Spotify controversy continues, Joe B weighs in

Let there be songs to fill the air....

 

The thing is, so-called experts like radio DJs, music journalists and other "gatekeepers" still exist. In fact, they have more outlets for their opinions and influence via music blogs, social media and especially now, podcasts and satellite radio. All these expert outlets exist simultaneously with streaming services and youtube, so ultimately everyone gets to decide and has more choice as to how they discover and experience music. If people want to still only listen to the radio or what a certain set of rock journalists recommend or what only certain major labels release, they can easily do that. No one is stopping them.

 

This seems to me a very well reasoned perspective. It demolishes the argument that everything should be streamed via subscription service. I’ve never been of a mindset that all streaming is bad. In fact, where films and video entertainment is concerned it’s almost essential. There is a point where one’s collection becomes an issue of space as well as diminishing return. Those programs & movies that only get viewed once are best watched on Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc.

OTOH, concerts ...especially classic rock concerts from the 60’s & 70’s that I want to rewatch... are usually best acquired in some fashion as physical media (DVD, BD or UHD). This is also the case for some foreign produced series and entertainers (such as British comedian Bill Bailey) whose repertoire may not be widely available for view in the States.

Music, for me, is very eclectic and not necessarily as diverse as others. That’s my choice. I like classic rock, jazz and classical predominantly. I’m not nearly as interested in new music as older because I haven’t heard everything of interest to me that was done ages ago. That doesn’t mean I turn away from new music, but it is a tougher sell.

My biggest beef is with those streaming advocates who are determined to knock collectors as fringe folks. As long as the interest in collecting is there, physical media isn’t going away. Streaming can be a nice addition to the mix that folks will either take or leave, ...OR it can be the playpen agenda issue for overzealous advocates who throw monkey poop at everyone who doesn’t see subscription platforms as a panacea.


Cat

 

It's not "scammers". They aren't succeeding. I have yet to be exposed to some new band no one has ever heard of getting top billing on Apple Music in my recommendations or my favorite stations/playlists and I'm not aware of The Peoria Holiday Inn's own Freddy And The Firebirds being played alongside Maroon 5 and disrupting the engines either. There are billions of streams. No scammer can keep up with the big boys.

As far as compensation, you should have figured out already that Streaming services compensate the Labels fairly. The Labels are screwing over the artists and you no-name performers are not going to win this lazy and entitled "compensate me so I don't have to tour anymore" battle if you don't go after the right enemy.

 

That describes me, so I can help with this. It's broken down into two parts:

Part 1 - Trusting Technology & Leaving Physical Behind: I'm not "renting" anything. I'm using streaming instead of a CD player to achieve the same endgame. I don't believe for a minute that streaming is ever going away so I have no apprehension about the July 2017 cut-over date when I stopped paying for iTunes downloads and started my streaming experience on Apple Music. And if something nuclear ever happens and Apple Music shuts down I have extreme confidence that Apple will do what they've done in the past and just let us keep the media we have downloaded prior to the cutoff. Again, I never see this happening, but this doomsday theory keeps coming up so I'm addressing it.

Part 2 - Streaming Is A Much Better Experience - Section A - New Music Discovery: This is where trepidation and past allegiances to physical goes out the window. Once you really get into it and really work your streaming service for a few months, the output is just mind-blowing. The more you tell your streaming service the more it 'knows' you and starts presenting you with content that you love. And not just old stuff- the new music it sends your way you fall in love with immediately as well, could be a song from 1988 that Apple Music knows you've never played, could be a brand new song from a brand new artists that just got released yesterday. When these songs are sprinkled in with your favorites the streaming service really shines, feels fresh and familiar at the same time. I can't tell you how much new music I'm discovering every week and most of it is from the past, artists or genre's I just wasn't into back then.

Part 2 - Streaming Is A Much Better Experience - Section B - Your Existing Library: This is the most important aspect and the one that often gets sweept under the rug. Without realizing it, your 50 year old hand-curated library is overwhelming and you don't spend enough time exploring it and it's too hard to get to a good mix of songs. By uploading the whole thing into your streaming service, it's just so much more convenient to get to. If I'm being honest, the new music discovery is okay but the way that I can access my 20,000 songs library of albums, boots, live shows, rarities, and all the basic stuff is just fantastic. And it's not just because I can use my voice to pull up an obscure U2 live show without fumbling through milk crates; it's because all those songs get presented back to me in a Mood Playlist ("play songs for a rainy evening") or an Artist Playlist ("play deep cuts from U2") or a Song Playlist ("make me a playlist based on the song The Fly by U2").

Streaming is not about "renting". It's about "experiencing".

 

"Experts"? When in 1988 an FM radio station Music Director was making the decisions you weren't getting "expertise". You were getting the opinion of one individual with his own narrow scope and narrow taste level. Influenced by things like labels and their connections to his boss, and free tickets to concerts for his brother, and who might be a good landing spot in his career.

Streaming is actual expertise. Because nothing can be more expert than the aggregated opinions of millions of people. If you're a Steely Dan fan you're going to be exposed to a lot of Boz Scaggs because the millions of subscribers and billions of plays tell your streaming service to do so. If you don't like Boz Scaggs, just downvote a song and it won't play again. If you like Boz Scaggs, upvote a few tracks and it'll serve more, and then it'll move on to Rickie Lee Jones. Over time the upvoting and downvoting along with the time spent listening/requesting certain artists/genres tailor the experience for each individual, has far less to do with group dynamics.

 

You can stop with this fallacy now, thanks.

I can't speak for Spotify, but if Apple Music ever shut its doors Apple would 100% allow its subscribers to download the music in their playlists and their 'likes' at the cutoff at no extra charge. They've done this before. Apple appreciates my business and the $20,000 worth of electronics I've purchased from them over the years and they're not going to allow $200 worth of music to damage that relationship.

As for Spotify and Tidal that have no such revenue stream, so what? If their subscribers loved a few albums that much they'd just go back to iTunes and download them just like the good old days.

What you and your cronies don't understand is that no one collects streams. We're not building libraries anymore. They're as dead as the album and the compact disc.

 

This.

To an audiophile raised in 1977, a streaming service should be thought of as an accessory, a Discwasher for the car or the kitchen. It's not binary. It's not one or the other. Listen to your old stuff in the old way, listen to your old stuff in the new way, it's still the same music. If I want to hear Benny And The Jets right now, it can be MP3, it can be CD, it can be streamed, it's just another option and one based mostly on convenience.

 

No one needs to be determined to label collectors of compact discs as "fringe". You just are. I didn't knock my grandmother for using a black and white TV in 1999, I didn't knock my mother for using a flip phone in 2018, and I'm not going to knock those who buy compact discs in 2019. But that doesn't mean you're mainstream. It means you're outliers. You've made yourselves this way by not accepting the latest technology and holding onto the old one, mostly out of bizarre unsubstantiated paranoia.

Compact discs are expensive to produce in limited numbers and those who buy them are on a budget. They'll be completely gone in 5 years.

 

Lo and behold! Once again you descend from the mount empty handed.


Cat

 

This is where you lose me. Anybody who loves music is constantly building their music library or collection or whatever you want to call it. It's a lifelong project that never really ends. Your statement makes zero sense.
​

 

Well, this presupposes that the "aggregated opinions of millions of people" and artistic quality are one and the same. My life experiences have told me that this simply isn't true. I mean, what movie lover uses the weekly box office rankings as their guide for what to go see? The masses have average/mediocre taste, generally speaking. I would much rather have the aggregated opinions of film critics or music critics and writers guide me with respect to what to watch or listen to, not the nameless faceless masses.

 

Streaming doesn't rule out experts. In fact it makes it easier to check out what those experts suggest. A friend called from LA today and suggested that I check out Cate Le Bon. Her music is definitely available on Google Play Music and I've already downloaded her albums onto my phone so I can listen to it without incurring any costs for bandwidth. She'll get paid for every one of those streams. If I liked it enough I'll purchase it.

Furthermore didn't anybody notice the link that I provided to a whole bunch of carefully assembled Spotify playlists made by the folks at the Numero Group. Incredibly deep tracks that experts in each of these different genres carefully assembled?

 

What about the poor guy who sticks his hand into the pile of elephant poop?

 

Thanks. This is useful information that helps me understand how a lifelong music lover, who once prowled the aisles of record stores in every city across America and Europe with me, could become a convert to streaming. It's a transformation that I've struggled to accept and has actually darkened our friendship.

You lose me at "trusting technology", however, as I know too much about history to ever do that. I think, too, that personality plays a role in this. I'm a natural archivist - I minored in history in college and I have a fetish about music history and having my digital music collection represent the original release formats, artwork, songwriters, album/single release dates, etc. For me, probably one-third to one-half of the enjoyment I get from music stems from this data management and collection process and the knowledge that comes with it, which enriches my experience of the music itself. It's the intellectual process of archiving that I relish, not necessarily the physical accumulation of stuff (which I've actually been culling down for a few years now and will continue to do). Other people have probably never cared about this aspect and only amassed large physical/digital music collections out of a pure desire to hear the music. Those are the people that are probably more predisposed to embrace streaming as a replacement for owning music. For me, because streaming doesn't really allow me to be my own archivist and manipulator of the music files, it simply won't work. I'd have the music, but at a lesser sound quality and without any of the satisfaction/enjoyment I get out of the historical side of the equation.

Also, my digital music library (of which my physical music collection is a subset) has already been assembled over the years, so I'm not faced with the daunting challenge of ripping 10,000 albums at once. It's just as easy for me to find what I want to hear and to assemble playlists as it is for you to via a streaming service. If I were starting from scratch today, it wouldn't be - I'll grant you that. But that hurdle has already been cleared for me. I'm not a physical-media only guy; I consider my digital music library to be my complete collection, with the physical media portion a subset that is also represented in the digital realm. Music I want in the best sound quality and with complete artwork, liner notes, etc. is in my physical collection, to be enjoyed on my excellent (if not quite audiophile grade) home stereo/surround system. Everything else is digital only, or eventually will be once I complete culling my CD collection and selling off the ones I don't need to have in a physical format.

I may not be "physical-only", but I absolutely am and will always remain "OWNERSHIP-only" with respect to music.

 

It makes a lot of sense if you understood streaming a bit better. I don't listen to favorite Artists anymore. That was a necessary physical convention. With streaming, I listen to favorite Moods or favorite Genres. The Moods and Genres have replaced the Artist as the focal point of my collection, therefore I don't need to collect anything. To understand this, you need to understand the technology:

Used to be I would wake up on a Sunday, in a good mood, sun is out, and I'd want to listen to Maroon 5. So I would it a few buttons and hear an hour of Maroon 5 songs. Now I listen to a custom channel that I created called "Sunday Morning" which is me telling Apple Music to "play songs that sound like the song Sunday Morning by Maroon 5". Just uttering that sentence to Siri on my HomePod speaker one time a year ago created a Mood Channel of songs that have that light, jazzy, piano-based, and uptempo feel, perfect for an optimistic mood.

When I listen to that Sunday Morning Channel that I created, about 20% of the songs are Maroon 5 and 50% are from other artists in my preexisting library, leaving 30% as new songs I'd never owned or heard on the platform. When I hear a song I don't like, I speak "I don't like this song" and it is noted and skipped. When I hear a song I do like, I speak "I like this song" and it is noted. As the weeks go by, Apple Music gets smarter and as I sit here a year later, I can say "play my Sunday Morning channel" and on will come hours of songs without a single dud among them, I can say "play my Summer Beach Channel" and let my HomePod run by the pool for 8 straight hours, never a dud. I can say "play my New Wave Channel" and on comes the Duran Duran and Joe Jackson I loved so much back in my college days along with songs I didn't remember I really liked.

So, instead of "collecting albums from my favorite artists" I now put my attention to "creating channels based on my favorite moods". In the example above, I'm still getting my fill of Maroon 5 songs, but the hour is augmented with more variety and a sprinkle of newness without the redundancy. To get there, it's a lot of work, a lot of thought goes into it, I pay a lot of attention to it. By creating a series of 30 go-to channels like this, I can just bounce between them and it covers all my music needs. There is an element of randomness that is critical to the experience. It's predictable but yet unpredictable. Every song that comes on is great, but not every song is one I've heard before.

Let me know if that makes sense. With streaming I'm still collecting, I'm still curating, but it's not about a particular artist and the play of predictable songs. It's about the mood I'm in and the wonderful surprise of each song that comes on and pleases me and those I am with.

 

It's called a "compilation". Nothing new here.

 

No. A "compilation" is static. Moods and Genres on a streaming service are ever-changing.

My Sunday Morning Channel is different every time I listen to it, it's not one "playlist" of 50 songs that repeats every time I call it up like in the old iTunes days. I've gone a full year without hearing the song "Sunday Morning" which inspired the thought I had to create the channel and led to the platform modeling it and perfecting it as the months go by.

Those that think "streaming is just another way to listen to music on the internet" don't understand it at all. It's the most powerful tool ever created in the history of recorded music. That's the reason its so popular. Cuts through the crap, plays just the good stuff, each listener is treated as an individual with control over a random and surprising listening experience. The more you use it, the smarter it gets. No more album downloads, playlist building, and library maintaining. It does all the work for you.

 

Thanks. This makes sense. I enjoy the process of manually creating iTunes (or, soon, "Music") playlists, either for individual artists, groups of artists, or genres and moods. I structure them in a specific way so that they are designed to be heard as I set them up rather than in a "shuffle" mode. I probably have a hundred of these already and am creating more of them all the time. Of course, my playlists are static (unless I edit them) and only include music that is in my iTunes library (and has thus been properly tagged to my rather exacting standards). I'm not going to be hearing anything I don't already own. And that's fine with me; there's plenty in there for me to rediscover. As I mentioned earlier, I have a process for discovering and evaluating new-to-me music and, if I think I'm going to like it, adding it to my collection and this process works for me. It's not that much about quantity of new music to me, but sifting for the stuff I really want to add to my library. I mean, I already have 110,000 songs, so I don't really NEED a lot more. It's more about finding the new stuff that's really going to move me.

 

most groups big and small still offer a physical product if you still want one.

 

If there’s flowing water nearby that’s where I’d be an advocate for streaming.


Cat

 

...Really?!

Well, that didn’t take long!

Wow! An assertion followed by two caveats ...and a declaration based on wishful thinking.

I’m losing faith in your claims (Did streaming put out that burning bush too?).


Car

 

Sad, but SO true...