Tag Archives: #music industry

Music streaming is so passé…

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Streaming services have changed the way we listen to music, and not just in the way the content is delivered (primarily via mobile devices), or the sheer number of songs available for our listening pleasure (whole catalogues at our fingertips).

These streaming platforms (which have been with us for more then 15 years) have also led to some more negative consequences: the deconstruction of albums into individual tracks (thereby undermining artists’ intention to present their work as a whole, rather than its component parts); shifting the relationship we have with our music collections from “ownership” to “renting”; paying paltry levels of streaming fees compared to royalties on physical sales and downloads; pushing suggested content via opaque algorithms and “recommender engines” rather than allowing listener self-discovery; squashing music into highly compressed audio formats, thus impairing the listening quality; and reducing album cover art work and design into tiny thumbnail images that don’t do justice to the original. (If you can’t appreciate the significance and importance of album art work, this forthcoming documentary may change your mind.)

Of course, streaming is not the only way to consume music – we still have vinyl, CDs and even cassettes in current production. (And let’s not forget radio!) Although optimistic numbers about the vinyl revival of recent years have to be put in the context of the streaming behemoths, there is no doubt that this antique format still has an important role to play, for new releases, the box-set and reissue industry, and the second-hand market.

For myself, I’ve largely given up on Spotify and Apple Music: with the former, I don’t think there is enough transparency on streaming fees (especially those paid to independent artists and for self-released recordings) or how more popular artists and their labels can pay to manipulate the algorithms, plus the “recommendations” are often out of kilter with my listening preferences; with the latter, geo-blocking often means music I am looking for is not available in Australia. (As I am writing, Spotify is playing a track which has been given the wrong title, proving that their curation and editorial quality is not perfect.)

Streaming can also be said to be responsible for a type of content narrowcasting – the more often a song is streamed (especially one that has been sponsored or heavily promoted by a record label) the more often it will appear in suggested playlists. Some recent analysis by Rob Abelow suggests that fewer than 10% of songs on the Spotify billion stream club were released before 2000. This may have something to do with listener demographics (e.g., digital natives), but it also suggests that songs only available as streams (i.e., no download or physical release), or songs heavily marketed by labels wanting to promote particular content to a specific audience, will come to dominate these platforms.

Further evidence of how streaming is skewed towards major artists is a recent post by Damon Krukowski, showing how independent musicians like him are being “encouraged” to be more like megstars such as Ed Sheeran. Never mind the quality of the music, just think about the “pre-saves” and “countdown pages” (tools which are not yet available to every artist on Spotify?).

I’ve been using both Bandcamp and Soundcloud for more than 10 years, to release my own music and to discover new content. I began with Soundcloud, but soon lost my enthusiasm because they kept changing their business model, and they enabled more popular artists to dominate the platform with “premium” services and pay-to-play fees that favour artists and labels with bigger marketing budgets. Whereas Bandcamp appears to be doing a better job of maintaining a more level playing field in regard to artist access, and a more natural way for fans to connect with artists they already know, and to discover new music they may be interested in.

But all of this simply means that streaming has possibly peaked, at least as an emerging format. The industry is facing a number of challenges. Quite apart from ongoing disputes about royalty payments and album integrity, streaming is going to be disrupted by new technologies and business models, thanks to blockchain, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. These startups are going to improve how artists are remunerated for their work, create better engagement between creators and their audiences, and provide for more transparent content discovery and recommendations. Elsewhere, the European Union is considering ways to preserve cultural diversity, promote economic sustainability within the music industry, remove the harmful effects of payola, make better use of content metadata for things like copyright, creativity and attribution, and provide clear labeling on content that has been created using tools like AI.

Just for the record, I’m not a huge fan of content quotas (a possible outcome from the EU proposals), but I would prefer to see better ways to discover new music, via broadcast and online media, which are not dependent on regimented Top 40 playlists, the restrictive formats of ubiquitous TV talent shows, or record label marketing budgets. Australia’s Radio National used to have a great platform for new and alternative music, called Sound Quality, but that came off air nearly 10 years ago, with nothing to replace it. Elsewhere, I tune into BBC Radio 6 Music’s Freak Zone – not all of it is new music, but there is more variety in each 2 hour programme than a week’s listening on most other radio stations.

Next week: More Cold War Nostalgia

 

Musical Idolatry

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As a rebooted version of “Australian Idol” appears on network television, I can’t decide whether programs like this are a result of the current state of the music industry OR are they the cause of the industry’s malaise…?

I’ll admit upfront that I know I’m not the target demographic for these shows (Idol, Voice, Talent…), so I’m not even going to comment on the quality of the musical content or the presentation format.

Before we had recorded music or broadcast radio, the industry relied upon song writers selling sheet music, in the hope their compositions would get performed in theatres and concert halls – and audiences would want to buy copies of the songs to perform at home.

Then, radio largely killed the music hall, and with the advent of the 7″ vinyl record, together they eventually displaced the reliance on sheet music sales. From the early 1960s onwards, we also saw more artists writing, performing and recording their own material, which transformed both music publishing and the record industry itself.

Although record labels still exist as a means to identify, develop and commercialise new talent, only three of the so-called major labels have survived – a process of industry consolidation and M&A activity that began in earnest in the 1980s – ironically, a period now regarded as a “Golden Age” of pop music.

A key legacy of the punk movement of the 1970s was a network of independent music labels, distributors, publishers and retailers – along with a strong DIY ethic of self-released records and independent fanzines, thanks to lower production costs and easier access to manufacturing and distribution.

Now, there is more new music being released than is humanly possible to listen to. It is relatively quick and simple to produce and release your own music – record on a home laptop (even a tablet or smart phone will do), upload the finished mp3 files to user-accessible platforms such as Bandcamp and SoundCloud, and promote yourself on social media. However, without significant marketing dollars to buy an audience, those hoping to become an overnight viral sensation may be disappointed. And even if you do manage to get traction on one of the global streaming platforms, the income from digital plays is a fraction of what artists used to earn from physical sales.

So that’s how the major labels (and some of the larger independents) still manage to dominate the industry: they have the budget to spend on developing new talent, and they have money for marketing campaigns (and possibly to influence those streaming algorithms). Plus, they have access to a huge back catalogue that they can carry on repackaging at a fraction of the original production costs.

It’s also true, however, that the shorter shelf-life of many newer artists means that labels don’t have such an appetite for long-term development plans, where they are willing to nurture a new talent for several years, before expecting a return on their initial investment. Just as with fast fashion, the pop music industry has become hooked on a fast turnover of product, because they know only a fraction of new releases will ever become a hit, and they have to keep feeding the beast with new content.

Which brings me back to programs like Idol. First, it’s one way for the music industry to fast-track their next success. Second, it literally is a popularity contest – the industry gets an idea of what the public likes, so they can pre-determine part of their release schedule. Third, hosting these contests on commercial TV means advertising dollars and sponsorship deals can help defray their A&R and marketing costs (or, at least help them to prioritise where to spend their money).

But let’s not pretend that these singing shows are nothing more than televised karaoke. Performers don’t get to play their own songs, or even play any instruments (as far as I can tell). The program content relies on cover versions – usually songs that are well-known, and therefore already road-tested on the audience. Plus, by choosing to perform a particular song, a contestant may hope to win by association or identification with the successful artist who originally recorded it. But contestants are not free to choose whatever song they like – my understanding is there are only 1,000 (popular) songs to choose from, just like karaoke.

In pretending to discover new talent, in part, the industry is simply hoping to re-release songs in their back catalogue, albeit with a new face on the record. Through the restrictive format of these programs, the industry is not discovering new musicians or finding new song writers and composers, and it’s certainly not forging any new direction in music, because of the reliance upon an existing formula, and dependence on a very specific (and somewhat narrow) strand of pop music.

Next week: Eat The Rich?

 

Digital Perfectionism?

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In stark contrast to my last blog on AI and digital humans, I’ve just been reading Damon Krukowski‘s book, “The New Analog – Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World”, published in 2017. It’s an essential text for anyone interested in the impact of sound compression, noise filtering, loudness and streaming on the music industry (and much more besides).

The are two main theses the author explores:

1. The paradoxical corollary to Moore’s Law on the rate of increase in computing power is Murphy’s Moore’s Law: that in striving for improved performance and perfectionism in all things digital, equally we risk amplifying the limitations inherent in analog technology. in short, the more something improves, the more it must also get worse. (See also my previous blogs on the problem of digital decay, and the beauty of decay music.)

2. In the realm of digital music and other platforms (especially social media), stripping out the noise (to leave only the signal) results in an impoverished listening, cultural and social experience; flatter sound, less dynamics, narrower tonal variation, limited nuance, an absence of context. In the case of streaming music, we lose the physical connection with the original artwork, accompanying sleeve notes, creative credits and even the original year of publication.

Thinking about #1 above, imagine this principle applied to #AI: would the pursuit of “digital perfectionism” mean we lose a large part of what makes analogue homo sapiens more “human”? Would we end up compressing/removing “noise” such as doubt, uncertainty, curiosity, irony, idiosyncrasies, cognitive diversity, quirkiness, humour etc.?

As for #2, like the author, I’m not a total Luddite when it comes to digital music, but I totally understand his frustration (philosophical, phonic and financial) when discussing the way CDs exploit “loudness” (in the technical sense), how .mp3 files compress more data into less space (resulting in a deterioration in overall quality), and the way streaming platforms have eroded artists’ traditional commercial return on their creativity.

The book also discusses the role of social media platforms in extracting value from the content that users contribute, reducing it to homogenised data lakes, selling it to the highest bidder, and compressing all our personal observations, relationships and original ideas (the things that make us nuanced human beings) into a sterilsed drip-feed of “curated” content.

In the narrative on music production, and how “loudness” took hold in the mid-1990s, Krukowski takes specific aim at the dreaded sub-woofer. These speakers now pervade every concert, home entertainment system, desk-top computer and car stereo. They even bring a distorted physical presence into our listening experience:

“Nosebleeds at festivals, trance states at dance clubs, intimidation by car audio…. When everything is louder than everything else, sounds lose context and thus meaning – even the meaning of loud.”

The main issue I have with digital music is that we as listeners have very little control over how we hear it – apart from adjusting the volume. So again, any nuance or variation has been ironed out, right to the point of consumption – we can’t even adjust the stereo balance. I recall that my boom box in the 1980s had separate volume controls for each speaker, and a built-in graphic equalizer. To paraphrase Joy Division, “We’ve Lost Control”.

Next week: I CAN live without my radio…

Vinyl on the brain

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In planning to write a blog on vinyl records, I was responding to recent personal experiences and insights on this topic. Then events somewhat overtook me, as I learned of the death this past weekend of Philip Jeck (more on him later). So this post has taken on a slightly different tone.

Image sourced from Vintage Everyday

The initial trigger for this blog came from the realisation that I’ve been spending more time on Twitter engaging with fellow vinyl enthusiasts – and of course, this interest has been amplified by social media algorithms and their “preferences” and “recommendations”. In my experience, most people who post content about music in general (and vinyl in particular) tend to be much nicer than those who indulge in the didactic venom and unfiltered hate speech that passes for “social commentary” these days. But this just goes to prove that you find your audience (and your confirmation bias?) where you choose to seek them.

Part of this on-line engagement is prompted by a passion for collecting, and a love of sharing. Yes, it could merely relate to showing off one’s vinyl stash, and may reveal fetishistic tendencies – but frankly, there are far worse vices. A lot of the commentary details successful crate-digging, charity shop bargains, and re-discovered hidden gems. In fact, the prospect of finding an over-looked classic, unearthing a valuable rarity, or simply completing a gap in your collection often drives this obsession. So much so, that recently I found myself dreaming of records which I know don’t exist, but in so much detail that part of me thinks these artefacts must be out there somewhere!

Like many music enthusiasts, I was first exposed to vinyl records via my parents’ and then my sisters’ collections. For a time in the late ’60s, my dad used to visit EMI on business, and would sometimes come home on a Friday having picked up a new release or two, most memorably the first few singles on the Beatles’ Apple label. I probably got the collecting bug more than my siblings, and still recall the key albums I bought with my own money: “Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield, “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk, and “A Clockwork Orange” by Wendy Carlos – which probably confirms my personal bias for instrumental, electronic and soundtrack music.

Then, I started playing in bands with mates from school, an interest that was further fueled by the arrival of punk rock, and the realisation that there was more to music than the Top 40 and old hippies singing into their patchouli-drenched afghan overcoats. One group I was in, Greenfield Leisure, received an airing on John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 programme (the Holy Grail for aspiring musicians at the time), but mostly these bands existed on home-made demo tapes, and were only ever heard (and rarely appreciated…) by our long-suffering families. Later, I worked in a chain of infamous second-hand record stores in London, which, if nothing else, revealed some of the weirder ends of the vinyl-collecting public. It also helped expand my musical knowledge, but at the cost of a fair chunk of my paltry shop wages.

Vinyl is not necessarily the most convenient format of music – it’s not as portable as digital, and not as robust as CD. Records get scratched, they warp, the grooves fill up with dust, and the sleeves get battered and torn. So, despite advances in technology, and the huge market for digital music and streaming services, why have vinyl records endured?

The continued and renewed interest in music on vinyl cannot be explained by a single factor – this phenomenon is as multi-faceted as the genres of music people listen to.

First, whether or not driven by events like Record Store Day, limited edition releases, box set retrospectives or physical copies being shipped with download coupons, vinyl sales are steadily on the up. But as a proportion of how people listen to music each week, purchased music (physical and download formats) comprises less than 10%, while streaming formats account for two-thirds of our listening.

Second, the tactile nature of vinyl records, plus the opportunity they present for creativity in their use of artwork, design and packaging, can generate a more engaging and long-lasting experience. As someone said recently on Twitter, you probably don’t remember the first music you downloaded or streamed, but it’s very likely you remember the first record you bought.

Third, quite apart from the vast amount of artist and label back catalogue being reissued on vinyl, more and more new and contemporary music is being released on vinyl as well as digital – sometimes, there’s not even a CD edition.

Fourth, swathes of back-catalogue can only be accessed via original vinyl editions, having never been re-issued during the hey-day of CDs in the 1990s and early 2000s. In fact, even where current and past releases have been released for streaming and/or download, the vagaries of geo-blocking can mean that this digital content is not available in all territories.

Finally, the economics of streaming (and to a lesser extent, downloads) have revealed that artists receive just a tiny proportion of the subscription revenue generated by Spotify, Apple and others, which can make vinyl purchases more attractive to music fans. This dynamic has also made direct-to-buyer platforms like Bandcamp more appealing to artists and fans alike.

Back to Philip Jeck, a sound artist who transformed piles of dusty old records into a musical experience. Using techniques he gleaned from watching hip-hop DJs and post-modern turntablists, he curated (rather than composed) sound collages built up from layers of seemingly forgotten and anonymous recordings, turning them into live art. I was fortunate enough to see him perform twice. The first was in 1993, when he presented his magnum opus “Vinyl Requiem” at the Union Chapel in North London. The second was in 2008, for a much more intimate solo performance at The Toff in Town, Melbourne. In both cases, the use of streaming could not have resulted in such a strong creative process or delivered such immersive listening.

Next week: Music with literary leanings