Spotify Is An Enemy of Sustainable Arts

Since 99% of all albums ever created are 75% filler, I find that listening to just the good stuff is one of the major wins of a streaming service.

"Billy Joel Essentials" brings up his 30 top hits.
"Billy Joel Next Level" brings up his 30 best LP cuts.
"Billy Joel Deep Cuts" brings up his 30 second-best LP cuts.

By bouncing between these 3 playlists, I can hear the 90 most interesting Billy Joel songs and avoid the 200 dogs. Those of us who pay for streaming do so to:

1. Avoid commercials.
2. Avoid the chore of editing libraries of LP's.
3. Hear only the good stuff without doing any work to get there.

And though its rare, also:

4. Hear new music from new artists that leave a lasting impression and become a welcome addition to our libraries.

 

I admit that saw the thread and jumped to the end to see where the discussion is at - so haven't read the whole thing. That said I would like to point out:

Argument from authority - Wikipedia

Even though he is Eno and I do respect the heck out of him - he is not automatically right. So no need to pin it, it is just an opinion.

I like that fact that the artists gets more money from a single of my LP buys than from thousands of streams. Will continue to do so.

Friends, if you support artists, buy their records (preferably) and/or physical media. Making a living out of live performance is only possible above a certain level. Support them by indicating with your money that their art is worth being compensated for. Your Spotify money (if you actually have the premium) benefits the record company first and Spotify second.


Well - now to read the whole thread - hopefully that made sense.

v

 

Great post, and I'm excited that you took the time to learn about new technologies.

I, like you, tried Apple Music as a plaything. Free trial, why not. And it revolutionized the way I listen to music. Gone are the days of downloading albums, picking off the good songs, putting them on playlists. Gone are the days of syncing my iPod or iPhone in multiple vehicles and audio systems.

And you'll find that it's not the streaming service that is the breakthru- it's the streaming speaker. I bought a HomePod to keep in my upstairs bathroom and simply say "Hey Siri, play some Joe Jackson" and on comes "Breaking Us In Two" followed by hours of his other works. When we go away for summer vacation, I pack the HomePod and bring it to our beach house and simply say "Hey Siri, play some summer beach songs" or "play some 60's Motown" or "play some reading music" and there we go, it will run all day, 16 hours of fun in the sun for my beach house guests, all the songs very cool and different and interesting, and I don't need to do any work, don't need to curate playlists, don't need to be judged for my taste in music. It's liberating.

 

Nah. If he’s saying, as he appears to be, that recorded music has no utility or value, why do a few billion people listen to it?

Seems a bit like an old guy wanting to sound more perceptive than the rest of his peers.

 

Well, there is a reason why many governments lost elections when prices went up, but hardly any example of electoral failure after bringing the prices down thanks to ravaging other country and taking over its resources.

As one British minister commented imposing disastrous peanut plantations in the post-war colonial Africa: "on your success depends, more than on any other single factor, whether the harassed housewives of Britain get more margarine, cooking fat and soap, in the reasonably near future."

 

This isn't true at all. Your boss uses it that way but that's by choice. If he wishes to listen to albums, he could do so. In full.

 

I refuse to adapt and will have no reason to ever regret that decision. There’s a lot to be said for maintaining one’s standards and ideals in a world that becomes less livable on a seemingly daily basis.

 

It's actually incredible this still needs to be pointed out at all.

 

If I had kids I would refuse to allow them to play video games. Recorded music is meant to be listened to without any other sensory input. It’s for the ears, not the eyes.

Plus, kids need to play outside on their own, not sit indoors in front of a TV screen.

 

That's a good point.

Even better, what if I have a month where I don't use my subscription at all? Maybe they can put that into an artist retirement fund.

And do I get bonus points for the charity work I just did towards the industry? Can I write it off as a tax donation?

 

Post of the day.

 

MODERN DAD!

 

Okay.

 

I disagree. Streaming services have not stopped me from creating playlists and researching artists & albums. Good for you that you have your HomePod play random radio playlists all day, but the rest of us really do care about songs in particular.

 

Your boss is a musical troglodyte.

 

I agree. Streaming services are competing with free (via theft, which drove the market value to $0). Spotify is simply charging for the convenience of getting everything for free from one place. One-stop shop-lifting, if you will, LOL!

 

Leaving aside that my parents were making the same 'for my own good' arguments for my own video gaming 35+ yers ago...

Does the disapproval of the use recorded music in video games extend to films or another other medium that uses recorded music with a visual component? Or are video games a special case of their own? How about music videos? Or films such as A Hard Day's Night or Alan Parker's The Wall?

Are the recordings of Nobuo Uetmatsu's scores for the Final Fantasy games lesser for having been composed to support a video game narrative, as opposed to Joe Hisaishi (Studio Ghibli) or John Williams (Star Wars etc) scores being composed a to support cinematic narratives?

I'm not being deliberately argumentative, but I'm sure my son is being exposed to music that will stick with him through the video games he plays in the same was that seeing Star Wars and wanting the soundtrack album was my gateway to classical as a child in the late 70s.

I always saw label support for Spotify's ad-supported/free to the end user tier as a direct reaction to the heavy use of torreting in the early to mid 00's. I'm sure everyone concerned would prefer all streaming service customers to be paying customers, but at the time the biggest concern was getting people to abandon free for all copying of music and the blunt instrument of sueing people wasn't working quite as expected.

 

I use youtube to check out new/new to me music, concerts, etc. I wouldn't pay to stream music or tv for that matter.

 

Actually I don't think I said that cognitive dissonance itself is psychological dysfunction. I certainly don't think what is described as cognitive dissonance is that. So I am afraid you may well need to investigate the concept further.

I also think the parts of my previous posts that you quoted are all fair observations.

Where I think you lost the train of the argument is in how cognitive dissonance can LEAD TO illogical understandings and views. For example if the response to being faced with a new understanding that is at variance with one's initial understanding is to ignore it or discount it BECAUSE and only because it so contradicts that original understanding, then that is illogical. But I would not say that making illogical choices is in and of itself psychological dysfunction in the normal sense of the term. Neither is it a balanced psychological condition, but I don't need to say it is literally dysfunctional.

As witness those here who are defending Spotify by discounting how it undercompensates musicians or the benefits of other ways to listen to music, those people seem quite capable of being functional enough to post here and make arguments, even if they are specious, self-serving and essentially immoral. But dysfunctional? Even I don't think that.

 

We are not only consumers. Whether you should feel like a criminal is a red herring. No one said that. Uncomfortable about using the service and sympathetic to those who hope and want there to be some societal approach that redresses the balance between musicians and the streaming services would be quite sufficient.

 

This kind of post seems like not much more than form of trolling. I am not sure it is anything more than that.

 

Surely you are not saying that all behavior that is legal at a given time is equally moral?

Cheating and stealing are of course strong words. Rather unsubtle, and not particularly nuanced. But that doesn't mean they are without merit in describing what is going on.

 

If this was a legal trial, this kind of post would be an excellent exhibit in my cognitive dissonance analysis.

A Spotify proponent starts out enjoying the company's product. It is pointed out that a net effect of their market presence, and the kind of service they provide, is undermining a different way to listen to music. The response of the Spotify proponent is to disparage the value of that which such net effect diminishes.

I doubt (although concede it is possible) that the Spotify proponent here who so nicely provided this example began, before using Spotify, with such a dismissive and disparaging attitude to the album format. Again I could be wrong. But call me crazy, I think there is a reasonable chance it came afterward.

 

It's an interesting avenue for discussion, and not to veer too far off of the topic of this thread, for me, it comes down to the creative intent of the recording artist. If the song or music piece was written specifically for a film or TV show, then I think the visual component adds to the musical experience (and vice versa) and, ideally, the two should be heard and seen together.

If the song or music piece was composed and recorded apart from the film or TV show, but was subsequently used in the film or TV show, I would prefer that people discover and at least first hear the music on its own. What I often find is that people who come to older songs or music via TV shows or movies always associate the song with the scene in the movie/TV show that it accompanies. A classic (and sad to me) example is Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" - a stunning song in its own right that most people I've encountered seem to associate with a Cameron Crowe movie. They are substituting another person's creative vision/storyline (Crowe's) for the original recording artist's creative vision (Gabriel's), and that just seems wrong in my view. I suppose they can't help when or where they first heard the song, but I can't help but think that their experience of the song has been lesser than mine because they came to it via another person's work and the song will always be in service to that narrative in their minds.

Although I'm sure that a few do exist, I can't think offhand of any situation in which the beauty, meaning, or power of a song I've come to know on it's own as a recording has been enhanced through its use in a dramatic work of visual art such as a film or TV show (or video game, but I have very limited experience in that realm). I won't even go into the use of songs in advertisements, which I deplore. I can, however, think of plenty of cases where such later usage has cheapened or demeaned the original song in terms of my perception of it. Perhaps this is simply because I consider music to be by far the greatest and most powerful artistic medium (even beyond painting) because it has a way of firing the listener's imagination due to the absence of visual input (excepting album cover art), while narrative visual art such as TVs or films, for the most part (and there are notable exceptions), force a viewer to accept the creator's vision, largely without question.

Films that are specifically written to the music (such as The Wall or A Hard Day's Night) and conceptual music videos occupy an interesting middle ground. Presumably, the films and videos reflect the recording artist's intentions for the music, but they also can't help but force people to think of specific visuals when they hear the songs. Oftentimes in the case of videos, musicians bring in outside directors with strong creative visions of their own to be applied to the song. I'm not sure, however, that the end effect is much different from what I described above regarding films and TV shows that use previously recorded music.

To sum up: music uber alles

 

That's right, you didn't.

I didn't think you did. The phrase "psychological dysfunction" is the term that _I_ am saying fits your description of how streaming most converts are behaving. Please re-read the quote below from my previous post, which should make this clear.