artists without ever leaving your home or even getting up from your sofa. Or your car. Or wherever you are. So there's a bit of a trade-off when it comes to the convenience and depth of access, but to many like myself, it's well worth it.
I agree! I've gotten used to using Tidal in tandem with Wikipedia! I suppose it's a minor gripe considering, I just feel like it's pollution, is all.
I haven't personally encountered very much pollution in terms of duplicate content, but I have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of recordings done by certain prolific artists. Lee Konitz and Chet Baker spring to mind.
Konitz is a great example. His actual discography is huge, but looking at Amazon Music right now, and there are tons of irrelevant "albums", makes it harder to actually find his official recordings, not only in a discographical sense, but also for recording quality.