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It’s crazy how much sway Spotify and other streaming apps have over the future of what music is popular. Radio pop hits aside, I know lots of people who’s music

by zwkrt 7y ago

It’s crazy how much sway Spotify and other streaming apps have over the future of what music is popular. Radio pop hits aside, I know lots of people who’s music preference is something along the lines of “a few bands I like and their associated Spotify recommendations”. Music preferences and trends have always been culturally motivated both through grassroots word of mouth, and top-down by those creatively in charge at record labels. But now with algorithmic suggestions there is a third trend-motivator, which is music listeners and music producers reflecting on the overall system for statistical trends and correlations. I expect this motivator to push out the other two because it makes labels more (and safer) money and consumers seem to like it. The conditions for success are now highly metricked and quickly A/B testable. It’s like the internet before and after PageRank—and just the same, I would expect a cottage industry of “SEO” to pop up for the music industry.

holy_city 7y ago
I'll take algorithms over payola. At least they suggest things to me that I'd like to hear.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  No, algorithms can be used as tools to hide payola far better. If someone subtly tweaks the algorithm to favor a certain artist, how do you ever catch that? It's particularly concerning because there did a study that showed in different control groups of music listeners, new songs became popular just based on which ones became popular earlier. I mean, try this trick on yourself: find a random song and listen to it 20 times. Odds are you'll like it a lot better after the first several listens than the first time. If in addition to that all your friends happened to know and like the song, and they started advertising the artists heavily, bam! It's a hit. It's just groupthink, and we're all susceptible to it.
- bsder 7y ago
  Really? Ed Sheeran is so good that he had 5 of the top 10 hits simultaneously? If that's the end result, I think we need to bring back payola.
  - holy_city 7y ago
    meh? Charts have always been poor representations of musical quality/popularity. I use spotify because the algorithms suggest me good music based on my taste, and despite the weird polarity of it they always find new music that interests me. I have no problem with Spotify's algorithms. They do a very good job with a very difficult problem.
magashna 7y ago
I'm not sure if it's better or worse than how it was back in the big radio days, where records would get play based on kickbacks, swag, and brown paper bags with drugs or cash.
wjnc 7y ago
When I was 16 two decades ago I loved music, went to concerts, knew the local bands and their entourages, visited the library to loan CD's to copy on tape, etc. I still discover albums of my favorite bands I've seem to have missed. This all to say that discoverability is such a big plus in my book I would be happy for Spotify to take over radio in the lives of those less musically interested.
- zwkrt 7y ago
  Yeah I didn’t think that it is worse or better, only different!
- qqn 7y ago
  Agreed! I discover many songs through friends who are big on Spotify and it's great. Though my personal approach to discovering new music now is going through the full discographies of artists I love (so neat "seeing" their evolution), and then Shazaming any great song I hear while out and about (and then YouTubing the heck out of that artist to quickly mine for any other potential treasures). So far this has been a wonderful approach, especially since I inevitably end up researching the artists and songs I go through, learning so much more about the background stories like song meanings and the issues of those times. As an aside, and speaking of the nonmusical elements that make a song popular, three other things that do it for me are when I heard that particular song (huge fan of Garth Brooks' "Callin' Baton Rouge" because it was what my host parents played on a fantastic summer I spent on exchange), and the CD cover or other imagery that's associated with the artist (it actually makes me sad to delete humdrum songs from my library if they have fantastic album covers) are two. The third is the subsection of songs that I grew up with, which is different than those from the summer exchange situation above because these are emotionally tied to a time in my life when everything was fresh and exciting; they were the theme not just songs but entire albums running through the background of my youth. Objectively speaking, there's nothing too special about Oasis or Weezer or ATB or Robert Miles or Darude or Aqua but that they found me in a particularly impressionable time in my life. Simon and Garfunkel are in this gathering as well, but it's just sheer luck that my friends were turning hipster and so I was exposed. They were actually what caused me to spring off from the popular tunes of the day into more timeless classics : )
reroute1 7y ago
Isn't this basically what radio, mtv, and every music technology does in a way?
- zwkrt 7y ago
  Yes, but there was always a human at MTV deciding which videos to play!

by zwkrt 7y ago

holy_city 7y ago

I'll take algorithms over payola. At least they suggest things to me that I'd like to hear.

asdfman123 7y ago
No, algorithms can be used as tools to hide payola far better. If someone subtly tweaks the algorithm to favor a certain artist, how do you ever catch that? It's particularly concerning because there did a study that showed in different control groups of music listeners, new songs became popular just based on which ones became popular earlier. I mean, try this trick on yourself: find a random song and listen to it 20 times. Odds are you'll like it a lot better after the first several listens than the first time. If in addition to that all your friends happened to know and like the song, and they started advertising the artists heavily, bam! It's a hit. It's just groupthink, and we're all susceptible to it.
bsder 7y ago
Really? Ed Sheeran is so good that he had 5 of the top 10 hits simultaneously? If that's the end result, I think we need to bring back payola.
- holy_city 7y ago
  meh? Charts have always been poor representations of musical quality/popularity. I use spotify because the algorithms suggest me good music based on my taste, and despite the weird polarity of it they always find new music that interests me. I have no problem with Spotify's algorithms. They do a very good job with a very difficult problem.

magashna 7y ago

I'm not sure if it's better or worse than how it was back in the big radio days, where records would get play based on kickbacks, swag, and brown paper bags with drugs or cash.

wjnc 7y ago

When I was 16 two decades ago I loved music, went to concerts, knew the local bands and their entourages, visited the library to loan CD's to copy on tape, etc. I still discover albums of my favorite bands I've seem to have missed. This all to say that discoverability is such a big plus in my book I would be happy for Spotify to take over radio in the lives of those less musically interested.

zwkrt 7y ago
Yeah I didn’t think that it is worse or better, only different!
qqn 7y ago
Agreed! I discover many songs through friends who are big on Spotify and it's great. Though my personal approach to discovering new music now is going through the full discographies of artists I love (so neat "seeing" their evolution), and then Shazaming any great song I hear while out and about (and then YouTubing the heck out of that artist to quickly mine for any other potential treasures). So far this has been a wonderful approach, especially since I inevitably end up researching the artists and songs I go through, learning so much more about the background stories like song meanings and the issues of those times. As an aside, and speaking of the nonmusical elements that make a song popular, three other things that do it for me are when I heard that particular song (huge fan of Garth Brooks' "Callin' Baton Rouge" because it was what my host parents played on a fantastic summer I spent on exchange), and the CD cover or other imagery that's associated with the artist (it actually makes me sad to delete humdrum songs from my library if they have fantastic album covers) are two. The third is the subsection of songs that I grew up with, which is different than those from the summer exchange situation above because these are emotionally tied to a time in my life when everything was fresh and exciting; they were the theme not just songs but entire albums running through the background of my youth. Objectively speaking, there's nothing too special about Oasis or Weezer or ATB or Robert Miles or Darude or Aqua but that they found me in a particularly impressionable time in my life. Simon and Garfunkel are in this gathering as well, but it's just sheer luck that my friends were turning hipster and so I was exposed. They were actually what caused me to spring off from the popular tunes of the day into more timeless classics : )

reroute1 7y ago

Isn't this basically what radio, mtv, and every music technology does in a way?

zwkrt 7y ago
Yes, but there was always a human at MTV deciding which videos to play!