There is a solution. DON'T GIVE ANY MONEY TO SPOTIFY. I IBUY CDS AND VINYL. And, once in a while, I'll splurge on a good cassette. In fact, I'm putting in the best of BTO right now. Analog isn't all that bad, and I got my pencil ready if the cassette tape gets in a bind.
I will add to these two comments that I find Spotify saves me a little moolah on my somewhat extravagant CD (and occasional LP) buying near every month by my using it to audition potential purchases. Not acquiring a couple of CDs that I wouldn’t like much about cancels out the subscription. Of course, Bandcamp achieves the same purpose without a subscription, but it’s not as useful for older catalog investigation.
As regards the quality of curation, you can bet as an old school DJ I rarely let Spotify just run away in the background. Where I live there is no local radio that plays much of what I’m interested in, vintage African styles and specifically late ‘70s reggae. Occasionally, I’ll let Spotify take off in those directions - and I must admit that it isn’t too bad. However, the usual result is that after about twenty minutes I go to the shelves and pull down whatever it is that Spotify has stimulated interest in.
And, respect due where it’s due, Spotify makes available considerable music in the areas of my interest that is hard and expensive to find in physical form. However, to a large extent, this is cancelled out by the tendency of tracks to no longer be available.
None of this excuses Spotify for pulling the scam it has pulled. As much as anything else I am offended by the casual way in which it cheapens the magical and mysterious way that I believe makes real music by living, breathing artists.
My wife has a tendency to let Spotify run off in some vaguely ambient new agey way and it’s pretty damn obvious after a little while that it’s spouting real drivel, even more than the customary standards of such “genres,” which I suspect is exactly the sterile pablum Ted is writing about in this summary of the Harper’s article. Now, I anxiously await the arrival of my real world paper copy of Harper’s in my mailbox. Seems a little late this month.
Occasionally, I have referred to Spotify as Spurtifly. I think I’ll use that word more often now.
FWIW, there are Spotify alternatives that fulfill many (all?) of these roles and appear to be *less* evil. A big problem with both tech and broadcasting is rapid consolidation amd subsequent lack of competition. Maybe if Spotify has to work for customers they'd suck less.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Tidal. Great artist / album metadata, solid app.
Thank you for the suggestion. Yours is the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. After reading it and similar comments throughout this discussion, I will try Tidal in the new year when I can hopefully think straight about a number of musical-digital issues cluttering up my life. Things need cleaning up. Physically, I have a vast number of CDs spread around as I’ve been slowly working on a gigantic mix project. Digitally, I must repair the mess left by my trial subscription to Apple Music on my phone and avoid contagion on my other devices. And then transfer my playlists from Spurtifly to Tidal.
Over the course of reading all these comments, I realized that I absolutely do not wish to keep sending money to a company controlled by the likes of Daniel Ek. Besides his apparent pump’n’dump stock inflation scheme that appears to be connected with this fake publishing venture that diverts money at scale from real artists, his support of Joe Rogan with his bilious, even if popular, podcast is unacceptable. Let the right wing media system with its echo chambers look after itself! I’m off to greener pastures.
My thoughts almost exactly. Re genres that are difficult to find , obtain. Been deleted etc. And the amount of AI Ambient Drivel is Colossal, but that is Electricity for you, clogging the Soundwaves!! 😆🏄🪇🥁🎸🎛️🎚️🌐👀🌘🌌📢📡🛰️🔧
Electricity is a great song by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band from the first Safe As Milk album. And I wish it were clogging the Soundwaves! The good Captain is the best earhole rinse I know, just superior (although not by much) to Lee Scratch Perry. Earholes should be rinsed at least three times a day.
That is an interesting question! Perhaps another of my Spotify techniques will answer with practice rather than theory.
Every month I start a new playlist which begins simply with the month and year, e.g. December 2024. Then I add every album, EP or single that I hear about or think of as the month progresses. The title of the first one is semi-added to the playlist name in an abbreviation, which eventually turns out to be meaningless. Could have something or nothing to do with the following additions. These can be new releases that I get notified of by the many artists and labels I follow on Bandcamp or that I see on a record shop’s email or that I read a review of somewhere or I get interested in as I wander about. I also add old releases that come to mind for one reason or another. Some I already have on CD or vinyl, but there is a convenience of portability with iPhone and Spotify and I figure that, small as they may be, there’ll be a tiny trickle of royalties or I may tweak the blasted algorithm! Haha, my favourite pastime, tweaking the algorithm! Although with the rather broad range of my interests and tastes it is still a sort of random selection, which gives the algorithm conniptions. It really kind of breaks down when it comes to making suggestions about what to add. Very occasionally I’ll follow a suggestion, but to be honest I hate giving the machine the satisfaction of thinking I’m paying attention. See how far we’ve come? I’m talking about giving a machine satisfaction! Sick world and we all live in it.
At the end of the month, there are probably something like 1,000 songs in a list and I start all over again. I’ve thought of making the lists weekly, but that hasn’t happened yet. It would save on a lot of scrolling.
Not to indulge in virtue signaling but when I really like something I hear, I try to buy a physical product. Unfortunately, this is happening less and less because I am fairly broke, my shelves are full, I don’t like enough much new of what I hear these days, and eBay/Discogs resellers of old catalogue absorb much of my time and attention. And, you know, ultimately time available after writing comments here is limited! Ted is trying to save my bank account! Sort of. But I’m an old-school music junkie and still buy far more than the statistical average. I generally try to always have something new coming to me in the mail. Most unfortunately, local record shops where I live are inadequate for my purposes although OK for an emergency fix.
I also have more thematically curated playlists, but I’m pretty lazy about it. Still, there are a lot of playlists. And I save albums just for the hell of it. I figure I should make the machine do some real work! If you, or anyone else, is sufficiently interested and want to see what a big mess this all results in, I’m jackravencorvus. You could become Follower #31, not quite such a dignified position as #33 or #45 or even #78, but I’m patient.
My two favorite radio stations are WDJO and WAIF, two VERY independent stations. I don't listen to them in protest of the commercial stations, they are just far more enjoyable to listen to.
Thanks for sharing! Any listener supported radio is better than commercial radio. Keep it left of the dial! But I still flip around stations while driving. Radio is the best. I also like the human connection. And the real time aspect. More people should try it.
Agree, Kate. Lately all I've really been listening to is a local college radio station. Our local high school has something but I haven't dug into learning more about it yet. I'll switch over to regular radio every so often, but there are only so many versions of sleigh ride, jingle bells, let it snow, and do you see what I see that I can handle after awhile.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Listener supported radio is listener supported. Try listening left of the dial and support your local radio stations.
That is most definitely NOT a solution! To really solve this problem, people have to be not only warned of what's bad (as this article did), but also be given an alternative that does not forgo the good things about Spotify. Without that, it's magical utopian thinking to expect everyone to embrace something which is less convenient and requires them to purchase (or drag out of storage) equipment they don't have at the ready. The idea of people going back to CDs and vinyl doesn't scare Spotify one bit.
But this might:
A quick search reveals numerous online services which will transfer Spotify libraries and playlists to another streaming platform. That's the way to do it.
I use Quobuz and Bandcamp. They don’t have as much of a catalog as Spotify might (haven’t used it) but they pay the artists a more reasonable amount. Or buy CDs/albums
That’s the issue. They are all at it! After reading this article I might move to Apple Music? They already own my phone, my laptop, get my movie subscription so they might as well have my ears too.
Because it is utterly unrealistic to expect that to ever come remotely close to happen. Ok, it IS a solution, you’re right. Just a laughably unrealistic one and therefore not even worth thinking about.
It is unrealistic. Just because I DO THE RIGHT THING, doesn't mean most people will. Most people are selfish and will do what saves them money over what is right. I spend a few hundred dollars a month on music. I could avoid that for a lot less by supporting Spotify.
Imagine selfishly wanting to listen to the music you actually enjoy rather than whatever happens to be on the radio at the moment. Why can’t people ever just do the right thing? Just lazy honestly.
If everyone just stopped listening to music then Spotify wouldn’t make any money. The solution is obviously to return to the good old days when every family had a piano in the parlor where we would gather around for singalongs. No more streaming.
I'm not sure if you're kidding but I am laughing. I have many musician friends and they gladly make their own music in any given night but they aren't the majority of people for sure. I grew up on radio and Canada had content laws so I had lots of exposure to Canadian and UK music, worked at a bar where the DJs travelled to NY or Toronto to find the newest underground stuff, had friends who worked on the college radio, there were local clubs that hosted great bands all the time. No shortage of good music. Even when I lived in Boston I was an avid supporter of local jazz clubs and had a big collection of CDs. Since everything went to digital (that is another whole beef and story) and streaming, I listen to nearly nothing because I can't stand Spotify and their algorithms and what seemed obvious just the way it's set up is that artists weren't benefitting from their own work. It's a shame really. I'd love an alternative that was controlled by the artists and gave proper royalties to them, and was geared towards connecting people with legit new artists. Ani DiFranco produced her own records and holding 100% of her profits allowed her to out gross the Dead or U2, so why can't there be something that takes a small share to op a platform that democratizes accessibility to real artists? Radiohead went direct to the people. There's got to be a better way.
Exactly, stop using the platform if your against this type of thing. Artists should do the same. If enough stand tough the platform will collapse. However, This is not payola. The listener has full control of what they hear on Spotify. It's not possible to legislate musical taste anyway. I'm sure many people don't mind or care who is playing this sort of background music anyway.
Agree mostly. However, for decades long subscribers like myself who have invested in the communal/social aspects of finding and sharing new music, it's a valuable resource to simply stop using. I don't agree with Spotify profiteering through a growing web of banal mockery. That's gotta stop.
Buying via Discogs doesn't benefit artists, though, because it's all used physical media. Even though you're spending more and not supporting $potiFY, the net effect to the artist is LESS revenue!
True. But I disagree that it’s less revenue. It’s spreading your music to more people. It’s also (in my case) letting someone else enjoy music that I wasn’t listening to anymore. Now there’s a new potential customer for your next record or concert tour.
The same is true of buying a painting from another owner. The original artist doesn’t benefit directly, but his or her art gets recognized as valuable.
But not everyone who looks at a listing on Discogs buys that listing. And a large percentage of those who do buy a listing on Discogs came there looking for it because they had streamed a song from it, or another album by the same artist, first.
Please show me one single artist who says they benefit more from exposure on Discogs than on any streaming service. Please show me one single artist who says having their work listed on Discogs sells more tickets to their shows than having their work available on streaming services.
No one should be surprised that Spotify has turned out to be nothing but a scam. . dump it now. . .Let their CEO spend some of his ill gotten gain on high priced lawyers to get him out of this mess.
Hot take: you don't need to listen to 2000 artists a year. How many of their names can you list off the top of your head? How many of their tracks can you match to the artist name?
You said it yourself, "how we consume music today". That is what is wrong. We're listening to 2000 artists but keep listening to the same 2 playlists we saved. When we want to venture out and find new music, oh look Spotify has playlists for us.
Music is being treated like the background to life. I do miss having 9-10 albums a year but truly digesting, even learning to love some of them.
And don't get me wrong, I use Spotify too and I'm a musician who has several albums on there. I'm not any better than you or someone else. I am just so sick and tired of being part of this. It is just wrong. It's all very wrong.
This is very cool. And I’m with you on this. I haven’t been with Spotify for at least five years. Although tu have an included Apple Music membership I’ve just started buying traditional media again.
The arts are important. Gives meaning to the dust of everyday life. We need it. Artists get taken advantage of all the time. I love his tenacity. Think of all of your favorite pieces of music and consider what would have happened if that creator had no artistic integrity. People who appreciate the process of creating know how this garbage slop by AI & tech Bois is infecting the culture.
And if Spotify can do this to musicians and vocalists, authors beware of programs like Kindle Unlimited. Amazon could seed that space with AI generated uncopyrighted garbage and promote it over authors' genuine books so Amazon pays fewer royalties.
There's already a ton of AI crap on Amazon for Kindle (and Kindle Unlimited has been terrible for authors since the beginning). Just this week I noticed a suspicious number of biographies of Maggie Smith that were all released within days of her death. They have terribly generic titles, and one even features a cover photo of someone who is very obviously not Maggie Smith. Vox ran a story just this summer on the brothers behind the flood of garbage AI-generated ebooks on Amazon, and it's not happening by accident.
I’ve also noticed that there’s a lot of regurgitated summations of popular books available in electronic form on Amazon. Usually with the same title as the summarized original! Enshittification all around. Please note that real human and very talented writer Cory Doctorow should be credited for coining the term “enshittification.”
Yes that article on enshittification was so spot on, who wrote that? I used to do research as a kid at a very old library with a huge collection and there were often multiple books with the same exact text under different authors, from late 1800s/early 1900s and I always wondered why or how that came about.... apparently we've given over publishing to these unregulated pig troughs so same as it ever was?
You're welcome. I wish more people knew, and that there was a way to stop the influx of complete crap. The irony is that I found that link after seeing a thoroughly innocuous-looking a about how you could learn to publish on Amazon on Instagram and going to investigate it. I am sure they rope in a lot of clueless folks that way.
After reading the article, I’m pretty sure I stumbled across them a few years ago and was pretty hypnotized too. I have a pretty bright line around same-day large purchases, so I must have thought better about it the next day (and then just forgot about it all together).
At this point, I don't click on ANY social media ad without investigating it through an outside browser search first (not that they don't know you did that anyway, which is extra creepy). There are just too many scammers out there.
Yes, came across some really bad Agatha Christie-type-female-investigator 'novels' on Kindle recently. Stories and set ups that were cringe worthy and lame yet had gushing 5 star reviews and cheap, generic covers..
Amazon has been discovered to push the books they publish for the 'self-publishing' group, sending traditional pub houses on a crying jag. NaNoWriMo allows AI submissions now.
Amazon could seed thst space with AI content? I think it's almost a certainty. When has any tech company had human beings at the heart of their decision making? Unfettered Gen-Ai that replaces all human creativity is their ultimate goal.
Nancy, thanks for the Vox story re garbage ebooks. I didn’t really know those details. I never liked or used ebooks but now . . . this explains so much. Ripping off real authors of the past is bad enough. Selling AI fake writing is entirely about, and then the nerve to sell like a pyramid scheme. The only good is that this is absolutely self-destructing. Where do you go from .99 ebooks but down? I think we need to revert back to Ancient Greek methods of oral storytelling only!
I would watch out for any system (other than an album's track list) that automatically picks the next song for you. The selection algorithm will have a goal and that goal will be set by the company.
My big beef with Spotify is that my Playlist (any one of them, which I compile myself) will play a song again within less than an hour. 900 songs and you replay on 20 minutes?! You can that shuffle? Their customer service sucks. I've tried numerous times to explain what random shuffle means. I learned coding at the turn of the millennium. I KNOW what these terms mean. They apparently don't.
Which is exactly the point being made: Spotify's goal isn't to serve you what you want. It's to serve you what costs them the least, while still preventing you canceling your subscription.
This is exactly my (largest - of many) beef with Spotify as well. My hack for that has been to sort a playlist alphabetically by song title. Which works exactly once of course, but it's better than nothing.
I’ve noticed this with large playlists. I assume it slightly prioritizes music with cheaper payouts for the artist according to their agreement but have zero way of proving it, but if you even slightly did this it would be millions of dollars per year.
Which is interesting, because there have been articles written in the programming literature about how not to do this, and the programmers who wrote them worked for Spotify.
I've never had that issue. When I shuffle playlists several hundred songs long nothing repeats itself until all have played once. Of course, I'm a subscriber, which gives me a lot more control over what I hear when listening.
My husband is an independent composer with a million followers on Spotify. This year, he increased his overall streams by 14 million, totaling something like 43 million streams for the year.
Last year, over 2,000 of his listeners tagged him as their top artist on Spotify because of the Spotify Wrapped feature. This year? Not a single person reported him as their top artist. In fact, many reached out and told him they KNEW he was their top artist but that it was not showing that in their Wrapped coverage.
I could go on and on about the "instrumental" playlists on Spotify. We make pennies on the dollar and are frustrated that we see so many talented artists have their work suppressed in favor of garbage. However. We also continually see good work get found on the platform and many of us get a huge part of our livelihood from it. We see a lot of artists fall into the trap of blaming the machine for their lack of success instead of genuinely questioning whether or not their work is actually good. So while I understand the calls to cancel Spotify and find alternate ways of streaming (something we actively pursue and will continue to do), Spotify is still an incredibly huge part of the life of so many independent musicians like my husband.
My real hope is that someone does a documentary on Spotify. I think that's one way we could start to demand more accountability.
This is wild. Shocking-not-shocking. I know greed has always been with us, but this does seem to be the era where it's running rampant and ruining everything of value.
As a musician with music on Spotify, this is beyond infuriating and paradoxically numbing — receiving a fraction of a penny per stream is one thing, but the infiltration of AI into this space is heartbreaking. If real art dies & the listener doesn’t even notice, so does the magic of the human spirit.
My uncle is also a musician, was signed to a major label and came up in the era before social media or streaming. I’ve heard very bad things about major labels, but honestly, between having to play the social media algorithm games plus this in todays landscape, I would rather deal with the bs back then.
Ultimately people have a choice. They can choose to have real music and support real artists on platforms that are not the McDonald’s of audio, or this will continue - because it’s just convenient (and free) for the listener to have whatever they want at their fingertips.
I make sure to actually buy the music I really love--though Apple has been making it harder and harder. The cds I ripped years ago have even been hijacked by Apple Music (my wife signed up and it screwed up my entire library) so I can't listen to them if we don't pay the monthly fee. Disgusting. Support platforms that actually sell music and pay musicians, if you can find them.
That always scared me about Apple Music, they will go into your library & swap out a song for a newer version? I couldn’t tolerate that, hands off my music !
So did Mad 45 on Pay It All Back Vol. 8, the latest compilation in the series from Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound Label. Very to the point collection from a very to the point label. “Disturbing The Comfortable, Comforting The Disturbed” is its slogan.
Avoid Apple Music like the plague. I was suspicious of it for a long time, but eventually thought I would try it on one of my devices. I was right. Totally screwed things up. Still haven’t got around to doing all the work required to unscrew in that device but I made sure to keep a clean library on another hard drive. Umm, Valentine, despite your name, have you thought of divorce?
I still have my IPod with my old CDs. Funny how Apple discontinued it. We regret uploading our CDs. It’s also hard to find a DVD/CD player. They don’t want you using real media.
I never use Apple music to listen to anything that’s been ripped or purchases/downloaded. If the files have been moved elsewhere, the software is not aware of and can do nothing to interfere with it.
We’ve been in bad shape indeed for a decade or two. The ones and zeros guys are at cross purposes with musicians. Music was never a great job but the 70s was a decade that produced brilliant music and musicians flourished…you needed them to make music and the unions had some clout. That ship was sunk by the digital chip and now this. The “creators” of these tracks don’t need to play well or play at all. Cut and paste, drag and drop and prompt prompt prompt…
The responses to Ted’s alert are what I’ve been getting for decades with similar complaints. Apathy. And today I got a note from a student thanking me for the scholarship he was awarded this year. Can’t be certain but swear it was written by AI.
Ted wrote at length about the monetization of music in Music: A Subversive History, reaching back even before the publishing industry. Definitely worth the read if people are finding his writing thru the Substack page — if you like what he writes about music and cultural appropriation on this page, you’ll love his books. *
I tried Spotify for a couple weeks. It was quickly obvious to me that Spotify wanted to choose what I listened to. I thought it was lousy software and uninstalled. But now I see what they were up to.
I would be delighted to pay my share for a new platform that supports artists and music lovers.
I guess the benefit is that I have discovered songs and artists I would never would have heard of otherwise (and sometimes even bought their CDs eventually, although I know that is not typical). I am quite happy to have a music experience in which I don't know what will come next. Like listening to the radio which few ever complained about.
Fine and fair point. I too value introductions to new music. But I'm old-ish, so to me that's 'like the radio used to be'. Where I live there's not much on the radio, and the mainstream stations (a) don't play new music, and (b) play too many commercials for me to bear. So I do complain about the radio when it's on, but mostly I don't listen anymore ☹️
I enjoy Minnesota Public Radio's The Current station (you can stream online OR pull up their 100 most recently played songs on Spotify). I feel like it hits a great mix of new and old stuff as well as variety...within certain boundaries. It has been a great way to find new to me artists. They also have a lot of great artist features and such on the website.
Discovering music via algorithm feels empty to me. I used to discover new music by going to independent record shops, gigs, parties, looking through friend’s record collections. There was a social aspect that is now replaced by a few lines of code.
I seldom listen to Radio, don’t enjoy the inane banter and having to sit through tracks I dislike. I don’t use Spotify - even as a musician with over 10k monthly plays, which amounts to a few pennies in royalties. I find it all subtly soul destroying if I’m honest, the endless scrolling of a machine-curated list, searching for something statistically likely to please me.
Maybe a generational issue. (I don't know how old you are, but maybe youngish?) Once the radio was all there was. (Not really, obviously, but most people owned well under 100% of the music they enjoyed. And the radio was free!)
I grew up in the 70s/80s. Music was physical - tapes, vinyl. As said, I never listened to the radio much, even back then. I read the music press and went to record stores, gigs, parties, listened to what my friends were into. Now it’s different, there is an endless selection of new music on hand, no real feeling of discovery. Just a feeling of saturation, omnipresence, convenience. I’m not saying there’s no good new music, just that the way it is discovered lacks something.
I value not only the introduction to new artists but also the ability to have the music online and readily-accessible. There are artists I've discovered on Spotify and subsequently purchased their CDs, which are now... I dunno, in a drawer somewhere, since playing CDs is simply not optimally convenient for most of us in this day and age. We need an ethical alternative to Spotify.
Yes, I no longer own a dedicated CD player, so I have been known to amuse myself by playing a newly purchased CD once on a mini DVD player hooked up to my laptop (since it also now lacks a built-in CD/DVD drive), then reverting to Spotify ever after.
You can still buy external CD drives that connect to any desktop or laptop via USB. They're a lot cheaper than they used to be, too. $20-40.
I build my own desktops, and internal SATA Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drives are dirt cheap. $20-40 for a good one if all you want is data reading/writing and CD listening/ripping/burning; $60-80-100 for one that also includes basic movie decoding software. It's the decoding software needed to watch DVD and Blu-Ray movies that costs 3-4X what the drives cost.
You can do that without being a Spotify subscriber. Apple Music and Tidal both have deeper selections and pay artists more than Spotify does. At some point one has to make a decision about how much they're willing to compromise
Yup. That echoes my response to Spotify. There are other musicians that I have collaborated with who are on Spotify. The platform seems to have done nothing for them. I am presently considering how to get what I am working on into the public arena, not to make money per se but just to get it out there, wherever that is. 🤔
I don’t want to blame the victims, but I use Spotify to listen to music *intentionally* and never encounter the garbage, playlist-padding stuff you describe. Take control of your listening, people!
this right here. I'm so confused by people listening to random music. I listen intentionally to artists I love and playlists I've created. I never see any of the rest of it. If people would do that instead of playing random playlists, Spotify couldn't get away with this.
But to do that they'd have to... GASP!... subscribe to the paid version of Spotify for $11 a month. They'd rather use the free version with all of its limitations while loudly complaining that their favorite artists aren't getting paid much of anything and not getting much exposure either.
"They called it payola in the 1950s. The public learned that radio deejays picked songs for airplay based on cash kickbacks, not musical merit." That was because the radio stations they worked for paid them jack shit in salary. So to make it a living wage, it was either payola, start a record company, promote local concerts, or some combination of all of the above.
Fair point David. And I agree with you... to this day, radio DJs are asked to finance their own shows through sponsorships which inevitably creates a direct connection between advertiser and host. Ted has written a great follow-up here to the theory he has been positing all year (and I saw it explained excellently on his appearance with Rick Beato). But as someone who has written on this subject extensively, I am not sure that, regarding the action taken against payola, it was "Music fans (who) got angry and demanded action." It was Congress, looking for cheap scapegoats. Allan Freed, who had thoroughly embraced Black R&B, and crossed the race line many times in his TV and radio appearances but who had problems with alcohol and clear connections with Maurice Levy, was the obvious fall guy. Dick Clark, all-American host of American Bandstand, was given a clear run in his wake. Cheers!
The tech alternative is so painfully obvious I feel like a bore b/c I constantly repeat it. Labels can use interoperable security and open source DRM to directly release music and people can choose their own players. There is no reason for someone to make money on the software end of this because it’s straightforward. If labels cover the hosting costs, it’s straightforward if the big players wanted to do it.
Although, people getting into Chill Wave music is an example where AI gen slop will win.
There is a solution. DON'T GIVE ANY MONEY TO SPOTIFY. I IBUY CDS AND VINYL. And, once in a while, I'll splurge on a good cassette. In fact, I'm putting in the best of BTO right now. Analog isn't all that bad, and I got my pencil ready if the cassette tape gets in a bind.
Listen to radio curated by actual DJs. Listener supported radio, college radio, public radio. Please listen to your local radio stations.
I will add to these two comments that I find Spotify saves me a little moolah on my somewhat extravagant CD (and occasional LP) buying near every month by my using it to audition potential purchases. Not acquiring a couple of CDs that I wouldn’t like much about cancels out the subscription. Of course, Bandcamp achieves the same purpose without a subscription, but it’s not as useful for older catalog investigation.
As regards the quality of curation, you can bet as an old school DJ I rarely let Spotify just run away in the background. Where I live there is no local radio that plays much of what I’m interested in, vintage African styles and specifically late ‘70s reggae. Occasionally, I’ll let Spotify take off in those directions - and I must admit that it isn’t too bad. However, the usual result is that after about twenty minutes I go to the shelves and pull down whatever it is that Spotify has stimulated interest in.
And, respect due where it’s due, Spotify makes available considerable music in the areas of my interest that is hard and expensive to find in physical form. However, to a large extent, this is cancelled out by the tendency of tracks to no longer be available.
None of this excuses Spotify for pulling the scam it has pulled. As much as anything else I am offended by the casual way in which it cheapens the magical and mysterious way that I believe makes real music by living, breathing artists.
My wife has a tendency to let Spotify run off in some vaguely ambient new agey way and it’s pretty damn obvious after a little while that it’s spouting real drivel, even more than the customary standards of such “genres,” which I suspect is exactly the sterile pablum Ted is writing about in this summary of the Harper’s article. Now, I anxiously await the arrival of my real world paper copy of Harper’s in my mailbox. Seems a little late this month.
Occasionally, I have referred to Spotify as Spurtifly. I think I’ll use that word more often now.
Or maybe Stupefy...
Exactly this!
FWIW, there are Spotify alternatives that fulfill many (all?) of these roles and appear to be *less* evil. A big problem with both tech and broadcasting is rapid consolidation amd subsequent lack of competition. Maybe if Spotify has to work for customers they'd suck less.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Tidal. Great artist / album metadata, solid app.
Thank you for the suggestion. Yours is the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. After reading it and similar comments throughout this discussion, I will try Tidal in the new year when I can hopefully think straight about a number of musical-digital issues cluttering up my life. Things need cleaning up. Physically, I have a vast number of CDs spread around as I’ve been slowly working on a gigantic mix project. Digitally, I must repair the mess left by my trial subscription to Apple Music on my phone and avoid contagion on my other devices. And then transfer my playlists from Spurtifly to Tidal.
Over the course of reading all these comments, I realized that I absolutely do not wish to keep sending money to a company controlled by the likes of Daniel Ek. Besides his apparent pump’n’dump stock inflation scheme that appears to be connected with this fake publishing venture that diverts money at scale from real artists, his support of Joe Rogan with his bilious, even if popular, podcast is unacceptable. Let the right wing media system with its echo chambers look after itself! I’m off to greener pastures.
Almost everyone is available on Tidal, which at least pays the musicians better, and doesn't seem to play games quite as badly with their playlists.
My thoughts almost exactly. Re genres that are difficult to find , obtain. Been deleted etc. And the amount of AI Ambient Drivel is Colossal, but that is Electricity for you, clogging the Soundwaves!! 😆🏄🪇🥁🎸🎛️🎚️🌐👀🌘🌌📢📡🛰️🔧
Electricity is a great song by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band from the first Safe As Milk album. And I wish it were clogging the Soundwaves! The good Captain is the best earhole rinse I know, just superior (although not by much) to Lee Scratch Perry. Earholes should be rinsed at least three times a day.
The more recent versions from John French's Magic Band are worth tracking down - some very good live concert footage on YouTube.
Have you used Soulseek? It has lots of stuff not found on streaming services.
Thanks. I’ll check it.
I did. Looks like a file sharing system. Not streaming. Inherently a pain in the ass. Am I missing anything?
That is an interesting question! Perhaps another of my Spotify techniques will answer with practice rather than theory.
Every month I start a new playlist which begins simply with the month and year, e.g. December 2024. Then I add every album, EP or single that I hear about or think of as the month progresses. The title of the first one is semi-added to the playlist name in an abbreviation, which eventually turns out to be meaningless. Could have something or nothing to do with the following additions. These can be new releases that I get notified of by the many artists and labels I follow on Bandcamp or that I see on a record shop’s email or that I read a review of somewhere or I get interested in as I wander about. I also add old releases that come to mind for one reason or another. Some I already have on CD or vinyl, but there is a convenience of portability with iPhone and Spotify and I figure that, small as they may be, there’ll be a tiny trickle of royalties or I may tweak the blasted algorithm! Haha, my favourite pastime, tweaking the algorithm! Although with the rather broad range of my interests and tastes it is still a sort of random selection, which gives the algorithm conniptions. It really kind of breaks down when it comes to making suggestions about what to add. Very occasionally I’ll follow a suggestion, but to be honest I hate giving the machine the satisfaction of thinking I’m paying attention. See how far we’ve come? I’m talking about giving a machine satisfaction! Sick world and we all live in it.
At the end of the month, there are probably something like 1,000 songs in a list and I start all over again. I’ve thought of making the lists weekly, but that hasn’t happened yet. It would save on a lot of scrolling.
Not to indulge in virtue signaling but when I really like something I hear, I try to buy a physical product. Unfortunately, this is happening less and less because I am fairly broke, my shelves are full, I don’t like enough much new of what I hear these days, and eBay/Discogs resellers of old catalogue absorb much of my time and attention. And, you know, ultimately time available after writing comments here is limited! Ted is trying to save my bank account! Sort of. But I’m an old-school music junkie and still buy far more than the statistical average. I generally try to always have something new coming to me in the mail. Most unfortunately, local record shops where I live are inadequate for my purposes although OK for an emergency fix.
I also have more thematically curated playlists, but I’m pretty lazy about it. Still, there are a lot of playlists. And I save albums just for the hell of it. I figure I should make the machine do some real work! If you, or anyone else, is sufficiently interested and want to see what a big mess this all results in, I’m jackravencorvus. You could become Follower #31, not quite such a dignified position as #33 or #45 or even #78, but I’m patient.
I do the same - I have monthly playlists going back several years; it serves as a journal of what I listened to. Cheers!
My two favorite radio stations are WDJO and WAIF, two VERY independent stations. I don't listen to them in protest of the commercial stations, they are just far more enjoyable to listen to.
Thanks for sharing! Any listener supported radio is better than commercial radio. Keep it left of the dial! But I still flip around stations while driving. Radio is the best. I also like the human connection. And the real time aspect. More people should try it.
Agree, Kate. Lately all I've really been listening to is a local college radio station. Our local high school has something but I haven't dug into learning more about it yet. I'll switch over to regular radio every so often, but there are only so many versions of sleigh ride, jingle bells, let it snow, and do you see what I see that I can handle after awhile.
College radio is so fun. You never know what you’ll hear next. Plus live music listings and other events. It’s a great community service.
I found a college radio app, but have no idea who, if anyone is getting paid from it.
But terrestrial radio doesn't pay performers.
Never has.
It 'ain't as curated as you think...
There are required strict playlists...
Of you listen long enough most DJ's have to play a script...
Right down to PBS classical...
It is sad, uncreative...
AI is your friend and MASTER...
Get used to it...
Awww not AI
You have no idea what you are talking about. Listener supported radio is listener supported. Try listening left of the dial and support your local radio stations.
Mmmkay Kate, was employed stations.
So...
I will take no offense...
This is a place to share ideas snd experiences...
Cheers!
That is most definitely NOT a solution! To really solve this problem, people have to be not only warned of what's bad (as this article did), but also be given an alternative that does not forgo the good things about Spotify. Without that, it's magical utopian thinking to expect everyone to embrace something which is less convenient and requires them to purchase (or drag out of storage) equipment they don't have at the ready. The idea of people going back to CDs and vinyl doesn't scare Spotify one bit.
But this might:
A quick search reveals numerous online services which will transfer Spotify libraries and playlists to another streaming platform. That's the way to do it.
👍🏼 What is the best & most ethical alternative streaming platform?
I use Quobuz and Bandcamp. They don’t have as much of a catalog as Spotify might (haven’t used it) but they pay the artists a more reasonable amount. Or buy CDs/albums
There isn’t one. Not one with enough mainstream appeal.
Tidal I believe.
I think Tidal was supposed to be this alternative, but the odd seeming acquisition by Block 4 years ago I have little faith in long term.
That said, I still pay for it.
That’s the issue. They are all at it! After reading this article I might move to Apple Music? They already own my phone, my laptop, get my movie subscription so they might as well have my ears too.
Why is it not a solution. If everyone did as I did and nobody listened to Spotify- WAIT FOR IT.....THEY WOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS. Wake up man.
Because it is utterly unrealistic to expect that to ever come remotely close to happen. Ok, it IS a solution, you’re right. Just a laughably unrealistic one and therefore not even worth thinking about.
It is unrealistic. Just because I DO THE RIGHT THING, doesn't mean most people will. Most people are selfish and will do what saves them money over what is right. I spend a few hundred dollars a month on music. I could avoid that for a lot less by supporting Spotify.
Imagine selfishly wanting to listen to the music you actually enjoy rather than whatever happens to be on the radio at the moment. Why can’t people ever just do the right thing? Just lazy honestly.
Wait—- so it sounds like we’re actually in the same side of this topic.
If the end goal is to topple Spotify, the best strategy is one that a whole lot of people would realistically embrace.
If everyone just stopped listening to music then Spotify wouldn’t make any money. The solution is obviously to return to the good old days when every family had a piano in the parlor where we would gather around for singalongs. No more streaming.
I'm not sure if you're kidding but I am laughing. I have many musician friends and they gladly make their own music in any given night but they aren't the majority of people for sure. I grew up on radio and Canada had content laws so I had lots of exposure to Canadian and UK music, worked at a bar where the DJs travelled to NY or Toronto to find the newest underground stuff, had friends who worked on the college radio, there were local clubs that hosted great bands all the time. No shortage of good music. Even when I lived in Boston I was an avid supporter of local jazz clubs and had a big collection of CDs. Since everything went to digital (that is another whole beef and story) and streaming, I listen to nearly nothing because I can't stand Spotify and their algorithms and what seemed obvious just the way it's set up is that artists weren't benefitting from their own work. It's a shame really. I'd love an alternative that was controlled by the artists and gave proper royalties to them, and was geared towards connecting people with legit new artists. Ani DiFranco produced her own records and holding 100% of her profits allowed her to out gross the Dead or U2, so why can't there be something that takes a small share to op a platform that democratizes accessibility to real artists? Radiohead went direct to the people. There's got to be a better way.
That’s only a solution if the other platforms aren’t also pulling a similar scam.
Thank you.
Which is why they, very "honestly", don't have a playlist export feature on their app.
Bandcamp is also excellent.
Exactly, stop using the platform if your against this type of thing. Artists should do the same. If enough stand tough the platform will collapse. However, This is not payola. The listener has full control of what they hear on Spotify. It's not possible to legislate musical taste anyway. I'm sure many people don't mind or care who is playing this sort of background music anyway.
Agree mostly. However, for decades long subscribers like myself who have invested in the communal/social aspects of finding and sharing new music, it's a valuable resource to simply stop using. I don't agree with Spotify profiteering through a growing web of banal mockery. That's gotta stop.
If you don't know discogs.com, go there. You can find pretty much everything ever recorded, and the users are overwhelmingly nice and reliable.
Pro tip: the quoted shipping cost is usually calculated for ONE item. You can get 5 CD's from one seller, and just pay the shipping cost of one.
Buying via Discogs doesn't benefit artists, though, because it's all used physical media. Even though you're spending more and not supporting $potiFY, the net effect to the artist is LESS revenue!
True. But I disagree that it’s less revenue. It’s spreading your music to more people. It’s also (in my case) letting someone else enjoy music that I wasn’t listening to anymore. Now there’s a new potential customer for your next record or concert tour.
The same is true of buying a painting from another owner. The original artist doesn’t benefit directly, but his or her art gets recognized as valuable.
That's no more exposure/recognition than they get from Spotify, and at least they get a miniscule amount of revenue from Spotify.
“That's no more exposure/recognition than they get from Spotify”
Wrong. Someone buying a physical record of an artist is qualitatively more of a fan statement than just listening to them on Spotify.
But not everyone who looks at a listing on Discogs buys that listing. And a large percentage of those who do buy a listing on Discogs came there looking for it because they had streamed a song from it, or another album by the same artist, first.
Please show me one single artist who says they benefit more from exposure on Discogs than on any streaming service. Please show me one single artist who says having their work listed on Discogs sells more tickets to their shows than having their work available on streaming services.
What you’re seeing here is a phenomenon called “enshittificatiob”, a term coined by Cory Doctorow.
I'm with you but, honestly, this is like trying to stop a whole division of armoured vehicles by firing a pea-shooter.
No one should be surprised that Spotify has turned out to be nothing but a scam. . dump it now. . .Let their CEO spend some of his ill gotten gain on high priced lawyers to get him out of this mess.
Plus the analog signal is way more rich than the flat, digital mp3.
I do believe that this is the only thing we can do to change this scenario.
And I listen to Pandora
Honey, I listen to over 2000 artist A YEAR, you think I'm able to buy, what, 5000 CDs?
Its fine if all you listen to is the beatles and rolling stones or whatever, but it doesnt work how we consume music today;
Hot take: you don't need to listen to 2000 artists a year. How many of their names can you list off the top of your head? How many of their tracks can you match to the artist name?
You said it yourself, "how we consume music today". That is what is wrong. We're listening to 2000 artists but keep listening to the same 2 playlists we saved. When we want to venture out and find new music, oh look Spotify has playlists for us.
Music is being treated like the background to life. I do miss having 9-10 albums a year but truly digesting, even learning to love some of them.
And don't get me wrong, I use Spotify too and I'm a musician who has several albums on there. I'm not any better than you or someone else. I am just so sick and tired of being part of this. It is just wrong. It's all very wrong.
This is very cool. And I’m with you on this. I haven’t been with Spotify for at least five years. Although tu have an included Apple Music membership I’ve just started buying traditional media again.
Word!
"Congress should investigate ethical violations ..."
Dude.
The arts are important. Gives meaning to the dust of everyday life. We need it. Artists get taken advantage of all the time. I love his tenacity. Think of all of your favorite pieces of music and consider what would have happened if that creator had no artistic integrity. People who appreciate the process of creating know how this garbage slop by AI & tech Bois is infecting the culture.
I did a double take when I saw your name - it’s like the reverse of Stan Kenton! Cheers!
We haven’t progressed very far from the old question, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
LOL if this Congress does nothing we should be so lucky
You ARE kidding - right ? CONGRESS ? What a laugh !
I mean it is a platform that has contractual obligations to their suppliers and customers. So why not?
"So sue them!" would be the logical answer.
Bet the fine print covers that.
Hahaha … yeah
The least ethical institution in America (well, there's the medical system, mainstream news...) !
I was thinking exactly this.
Ironic <said in the voice of Palpatine>
And if Spotify can do this to musicians and vocalists, authors beware of programs like Kindle Unlimited. Amazon could seed that space with AI generated uncopyrighted garbage and promote it over authors' genuine books so Amazon pays fewer royalties.
There's already a ton of AI crap on Amazon for Kindle (and Kindle Unlimited has been terrible for authors since the beginning). Just this week I noticed a suspicious number of biographies of Maggie Smith that were all released within days of her death. They have terribly generic titles, and one even features a cover photo of someone who is very obviously not Maggie Smith. Vox ran a story just this summer on the brothers behind the flood of garbage AI-generated ebooks on Amazon, and it's not happening by accident.
I’ve also noticed that there’s a lot of regurgitated summations of popular books available in electronic form on Amazon. Usually with the same title as the summarized original! Enshittification all around. Please note that real human and very talented writer Cory Doctorow should be credited for coining the term “enshittification.”
I love Cory Doctorow and I'm glad he's getting the credit and popularity he deserves for his ideas.
They've been around forever, and are only getting worse.
Funny enough, I was just admiring the word so thanks for creating the creator!
Yes that article on enshittification was so spot on, who wrote that? I used to do research as a kid at a very old library with a huge collection and there were often multiple books with the same exact text under different authors, from late 1800s/early 1900s and I always wondered why or how that came about.... apparently we've given over publishing to these unregulated pig troughs so same as it ever was?
If my book and research was stolen & repackaged by AI like Gioia’s The History of Jazz was, I’d be on a warpath.
Did this happen!?! Oh brother!
I meant to include a link to the Vox article, and forgot: https://www.vox.com/culture/24128560/amazon-trash-ebooks-mikkelsen-twins-ai-publishing-academy-scam
That was a good read. Thanks for posting!
You're welcome. I wish more people knew, and that there was a way to stop the influx of complete crap. The irony is that I found that link after seeing a thoroughly innocuous-looking a about how you could learn to publish on Amazon on Instagram and going to investigate it. I am sure they rope in a lot of clueless folks that way.
After reading the article, I’m pretty sure I stumbled across them a few years ago and was pretty hypnotized too. I have a pretty bright line around same-day large purchases, so I must have thought better about it the next day (and then just forgot about it all together).
At this point, I don't click on ANY social media ad without investigating it through an outside browser search first (not that they don't know you did that anyway, which is extra creepy). There are just too many scammers out there.
Yes, came across some really bad Agatha Christie-type-female-investigator 'novels' on Kindle recently. Stories and set ups that were cringe worthy and lame yet had gushing 5 star reviews and cheap, generic covers..
Unfortunately, I'd be willing to bet a decent chunk of what you're describing was written by humans.
Wow
Amazon has been discovered to push the books they publish for the 'self-publishing' group, sending traditional pub houses on a crying jag. NaNoWriMo allows AI submissions now.
Get their books out of a public library.
I mean... buy their books?
Amazon already does this, with AI or just out-of-copyright material. Fancy cover, bad layout, zero editing, and few are the wiser. Until you read it.
It's out there alright - horrible stuff with 5 stars.
Amazon could seed thst space with AI content? I think it's almost a certainty. When has any tech company had human beings at the heart of their decision making? Unfettered Gen-Ai that replaces all human creativity is their ultimate goal.
Amazon doesn't need to. Humans are already making millions doing it at the expense of readers who don't know any better. https://www.vox.com/culture/24128560/amazon-trash-ebooks-mikkelsen-twins-ai-publishing-academy-scam
Nancy, thanks for the Vox story re garbage ebooks. I didn’t really know those details. I never liked or used ebooks but now . . . this explains so much. Ripping off real authors of the past is bad enough. Selling AI fake writing is entirely about, and then the nerve to sell like a pyramid scheme. The only good is that this is absolutely self-destructing. Where do you go from .99 ebooks but down? I think we need to revert back to Ancient Greek methods of oral storytelling only!
Followed your link for the Mikkelson twins, only found headlines, unable to read article.
I don't know what to tell you. I have no control over that. The whole article comes up for me. Maybe try again?
Precisely
Hold on I have to flip my album over. Now what were you saying? Spotify something?
Good one, Godfrey :) I was too busy reading my CD liner notes to give a cuss about Spotify🙏
I was blowing the dust off my stylus. And rolling a spliff on a gatefold. Marley’s “Rastaman Vibration” of course.
I would watch out for any system (other than an album's track list) that automatically picks the next song for you. The selection algorithm will have a goal and that goal will be set by the company.
My big beef with Spotify is that my Playlist (any one of them, which I compile myself) will play a song again within less than an hour. 900 songs and you replay on 20 minutes?! You can that shuffle? Their customer service sucks. I've tried numerous times to explain what random shuffle means. I learned coding at the turn of the millennium. I KNOW what these terms mean. They apparently don't.
Which is exactly the point being made: Spotify's goal isn't to serve you what you want. It's to serve you what costs them the least, while still preventing you canceling your subscription.
This is exactly my (largest - of many) beef with Spotify as well. My hack for that has been to sort a playlist alphabetically by song title. Which works exactly once of course, but it's better than nothing.
I’ve noticed this with large playlists. I assume it slightly prioritizes music with cheaper payouts for the artist according to their agreement but have zero way of proving it, but if you even slightly did this it would be millions of dollars per year.
Which is interesting, because there have been articles written in the programming literature about how not to do this, and the programmers who wrote them worked for Spotify.
I've never had that issue. When I shuffle playlists several hundred songs long nothing repeats itself until all have played once. Of course, I'm a subscriber, which gives me a lot more control over what I hear when listening.
I'm also a subscriber.
Didn’t we have this same discussion about IPods…?
Oh they know allright but choose not to in order to promote their own agenda and maximise profits.
It does it on the smaller ones, too.
But wait… are YOU ai? I see Gioia posting on Gioias page and have to ask… and hopefully laugh with you when you respond.
I am not AI. I am a biological offshoot that has undergone similar training protocol.
I've met Mike Gioia. And if he is a robot, he's doing a very good job of hiding it.
This is a far more perfect response than any ai could come up with now, so unless you’re a robot from the future, I buy it 😉
Well said.
My husband is an independent composer with a million followers on Spotify. This year, he increased his overall streams by 14 million, totaling something like 43 million streams for the year.
Last year, over 2,000 of his listeners tagged him as their top artist on Spotify because of the Spotify Wrapped feature. This year? Not a single person reported him as their top artist. In fact, many reached out and told him they KNEW he was their top artist but that it was not showing that in their Wrapped coverage.
I could go on and on about the "instrumental" playlists on Spotify. We make pennies on the dollar and are frustrated that we see so many talented artists have their work suppressed in favor of garbage. However. We also continually see good work get found on the platform and many of us get a huge part of our livelihood from it. We see a lot of artists fall into the trap of blaming the machine for their lack of success instead of genuinely questioning whether or not their work is actually good. So while I understand the calls to cancel Spotify and find alternate ways of streaming (something we actively pursue and will continue to do), Spotify is still an incredibly huge part of the life of so many independent musicians like my husband.
My real hope is that someone does a documentary on Spotify. I think that's one way we could start to demand more accountability.
This is wild. Shocking-not-shocking. I know greed has always been with us, but this does seem to be the era where it's running rampant and ruining everything of value.
As a musician with music on Spotify, this is beyond infuriating and paradoxically numbing — receiving a fraction of a penny per stream is one thing, but the infiltration of AI into this space is heartbreaking. If real art dies & the listener doesn’t even notice, so does the magic of the human spirit.
My uncle is also a musician, was signed to a major label and came up in the era before social media or streaming. I’ve heard very bad things about major labels, but honestly, between having to play the social media algorithm games plus this in todays landscape, I would rather deal with the bs back then.
Ultimately people have a choice. They can choose to have real music and support real artists on platforms that are not the McDonald’s of audio, or this will continue - because it’s just convenient (and free) for the listener to have whatever they want at their fingertips.
I make sure to actually buy the music I really love--though Apple has been making it harder and harder. The cds I ripped years ago have even been hijacked by Apple Music (my wife signed up and it screwed up my entire library) so I can't listen to them if we don't pay the monthly fee. Disgusting. Support platforms that actually sell music and pay musicians, if you can find them.
That always scared me about Apple Music, they will go into your library & swap out a song for a newer version? I couldn’t tolerate that, hands off my music !
As Klaus the clown from WEF said, "You will own nothing and be happy."
So did Mad 45 on Pay It All Back Vol. 8, the latest compilation in the series from Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound Label. Very to the point collection from a very to the point label. “Disturbing The Comfortable, Comforting The Disturbed” is its slogan.
https://www.discogs.com/release/24084257-Various-Pay-It-All-Back-Vol-8
And, ‘cos I love you all:
https://youtu.be/CCcH3XB9XnU?si=LEWkiB94xKMdzNN_
Always love hearing Sherwood. Thanks for this... I'm going to play this on the radio next time I'm at WAIF.
Avoid Apple Music like the plague. I was suspicious of it for a long time, but eventually thought I would try it on one of my devices. I was right. Totally screwed things up. Still haven’t got around to doing all the work required to unscrew in that device but I made sure to keep a clean library on another hard drive. Umm, Valentine, despite your name, have you thought of divorce?
I refuse to pay for Apple Music. Now I have another reason to not pay for it. What a rip off. Theft!
Bandcamp FTW
ABSOLUTELY.
I still have my IPod with my old CDs. Funny how Apple discontinued it. We regret uploading our CDs. It’s also hard to find a DVD/CD player. They don’t want you using real media.
I never use Apple music to listen to anything that’s been ripped or purchases/downloaded. If the files have been moved elsewhere, the software is not aware of and can do nothing to interfere with it.
Just one of several reasons I've never let Apple Music anywhere near any of my devices.
I don’t know what you mean Ted. ‘Trumpet Bumblefig’ is my favourite song in the world! 😂😂
We’ve been in bad shape indeed for a decade or two. The ones and zeros guys are at cross purposes with musicians. Music was never a great job but the 70s was a decade that produced brilliant music and musicians flourished…you needed them to make music and the unions had some clout. That ship was sunk by the digital chip and now this. The “creators” of these tracks don’t need to play well or play at all. Cut and paste, drag and drop and prompt prompt prompt…
The responses to Ted’s alert are what I’ve been getting for decades with similar complaints. Apathy. And today I got a note from a student thanking me for the scholarship he was awarded this year. Can’t be certain but swear it was written by AI.
Ted wrote at length about the monetization of music in Music: A Subversive History, reaching back even before the publishing industry. Definitely worth the read if people are finding his writing thru the Substack page — if you like what he writes about music and cultural appropriation on this page, you’ll love his books. *
* review by a real human, not a bot.
Start liking it. That genie ain't going back in the bottle.
I have zero faith in the ability of our incoming Congress to aggressively pursue corruption.
What I've never understood is consumers.
Despite investigations/whistleblowers detailing the exploitative nature of social media, people refuse to break their addiction.
The same is true of Spotify. People might be shocked at this corruption, but they'll continue using Spotify.
I tried Spotify for a couple weeks. It was quickly obvious to me that Spotify wanted to choose what I listened to. I thought it was lousy software and uninstalled. But now I see what they were up to.
I would be delighted to pay my share for a new platform that supports artists and music lovers.
I guess the benefit is that I have discovered songs and artists I would never would have heard of otherwise (and sometimes even bought their CDs eventually, although I know that is not typical). I am quite happy to have a music experience in which I don't know what will come next. Like listening to the radio which few ever complained about.
Fine and fair point. I too value introductions to new music. But I'm old-ish, so to me that's 'like the radio used to be'. Where I live there's not much on the radio, and the mainstream stations (a) don't play new music, and (b) play too many commercials for me to bear. So I do complain about the radio when it's on, but mostly I don't listen anymore ☹️
Check out WFMU (wfmu.org). Completely independent, a lot of fun shows playing new and old music, and an archive that goes back decades.
Thanks Mark; I'll check 'em out.
I enjoy Minnesota Public Radio's The Current station (you can stream online OR pull up their 100 most recently played songs on Spotify). I feel like it hits a great mix of new and old stuff as well as variety...within certain boundaries. It has been a great way to find new to me artists. They also have a lot of great artist features and such on the website.
Discovering music via algorithm feels empty to me. I used to discover new music by going to independent record shops, gigs, parties, looking through friend’s record collections. There was a social aspect that is now replaced by a few lines of code.
As I said, I don't think it is that different from hearing a great new song on the radio. But I agree it is less adventurous than some other methods.
I seldom listen to Radio, don’t enjoy the inane banter and having to sit through tracks I dislike. I don’t use Spotify - even as a musician with over 10k monthly plays, which amounts to a few pennies in royalties. I find it all subtly soul destroying if I’m honest, the endless scrolling of a machine-curated list, searching for something statistically likely to please me.
Maybe a generational issue. (I don't know how old you are, but maybe youngish?) Once the radio was all there was. (Not really, obviously, but most people owned well under 100% of the music they enjoyed. And the radio was free!)
I grew up in the 70s/80s. Music was physical - tapes, vinyl. As said, I never listened to the radio much, even back then. I read the music press and went to record stores, gigs, parties, listened to what my friends were into. Now it’s different, there is an endless selection of new music on hand, no real feeling of discovery. Just a feeling of saturation, omnipresence, convenience. I’m not saying there’s no good new music, just that the way it is discovered lacks something.
I value not only the introduction to new artists but also the ability to have the music online and readily-accessible. There are artists I've discovered on Spotify and subsequently purchased their CDs, which are now... I dunno, in a drawer somewhere, since playing CDs is simply not optimally convenient for most of us in this day and age. We need an ethical alternative to Spotify.
Yes, I no longer own a dedicated CD player, so I have been known to amuse myself by playing a newly purchased CD once on a mini DVD player hooked up to my laptop (since it also now lacks a built-in CD/DVD drive), then reverting to Spotify ever after.
Yes, it's difficult these days to even find a laptop with a CD drive... :(
You can still buy external CD drives that connect to any desktop or laptop via USB. They're a lot cheaper than they used to be, too. $20-40.
I build my own desktops, and internal SATA Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drives are dirt cheap. $20-40 for a good one if all you want is data reading/writing and CD listening/ripping/burning; $60-80-100 for one that also includes basic movie decoding software. It's the decoding software needed to watch DVD and Blu-Ray movies that costs 3-4X what the drives cost.
You can do that without being a Spotify subscriber. Apple Music and Tidal both have deeper selections and pay artists more than Spotify does. At some point one has to make a decision about how much they're willing to compromise
Apple Music messes with your internal library of music you've ripped from CDs or purchased as downloads.
Yup. That echoes my response to Spotify. There are other musicians that I have collaborated with who are on Spotify. The platform seems to have done nothing for them. I am presently considering how to get what I am working on into the public arena, not to make money per se but just to get it out there, wherever that is. 🤔
I don’t want to blame the victims, but I use Spotify to listen to music *intentionally* and never encounter the garbage, playlist-padding stuff you describe. Take control of your listening, people!
this right here. I'm so confused by people listening to random music. I listen intentionally to artists I love and playlists I've created. I never see any of the rest of it. If people would do that instead of playing random playlists, Spotify couldn't get away with this.
But to do that they'd have to... GASP!... subscribe to the paid version of Spotify for $11 a month. They'd rather use the free version with all of its limitations while loudly complaining that their favorite artists aren't getting paid much of anything and not getting much exposure either.
I do. I don't use Spotify. Or any streaming "service."
"They called it payola in the 1950s. The public learned that radio deejays picked songs for airplay based on cash kickbacks, not musical merit." That was because the radio stations they worked for paid them jack shit in salary. So to make it a living wage, it was either payola, start a record company, promote local concerts, or some combination of all of the above.
Fair point David. And I agree with you... to this day, radio DJs are asked to finance their own shows through sponsorships which inevitably creates a direct connection between advertiser and host. Ted has written a great follow-up here to the theory he has been positing all year (and I saw it explained excellently on his appearance with Rick Beato). But as someone who has written on this subject extensively, I am not sure that, regarding the action taken against payola, it was "Music fans (who) got angry and demanded action." It was Congress, looking for cheap scapegoats. Allan Freed, who had thoroughly embraced Black R&B, and crossed the race line many times in his TV and radio appearances but who had problems with alcohol and clear connections with Maurice Levy, was the obvious fall guy. Dick Clark, all-American host of American Bandstand, was given a clear run in his wake. Cheers!
The tech alternative is so painfully obvious I feel like a bore b/c I constantly repeat it. Labels can use interoperable security and open source DRM to directly release music and people can choose their own players. There is no reason for someone to make money on the software end of this because it’s straightforward. If labels cover the hosting costs, it’s straightforward if the big players wanted to do it.
Although, people getting into Chill Wave music is an example where AI gen slop will win.