4 ms·

How Much Does It Cost to Make a Hit Song?

9 points by JacobAldridge 11y ago

JacobAldridge 11y ago
If the last line of the article grabs you, here's the obligatory link to Courtney Love's seminal 2000 piece on the topic - http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ (And the previous HN discussions about it - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=courtney%20love%20does%20the%20math&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=courtney%20love%20does%20the%2...)
timdoug 11y ago
Related: "The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) is a 1988 book by The Timelords (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), better known as The KLF. It is a step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No. 1 'Doctorin' the Tardis'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
tomcam 11y ago
How Macklemore's (totally deserved) success was achieved as an "indie" effort. Spoiler alert: maybe not completely indie. http://raprehab.com/macklemores-indie-rise-is-simply-a-white-lie/ http://raprehab.com/macklemores-indie-rise-is-simply-a-white...
coldtea 11y ago
>Daniels manages a songwriting team of two brothers, Timothy and Theron Thomas, who work under the name Rock City. "You got all the best people, you're gonna make the best records," he says. So why do they make formulaic crap, and not even nice formulaic crap, like Tin Pan Alley, but just formulaic crap? I'm not saying this because of any nostalgia and such. I never lived in the times of Tin Pan Alley, and I like stuff from Rick James and Aphex Twin to Burial and MIA. But the BS sold as "R&B" today is beyond crap by most metrics -- the fact that's it made by "comitee" is also telling.
dstyrb 11y ago
A concise summary of just about everything wrong with the mainstream music industry. This excerpt is particularly nice: "You want them to turn on the radio and hear Rihanna, turn on BET and see Rihanna, walk down the street and see a poster of Rihanna, look on Billboard, the iTunes chart, I want you to see Rihanna first." Another relevant article: https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-do-all-records-sound-the-same-830ba863203 https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-do-all-records-sound-the-sam... A horrific excerpt: "Two or three times a year, a company like L.A.-based Music Research Consultants Inc arrive in town, hire a hotel ballroom or lecture theatre and recruit 50 to 100 people, carefully screened for demographic relevance (they might all be white suburban housewives aged 26–40). They’re each given $65 and a perception analyzer—a little black box with one red knob and an LED display. Then, they’re played 700 seven-second clips of songs. If they turn the knob up, the song gets played. If they turn it down, it doesn’t." Why is it so hard for indie artists these days? The world may never know. Damned Spotify.
- shalmanese 11y ago
  This is one segment of the industry Shazam is hoping to disrupt. The theory is that songs people are most curious about Shazaming is a better perceptual signal than adjusting a knob 700 times and you can gather way more data points way more cheaply. If you think the process is horrific, at least there's people trying to make it more accurate.

9 points by JacobAldridge 11y ago

If the last line of the article grabs you, here's the obligatory link to Courtney Love's seminal 2000 piece on the topic - http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ (And the previous HN discussions about it - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=courtney%20love%20does%20the%20math&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=courtney%20love%20does%20the%2...)

timdoug 11y ago

Related: "The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) is a 1988 book by The Timelords (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), better known as The KLF. It is a step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No. 1 'Doctorin' the Tardis'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual

tomcam 11y ago

How Macklemore's (totally deserved) success was achieved as an "indie" effort. Spoiler alert: maybe not completely indie. http://raprehab.com/macklemores-indie-rise-is-simply-a-white-lie/ http://raprehab.com/macklemores-indie-rise-is-simply-a-white...

coldtea 11y ago

>Daniels manages a songwriting team of two brothers, Timothy and Theron Thomas, who work under the name Rock City. "You got all the best people, you're gonna make the best records," he says. So why do they make formulaic crap, and not even nice formulaic crap, like Tin Pan Alley, but just formulaic crap? I'm not saying this because of any nostalgia and such. I never lived in the times of Tin Pan Alley, and I like stuff from Rick James and Aphex Twin to Burial and MIA. But the BS sold as "R&B" today is beyond crap by most metrics -- the fact that's it made by "comitee" is also telling.

dstyrb 11y ago

A concise summary of just about everything wrong with the mainstream music industry. This excerpt is particularly nice: "You want them to turn on the radio and hear Rihanna, turn on BET and see Rihanna, walk down the street and see a poster of Rihanna, look on Billboard, the iTunes chart, I want you to see Rihanna first." Another relevant article: https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-do-all-records-sound-the-same-830ba863203 https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-do-all-records-sound-the-sam... A horrific excerpt: "Two or three times a year, a company like L.A.-based Music Research Consultants Inc arrive in town, hire a hotel ballroom or lecture theatre and recruit 50 to 100 people, carefully screened for demographic relevance (they might all be white suburban housewives aged 26–40). They’re each given $65 and a perception analyzer—a little black box with one red knob and an LED display. Then, they’re played 700 seven-second clips of songs. If they turn the knob up, the song gets played. If they turn it down, it doesn’t." Why is it so hard for indie artists these days? The world may never know. Damned Spotify.

shalmanese 11y ago
This is one segment of the industry Shazam is hoping to disrupt. The theory is that songs people are most curious about Shazaming is a better perceptual signal than adjusting a knob 700 times and you can gather way more data points way more cheaply. If you think the process is horrific, at least there's people trying to make it more accurate.