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Streaming is secretly fixing your mainstream taste in garbage music
The world's most-streamed artists are a parade of major-label household names: Ariana Grande, Post Malone, Billie Eilish. But hidden below the top rankings, independent artists and labels are taking over a greater share of the music channeling into your headphones.
Why? Music-streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora -- and the quirks of how they funnel music you may never have heard otherwise -- are helping fuel an indie golden age just below the surface.
"If there's one thing that streaming has done for sure, it's created a new independent music industry," said Jorge Brea, founder and CEO of Symphonic Distribution, an independent music company in Tampa, Florida, that's distributed music by Waka Flocka Flame and Deadmau5 in his early days.
The meteoric popularity of streaming has lifted fortunes across the recording industry. But streaming also has been quietly shoring up the indie sector that exists outside the big three major labels. By nudging people to listen to a wider variety of artists, the services are helping more listeners stumble on music outside the mainstream. And by reconceptualizing how we pay for music, the services are helping indie artists and labels bask in streaming's glow.
[...] Since the advent of recordings, fans have paid upfront for tunes by picking and choosing specific titles, whether it was a record, CD or digital download on iTunes. In the streaming age, when you rent an all-access pass to an unfathomably deep catalog of virtually all the world's music, money is meted out to artists and music companies in a different way.
Services like Spotify and Apple Music pool together all the money they bring in every month, and artists are paid out in proportion to how much their music is streamed. That means indie artists don't need to overcome the hurdle of getting your attention before they can convince you to open your wallet. You're helping secure their income just by sampling their work.
"Streaming, slowly but surely, is creating a commercial ecosystem in which more artists are able to make a living — and forcing the biggest-earning megastars on the planet to share a chunk of their annual wealth," the Rolling Stone study said.
But that's not to suggest indie artists' livelihoods are a cake walk. In the streaming age, Saban said, middle-class artists have to work harder juggling their income from publishing, streaming, physical sales and touring -- in an environment where fans expect new material on a regular basis.
"Once upon a time, if you had good physical [CD and record] sales, you could also tour and be a happy, middle-class career artist," she said. But in the lives of midtier indie artists today, "They're all just hanging on with their fingernails to the best of their ability and cobbling together a living."
Even if it's a struggle, indie musicians have more of a shot than ever to break out.
"It was very, very difficult to be an independent label," Brea said. "But now independents are primarily going to be the industry as it continues to grow."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 05 2019, @07:47PM (10 children)
it was that big music labels have shit taste in music. Mostly I think they were just after bands that were generic enough to push, and talentless enough to stay the labels bitch.
99% of what I listen too these days I wouldn't have ever even heard if it wasn't for the Internet. Which is a good enough reason by itself to regard the MPAA and the RIAA and any politician who takes money from them, with utter fucking contempt.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 05 2019, @07:50PM (5 children)
Yes, there's plenty of good (and mediocre) music being made outside of the control of labels and the "pop" genre. No need to limit yourself to a selection of classic rock songs, unless that's what you want to listen to, which is also fine.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 05 2019, @08:24PM (2 children)
It's good, for artists, but maybe bad for the overall cohesion of society that we're re-fragmenting our musical world.
It's not like there ever was a time where _everyone_ absolutely loved the same kind of music, but, like a B.S. degree from a major University would ensure that you at least had some covered some common academic ground with every other B.S. degree holder from every other major University, children of the '80s (self included, though I'm more late-70s influenced) all at least knew what Thriller, Madonna, Purple Rain, Motley Crue, and Van Halen were...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 05 2019, @08:35PM (1 child)
Despite the plummeting cost of entry (one person with a laptop and some peripherals can replace a music studio), an explosion of content, and free ways to upload and promote music, a lot of the money and attention goes to a small handful of artists. This is true even with services like Spotify and Apple Music that could expose you to lesser known musicians, but are paid to push certain artists.
Spotify users push back at the over-the-top Drake promotion [techcrunch.com]
Spotify users demand refunds over Drake promotion [bbc.com]
A lot of people know about Kanye West, Drake, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, etc. Geriatric types might not know... or pretend not to know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=filcUwJR-sU [youtube.com]
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 05 2019, @08:56PM
Um... I recognize about half those names, could place most of them together with their more popular music - maybe...
Still, promotion is virtually everything in this world, particularly in Art, but even in medicine and science. I spent 12 years at a company that literally made the better mousetrap, but the CEO didn't want to invest in sales and marketing, so only a tiny tiny portion of the world beat a path to our door. I mean, the guy was pathological - we were in a hard spot financially (as we often were) and I suggested that somebody take a few days to go back through our 25+ years of customer files and just try calling these people to see if they had heard about our new, updated, low cost, much smaller product that could replace or augment the old device they bought from us all those years ago... he agreed when I said it, then 2 hours later he changed his mind, he wanted sales but didn't want to invest _any_ effort in selling. I think it was a kind of point of pride, and also a "well, if we had tried that we would have done better" thing for him.
Without promotion, artists (of all kinds, including street cons) starve. You've got to get in people's faces, talk up the product, whether that's feet on the street, banner ads via Google, Superbowl spots, direct mail, "educational seminars", or whatever - it all costs time and effort, and when you use other people's time and effort to assist you that costs money.
Music promotion is a sort of sick puppy corner case, where you can pour enough promotion behind an "artist" and make virtually any act a #1 hit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Troll) by Gaaark on Friday July 05 2019, @09:30PM (1 child)
and one of the reasons i appreciate people like Trent Reznor (NIN) is because he writes, sings and plays almost all of the instruments on almost everyone of his songs (studio albums).
Today, they can barely sing but couldn't write or play worth a damn, but HEY! I'M FAMOOOS!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday July 07 2019, @01:51AM
Okay: someone's a Bieber fan, so now I'm a troll!
Look at me...I'm a troll! At least I have good taste in music, guy. I pity YOU!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday July 05 2019, @08:14PM (3 children)
> big music labels have shit taste in music.
And Hollywood blockbusters are shit movies. And fast food chains produce usually shit food... The list goes on.
It turns out that there is much profit to be generated in outputting shit, because so many people buy...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 05 2019, @09:00PM (1 child)
Cheap and familiar beats out strange expensive quality, at least in the mass market.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:32PM
"at least in the mass market."
Back then, there wasn't anything but mass market for most people.
Unless you lived in a major urban center where you could go to shows regularly for a few bucks or raid the back record racks at indie record shops, the radio and the corporate record shops were the only exposure you got. And even if you were in a major urban center, your selection was limited by shelf size.
I don't know where people get the idea that freedom of choice is "counterculture". No, it is just freedom of choice. "Counterculture" is just another marketing term used to manufacture suckers.
I get that the Paredo principle applies to the music market. But the market used to have a shit ton of artificial constraints in the supply chain, and there are clearly people trying to return us to that. I may think gregorian-chant gogo fusion is crap, but I'll fight for your right to listen to it. Which is quite an opposing view from the RIAA or the MPAA take.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday July 05 2019, @09:44PM
I, too, have refined tastes and look down on pop culture.../s
There's a difference between honest criticism and pop culture bashing. It's the generalizations that give it away.
Except with fast food--that stuff really is crap. When the target price range is the bottom of the market, the quality will also be the bottom of the market. Of course, where you draw the line between crap fast food and reasonable fast casual is determined by how strong your counterculture game is. For instance, are you cool enough to call Panera crap? (Of course you are. That was a joke.)
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