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The Problem with Muzak – Spotify’s bid to remodel an industry
- CoolGuySteve 9y agoEvery other sentence in this article reads like something from /r/iam14andthisisdeep
- toastking 9y agoKeep in mind the person who wrote this run's a DIY venue in Brooklyn so they're pretty torn up about this. Spotify is pretty terrible for struggling DIY artists who mainly rely on album/merch sales at shows.
- coredog64 9y ago> This worker is teaching people to use the iPads that will one day replace her. It’s an awkward phenomenon that now pervades a growing cross-section of industries, a type of techno-solutionism that’s unbearable because it insistently capitalizes on quick fixes for problems that didn’t exist to begin with. These devices are awesome. When I go to lunch with my co-workers, it's easy to split the check. I don't have to give my credit card to anyone. And if we're in a time crunch I don't have to flag down the wait staff. Nor do they have to wait for their shot at the payment terminal.
- magic_beans 9y agoLet's be honest here: how many airport waitstaff out there have ever brightened anyone's day? Slim to none. I suspect this artist has never actually eaten at an airport restaurant -- the staff, at least at JFK and LAX, are some of the most demotivated, spirit-broken people I've ever encountered.
- mnx 9y agoThere might be some insight in this article, but the tone makes it unbearable to read for me. Halfway between apocalyptic and condescending.
- te_chris 9y agoI'm often baffled at the way Pitchfork et al have embraced Spotify when it so clearly wants to own everything to do with music so it can extract value everywhere. I love Spotify the product, but it's a terrible, impersonal experience in a lot of ways, and also doesn't feel very sticky to me. Sure, I need access to the catalogue, but the playlists leave me cold and I could easily switch to another service. I feel like there'll be opportunities for instagram-like upstarts to chip away at their base, offering things that their big, impersonal machine can't as it's so focused on scale.
- toastking 9y agoI'm not so sure. 8tracks tried that by collecting playlists from real people but it hasn't been able to stick. I think people like convenience and nothing is more convenient than a computer telling you what to do.
- svantana 9y agoTotally agree, though it's not viable to start a small-ish spotify alternative today because of the licensing situation. The rights owners really need to get together and create a generic streaming license, similar to what is offered to radio stations.
- pavlov 9y agoSpotify is frustratingly dishonest about what’s paid placement on their service. Recently they introduced a feature called “2017 Wrapped”, which contains a playlist named “Your Top Songs 2017”. I imagined this list would contain the songs I actually listened to most. Instead it’s biased so that many of my favorites don’t appear, yet there are major label songs that I don’t even remember actively playing. It’s borderline misleading advertisement to pretend these are “my top songs” when obviously the list is a pay-to-play for labels.
- pdpi 9y agoMy 2017 wrapped is a pretty accurate reflection of what I did listen to, and barely any of it is the sort of stuff you'd think of when you talk about "major label songs". There is, however, a "The Ones That Got Away" playlist, that, while still not heavy on anything particularly popular, could fit in with your experience. Maybe you were looking at the wrong playlist?
- pavlov 9y agoNo, I wasn't. Maybe I'm just unlucky to be in a user cohort where promoted songs are inserted into my top 2017 songs (to test how many extra plays they can get this way). It sucks that they do this to paying customers though.
- kingosticks 9y agoDo you scrobble your plays to last.fm? If so, it should be simple to show how right or wrong they are.
- mywittyname 9y agoMine is pretty spot-on. There are a few odd-balls on there that I attribute to their weighting manually selected songs much higher than those from a playlist.
- sincerely 9y agoSpotify is pretty consistent in doing this. If you link your Spotify account to Tinder, it gives you a list of your "Top Artists" to present on your profile, which in my experience only lists artists signed or distributing with major labels or imprints, regardless of what I've actually listened to the most.
- dsschnau 9y agoThe best alternative to spotify? Bandcamp. https://bandcamp.com/ https://bandcamp.com/
- zaarn 9y agoCan only agree. I download a lot of my music there, usually in FLAC for archiving and MP3 for listening.
- two2two 9y agoBandcamp is great. For the artists which I discovered either through Soundcloud or YouTube and have a Bandcamp page, I will follow and receive updates via email. It's a nice system for smaller artists who don't have newsletter support from small to large labels.
- Cknight70 9y agoI'd have to agree with you. What I've been doing lately is clicking on interesting album art in the recently purchased feed on their homepage. It amazes me how often I can guess what genre an album is just from the album art alone, I'll find around 10 new artists I really like within an hour of just clicking on album art.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoBandcamp is totally awesome. For an albums that truly resonate with me, I do listen to them on Spotify, but I'll also buy them on Bandcamp, to directly support the artists.
- kingosticks 9y agoExcept they have no streaming API so I can't use it with my normal audio player software. I am forced to stream it in a browser. I'm out.
- thirdsun 9y agoIt's not a streaming service. You buy your music there and own it.
- ryandrake 9y agoSuch a long, meandering article, but the meat of it seems to be here: “The more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s challenging music? Nah,” he says, telling me about all of the experimental, noise, and comparatively aggressive music on his label that goes unheard on the platform. “It leaves artists behind. If Spotify is just feeding easy music to everybody, where does the art form go? Is anybody going to be able to push boundaries and break through to a wide audience anymore?” I get that the author wants to listen to "challenging" music that "pushes boundaries" and laments that Spotify's algorithms are surfacing up Muzak instead. But there are other places to go to find your challenging music. For lots of other people, however, music is not some intimate connection with an artist's soul, it's simply something that goes on in the background while you're trying to get something else done or just relax. People seem to want Muzak--who are you to argue with the market when it has spoken?
- mental1896 9y agoOne thing I didn't see mentioned was how a song's "radio" seems to just play popular titles by bands in the same genre. When I first saw the feature, I was hoping it would be a successful implementation of Pandora's "Music Genome" promise, but it sounds like the same old market-driven gentle nudging toward what's popular, instead of what I actually wanted.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoI mostly listen to metal, not big popular metalcore and radio metal, but plenty of death metal, thrash metal, that sort of thing. The discover playlist, radios and daily mixes have been absolutely awesome for me, when it comes to discovering new bands. Sure, it generally sticks to the most popular songs by said artists, but 1) they're the popular tracks for a reason, and 2) it gets me to explore the rest of that artist's discography.
- MisterTea 9y agoI listen to similar plus black metal and found spotify to be decent enough. But as you pointed out, popular songs by popular artists. I have a beef with this, especially when you said: >1) they're the popular tracks for a reason Yes, popular because that's all anyone ever hears. That feeds into the same mindless pop music mentality of distilled top hits playlists which shackles the people themselves, the art, and the artist. Honestly I've found underground and promotional channels on Youtube to be much more explorative and satisfying. Odium Nostrum and Black Metal Promotion have been two very solid channels to follow who feature content that I enjoy which isn't on spotify.
- tarsinge 9y agoThe author doesn't differentiate between the contexts of music listening, but when you're at work and need concentration, in a bar, at a party, or doing a workout background music is great and playlists based on moods are on point. Personally I don't see the incompatibility with algorithmically generated playlists and appreciating every song being listened to when appropriate, in fact I find them great to discover new artists and songs, especially in niche genres.
- pdpi 9y agoMy experience is precisely the opposite: Spotify has been instrumental in exposing me to niche bands and expanding my taste. The "2017 Wrapped" email says I listened to 6944 different songs by 1426 different artists across 103 different genres this year.
- scrumbledober 9y agoThis is exactly my experience as well. I have discovered (pun intended) more musical artists and genres than I ever would have found in the olden days of spending countless hours downloading and curating my own musical collection that rarely ventured out of my genre comfort zone. Just looking through my more recent playlists there is so much niche music that I would not have known about with the itunes model.
- pfd1986 9y agoYes but with a caveat. Many of the artists I discovered via Spotify / Google Music make pennies from these sites. The truth is that unless you're buying an album (1) or other merchandise, you're not contributing significantly for the artist's survival. I was chatting with Brock Van Wey last week (aka bvdub, my favorite choice of background music when programming) and he was describing how challenge it is to stay in business nowadays. I naïvely thought these apps were helping those folks... I for one will try to buy more albums, even if digital, of the bands I listen to all the time. (1) directly from the artist (e.g. via bandcamp). Google Music, at least, doesn't really give you the mp3 but only a protected file that can solely be played in their software.
- chrisseaton 9y agoYou might as well use Patreon or something if you’re just giving them a donation for something you could already stream, then they’ll get both revenues.
- 7ewis 9y agoFor me it comes down to ease of use. If Spotify didn't exist, I doubt I'd be buying albums etc. anyway. It's the same as torrenting movies, people do it because it's convenient (and free) but now Netflix is here, it's even easier than torrenting. So that's why I'm subscribed to both services and have been for many years. So artists that leave Spotify, like Taylor Swift for example. I may listen to their music because it's in the charts, but when she left Spotify I just didn't listen to her music at all. So I'm sure Spotify do give the artists attention they would never usually get.
- dmschulman 9y agoSpotify's model is driven by what users consume the most, so it sounds to me like this isn't something Spotify is driving but instead the market is driving. "Challenging" music is good and necessary to further art, but it's not a kind of music that the majority of Spotify's audience go out of their way to consume.
- fuzzfactor 9y agoLive. Music. Eliminate the middleman. Get out and support your local bands.
- mywittyname 9y agoLive Nation is significantly worse for the music industry than Spotify is. Live shows are awesome, but let's not pretend there's no middleman involved. Unless you're seeing a tiny band, going to a live show involves dumping fist fulls of dollars into the pockets of a huge monopoly.
- Kluny 9y agoThere are thousands of tiny bars, pubs, house parties, outdoor venues, local street parties, and street corners where musicians play live and Live Nation is not involved at all.
- mywittyname 9y agoSure, but you're not going to see an artist of note at one of these places unless they have some connection to the place.
- Tsiklon 9y agoI think that all depends on what stuff you enjoy listening too. Heavy Metal music as an example, tends to be promoted by smaller scale promoters local to one town or city or area.
- radix07 9y agoWhat do you listen to in the car??
- sincerely 9y agoCassettes I bought at shows :P
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- magic_beans 9y agoI'm not in the music industry, so it's hard for me to feel the pain for many of the writer's muddled points: > As an industry insider once explained to me, digital strategists have identified “lean back listening” as an ever more popular Spotify-induced phenomenon. It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities, where they just pick a playlist and let it roll I can't see what's wrong with this. Is it a sin to consume music to meet an emotional need or match a mood? > One independent label owner I spoke with has watched his records’ physical and digital sales decline week by week. He’s trying to play ball with the platform by pitching playlists, to varying effect. “The more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s challenging music? Nah,” he says, telling me about all of the experimental, noise, and comparatively aggressive music on his label that goes unheard on the platform. This artist doesn't have to be on Spotify. > If Spotify is just feeding easy music to everybody, where does the art form go? Is anybody going to be able to push boundaries and break through to a wide audience anymore?” Again, Spotify is a platform whose interests are for itself. > Spotify’s ambition to superannuate labels is evident. In its quest for total power and control, Spotify has prioritized its own content, and it has made it notably more difficult to find albums rather than playlists. Of course Spotify prioritizes its own content. No one forces independent artists to be on Spotify. The writer is lamenting the death of an entire industry, but to blame Spotify is absurd. Blame big labels for pushing Top-40 pop nonsense for the past twenty years. Blame every single person for not valuing art. Blame modern culture for consumerism. Blame the internet for creating an expectation of instant gratification.
- steve-benjamins 9y agoI'm an artist and there's definitely a new type of listener that is listening for vibe. My most successful songs on Spotify are often described as "vibey" by listeners. People will comment on the "sound of the sounds" and the overall feel of it. Curiously I find other musicians less likely to comment about vibe. Instead they will comment on the songwriting or on the production— often picking out esoteric elements of the songs. It makes total sense that people are listening for vibe. Music is way more accessible than ever before. We pipe in music constantly to set mood or create ambience (or to cancel surrounding noise). I recently saw my father-in-law (who's in his mid-60s) sit down with his laptop and simply listen to some of his favourite folk music. He wasn't browsing the web. He was just listening. It was funny how unusual it seemed. I wonder if outrage from the music industry over the decline of active-listening has more to do with the feeling that artists are just less important. People mostly listen to music now— rather than individual artists.
- fortythirteen 9y agoOne of the hardest things for an artist to realize is that most people don't give a shit about what you do and, while what you do can be important to some people, it is not objectively important. The author of this article hasn't come to that realization yet.
- plussed_reader 9y agoYeah, who needs another iteration of Windows?
- exelius 9y agoI had been thinking this exact same thing -- streaming music has changed my consumption habits, and I noticed that my musical tastes started trending more and more toward the "muzak" spectrum (simple beats, repetitive melodies, minimal vocals). "Chillhop" is basically the muzak of 2010s; I mean it has been for a while but its popularity seems to have surged alongside streaming music. Or maybe it's just me getting old. :)
- mywittyname 9y ago> The band was happy to be included and inspired to see their peers push back against corporate exploitation. “The difference now is that, if you don’t bow down to Spotify, you might as well tell whoever runs the guillotine that’s above your neck to just let her rip,” The punk thing thing to do would be to release a song called "Fuck $Brand" that outlines all the scandals and abuses the brand has been involved in over the years. Yeah, it's kind of passive aggressive. But when execs at $Brand find out about it, maybe they'll start a corporate blacklist and put your band at the top of it.
- gumby 9y agoYet another complaint that the brief period of musicians as occasional break-out stars is over. What the author describes is the baseline position of musicians: mostly background performers. And when she writes of “music” she really means pop music, as classical musicians have by and large never made serious money.
- creaghpatr 9y agoThe author is trying to frame a cultural 'music discovery' problem as a Spotify UX problem. I don't think Spotify's netflixified playlists are a big issue. In fact, I think they are decently curated. The 'music discovery' problem stems from the centralization of music radio (in the late 2000s), causing a selected handful of superstars to reign supreme protected by the centralized barriers to entry. Spotify has created the inverse problem. Instead of a handful of superstars (other than the ones grandfathered in before streaming became commonplace), the US Top 50 chart (over a given 10 week time period)is fragmented with 100% interchangeable rap songs with DIY production chops. 'Interchangable' is the key word here- none of these artists are able to rise to headliner status and major music festivals are in jeopardy because they are running out of legacy headliners to keep them afloat. TLDR: Centralized radio enabled labels to conspire to make superstars. Spotify (not intentionally) prevents artists from becoming superstars. There are exceptions, of course, but the revenue numbers from previous generations dwarf those of, say, Fetty Wap.
- whiddershins 9y agoTL;DR payment for number of plays favors certain kinds of music over others, but it is not really anyone’s fault. My observation is that there’s an underlying flaw in the compensation model. I think it was non-obvious and a solution is even less obvious so I don’t really blame Spotify or other services. Some music is made to be listened to over and over. This category includes ambient and background music, but also any catchy pop-like song (in the broadest possible definition of pop). Other music is more narrative and challenging. It might be very important and emotionally impactful, but the listener tends to consume it more like a movie. They might listen to it once or twice. This is a piece of mine I really am proud of. I don’t expect anyone to have it on repeat or add it to a bunch of playlists: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRQk7TWndBw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRQk7TWndBw It is deliberately challenging. Back when the model was buying records, there was potential for some remuneration for creating challenging recorded work. Even if it was niche, if enough people appreciated it one could hope to cover costs. But at a fraction of a cent per play, even if a dedicated listener base absolutely adores your challenging recordings, it’s completely unrealistic to hope to make money from it. Possibly Patreon or something like it can fill that gap. But I really don’t think being frustrated with Spotify is a productive avenue.
- terryf 9y agoThe main problem with Spotify is their payment structure to artists. When I pay their monthly fee, I want that money to go to the artists that I listen to. There would be a simple way to do this - take the money I pay, minus the Spotify cut to provide the service and then proportionally divide it among the artists that I listen to. Do they do that? Oh no! Instead, they aggregate together all the music listened to and all the money paid them, take off their cut and then divide the total amount proportionately to artists. Effectively this means that I'm paying for music that I don't listen to. I hate the fact that some of my money is going to Justin Bieber.
- CaptSpify 9y ago> How can artists distribute and sell their work in a digital economy beholden to ruthlessly commercial and centralized interests? Well the distribution side is easy. Unless you have something special, you can just put it on a torrent and have other people help you distribute it. It's the making money part that is hard. It's still amazing to me that we have things like Spotify trying to control distribution. We don't need any more gatekeepers trying to block users from digital media. Instead we need to start figuring out how our economic models are so broken that they led us to our current situation. Virtual goods are so fundamentally different that we have companies who don't even realize that they've been automated out. And even worse: We have users who don't understand that and are willing to give these companies money.
- maxscam 9y agoThis is really true. I used to use grooveshark, which is very similar to spotify in terms of functionality, but what it had that spotify lacks is user generated playlists. I find spotify horrible for finding new music, however once you know who you want to listen to its great.
- thirdsun 9y agoSo you don't consider those playlists you can create and share on Spotify as user generated? However I agree that they could be featured more prominently. Apart from that Grooveshark was a service without legitimate content. As a streaming service you can't rely on user uploads and ignore the whole licensing aspect of the business.