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Lots of friends and my very own wife are musicians, their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly tha

by lloeki 6y ago

Lots of friends and my very own wife are musicians, their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. There’s a whole market of tool-assisted beat and melody makers that build and curate then offer these for sell for artists to buy. The whole process is heavily industrialised, tools allow the maker to produce dozens of such bricks a day, basically bruteforcing a whole space, but everything resembles everything else, diluted to no end, channeling the money stream and bleeding the “old way” creators to death. Albums have been dying for a while already, even EPs are barely living corpses in this attention grabbing landscape. Even for singles there’s just no way to mature ideas and create truly creative content in an amount of time that allows to keep up pace and make money through these platforms. So they stay on the local scene, which is being obliterated by COVID.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. I think this idea is misguided. The more music you produce, the more good music you produce. Trying to keep average quality up by restricting production is counterproductive in two separate ways; (1) it ends up causing you to produce lower-quality output than otherwise, and (2) nobody cares that you released some bad songs if you also released some good songs. I read a fun paper documenting this very effect (the first one) in a college pottery class. One class was told the grading procedure would be as follows: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will evaluate your pots for quality, and you will receive a grade accordingly. A second class was told they'd be graded like so: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will never look at your pots. They will be smashed into tiny shards, and your shards will be weighed. Your grade will be based on the weight of your accumulated pots after they are destroyed. More is better. In fact, the pots in group two were evaluated for quality just like group one. Students in group two produced more pots. They also produced better pots.
- eecc 6y ago
  The analogy is mildly inconsistent with what the OP was complaining about. The complaint is about the market being submerged with low quality knock-offs and automatically made products. The pottery story doesn’t apply because there’s no artistic craft learning curve involved in mindlessly running the tools. Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases. So what? Where did I make that assumption? I'm assuming some combination of these two factors: 1. If you have three public releases, you probably put in more work overall than if you had only two public releases. 2. There are diminishing returns to polishing a song, such that the same amount of work is more productive spent on two songs than it is spent on a single song.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      > If you have three public releases, you probably put in more work overall than if you had only two public releases. Or maybe you put in less work into each release?
- bambax 6y ago
  This is an often repeated cliché that one can find again and again in self-help books and blogs. There is no evidence that it is based on a true story, or that it reflects reality in any way. There are many authors who produce one or two books a year, and those books are complete garbage. Some of the the best authors in history just wrote a few masterpieces. Even with artists that were capable of a great output, it's not obvious that the quality of their art improves with time, beyond their formative years.
  - Closi 6y ago
    I agree that there is no evidence the story is true, but your assertion that there is no evidence that practice or experience makes someone better at a task is a bit much.

by lloeki 6y ago

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. I think this idea is misguided. The more music you produce, the more good music you produce. Trying to keep average quality up by restricting production is counterproductive in two separate ways; (1) it ends up causing you to produce lower-quality output than otherwise, and (2) nobody cares that you released some bad songs if you also released some good songs. I read a fun paper documenting this very effect (the first one) in a college pottery class. One class was told the grading procedure would be as follows: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will evaluate your pots for quality, and you will receive a grade accordingly. A second class was told they'd be graded like so: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will never look at your pots. They will be smashed into tiny shards, and your shards will be weighed. Your grade will be based on the weight of your accumulated pots after they are destroyed. More is better. In fact, the pots in group two were evaluated for quality just like group one. Students in group two produced more pots. They also produced better pots.

eecc 6y ago
The analogy is mildly inconsistent with what the OP was complaining about. The complaint is about the market being submerged with low quality knock-offs and automatically made products. The pottery story doesn’t apply because there’s no artistic craft learning curve involved in mindlessly running the tools. Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases. So what? Where did I make that assumption? I'm assuming some combination of these two factors: 1. If you have three public releases, you probably put in more work overall than if you had only two public releases. 2. There are diminishing returns to polishing a song, such that the same amount of work is more productive spent on two songs than it is spent on a single song.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    > If you have three public releases, you probably put in more work overall than if you had only two public releases. Or maybe you put in less work into each release?
bambax 6y ago
This is an often repeated cliché that one can find again and again in self-help books and blogs. There is no evidence that it is based on a true story, or that it reflects reality in any way. There are many authors who produce one or two books a year, and those books are complete garbage. Some of the the best authors in history just wrote a few masterpieces. Even with artists that were capable of a great output, it's not obvious that the quality of their art improves with time, beyond their formative years.
- Closi 6y ago
  I agree that there is no evidence the story is true, but your assertion that there is no evidence that practice or experience makes someone better at a task is a bit much.