Hit Charade

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/hn-repost?single_page=true

by tokenadult • 11 years ago

312 144 11 years ago

wpietri2• 11 years ago

What a good article. Given the bits about how related popular songs are, I can't believe we're far off from algorithmically generated songs being fed to a variety of meat-puppet stars. Or can we skip that and go right to CGI anime pop stars?

bjacobel• 11 years ago

Japan did. http://youtu.be/YSyWtESoeOc

wpietri2• 11 years ago

Neat. More for the curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku

It mentions she has over 100,000 released songs, which I presume are mostly fan created.

I guess I was thinking more like a virtual pop star in the sense of the pop stars mentioned in the article: meticulously controlled, always-on-brand industrial product. Sort of like the way a virtual Tupac appeared at Coachella, but made from scratch so that the money all flows to the puppeteers.

fenomas3• 11 years ago

For those not familiar, Hatsune Miku is a promotional character for voice/song creation software.

In short, Yamaha sells a music synthesizer IDE called Vocaloid, and one of its features is that you can add lyrics via voice synthesizer packages, and then control the tune, vibrato and whatnot. Several 3rd parties sell voice packages for Vocaloid, and usually they were just given names to distinguish them, but a company called Crypton made a voice package called Hatsune Miku, and marketed it along with visual assets and a minimal backstory.

Importantly, they released the character (not the software) under remix-friendly licenses that encourage (noncommercial) reuse, so fans sort of took Miku and made her their own in a very Gibsonesque "Idoru" sort of way. As such, the difference between Miku and bands like Gorillaz or similar is that here there's no particular artist behind the scenes. The company who owns Miku's copyright just makes software; the music comes from fans.

afarrell• 11 years ago

As someone who uses music for mood-modification about 90% of the time, I would be on board with Soylent Music.

caractacus• 11 years ago

Read up on AKB48. Japanese girl "group" with more than a hundred members split into teams. Often the record company will let fans vote on which members will become part of the next single. To vote? You have to buy the latest CD (and physical CDs remain huge in Japan). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKB48

adamnemecek7• 11 years ago

The charade is so well covered up that you have to go all the way to wikipedia to learn who wrote the single songs.

api2• 11 years ago

In the age of noise you don't have to keep somethings secret to cover it up. You just have to avoid drawing attention to it.

adamnemecek7• 11 years ago

Calling that a charade makes it sound like there is some sort of conspiracy though.

tomkwok• 11 years ago

The previous story about Max Martin (Martin Karl Sandberg):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7127488 [600 days ago] One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last 20 Years

infofarmer• 11 years ago

How meta would it be if both articles were ghost written by the same person?

nostromo• 11 years ago

Check out how similar Tik Tok and California Gurls are when they're mixed together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dPA2dCRNY The similarity is striking.

Both are written by Lukasz Gottwald, one of the songwriters mentioned in the article.

doughj3• 11 years ago

Here's another one, Part of Me by Katy Perry and Till The World Ends by Britney Spears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXC0ihxJQAQ (This is a mix of the two, but you can also clearly hearing it just by listening to one and then the other).

Both songs by Dr. Luke and Max Martin

david-given2• 11 years ago

I haven't heard of either (lucky me!) and I literally can't tell where the seams are in that track. (I suspect it probably helps that I can also barely distinguish the two pitch-corrected voices...)

zasz2• 11 years ago

Dude, what the hell, Atlantic. This article lifted a bunch of quotes straight from The New Yorker article on this a few years ago. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machin...

The quotes about needing a hook every seven seconds, and the magic that makes someone an artist and not a performer, were stolen.

Edit: guys stop upvoting me, I jumped on the plagiarism wagon way too quickly.

w1ntermute• 11 years ago

The author probably took those quotes from an upcoming book by the same author as that New Yorker piece[0]. The book's linked in this (Atlantic) article.

0: http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Machine-Inside-Factory/dp/039...

zasz2• 11 years ago

Ah, you're probably right.

Eric_WVGG• 11 years ago

This five minute excerpt from Before the Music Dies is one of the most amazing, illuminating things I’ve ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_p15RJY

SwellJoe2• 11 years ago

I think that's almost like the "uncanny valley" of pop stars. For all of the skills and tools that have to "make" her a star, she doesn't have that something that, say Rihanna or Katy Perry have, and it seems apparent that she doesn't within seconds of the video playing. Certainly, Katy Perry has a bigger budget behind her, but, I think there is an undefinable something else. The industry would love to be able to create a Katy Perry on demand, because Katy Perry commands significant money and has much more control over her career than a new artist.

I'm not suggesting Katy Perry or Rihanna are better, musically, than the next skinny hot teenager that comes along. But, evidence indicates they are better at being the face of the musical machine than the dozens of others that have come along with the same producers, same studios, same music execs, etc. backing them.

So, it's simplistic to suggest anybody hot could be a star like Katy Perry, because I don't think it's actually true. Anybody could sing on key, because there's a plugin for that. But, that's not all there is. I feel like this video (which I've watched before, and had the same sort of reaction to it) wants to present a story of the masses being bamboozled by these "made" artists. I think plenty of people want a manufactured product. Just like people don't buy laptops made in a garage, and instead choose a laptop designed and manufactured by thousands of people.

I don't like it (I'm a musician myself, and a huge music snob with a huge music collection), but I can't help but acknowledge that it is so. I want to listen to art, but many people just want an escapist product; the same could be said of film, television, etc.

philwelch2• 11 years ago

To be fair, they didn't exactly put the kind of budget into this example that they do into actual pop records. And they went with the first pretty teenage girl they could find. There are plenty of teenage girls in the world who are at least as pretty as that model and have the ability to sing (Auto-Tune is pretty limited--notice that the girl in the clip doesn't seem to effortlessly belt out her song the way Katy Perry can; even if you do have to be Auto-Tuned, it helps if you have some enthusiasm and volume you can pump into it). I don't know if they're as rare as we are led to think (though their market value suggests they are), but it's certain that natural talent isn't an overriding concern.

girvo• 11 years ago

Rihanna is an interesting one though; yes she's a mass-produced pop star, but she also has a really interesting reputation and is considered "real". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejRwLJcXjGQ -- unless you're aware of who "Charlamagne Tha God" is, the video might be a bit lost on the viewer, but it's worth watching. I find it fascinating when some of the pop stars apparently are living the lives they sing about.

WalterBright4• 11 years ago

Hmmph. Maybe this explains why I keep going back to music from before 1990. Or maybe I'm just old :-)

WalterBright4• 11 years ago

It also explains why David Cassidy never had another hit after leaving the Partridge Family, and the Monkees never had one after deciding that they were real musicians and could write their own music :-)

dbcooper• 11 years ago

I have a soft spot for Michael Nesmith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsOW_9KJSaw

spudlyo• 11 years ago

Yeah, the magic behind the Monkees were Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote most of their hits and later toured with Dolenz and Jones.

smacktoward• 11 years ago

That was my thought too, yeah. We all have a tendency to romanticize the stuff that came before us, but manufactured pop was a thing long before 1990.

EDIT: To provide an example, here's a very good 2001 article by British journalist Jon Ronson about the culture of child sex abuse that surrounded the UK's hitmakers of the '70s: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/01/weekend....

vpeters252• 11 years ago

The Monkees' music was recorded by "the wrecking crew", a gang of session musicians who were involved in most of the 60's hits. There is a very nice documentary about them on netflix named "The Wrecking Crew"

In the documentary they explain how these session musicians where so good, the Monkees' trained for a year before they could play the hits close enough for live concerts.

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

Nah, there's just as many good tunes coming out as there ever was. You just have to listen to Music Other Than Top 40 Pop. Fire up Pandora and seed it with some of your favorite pre-1990 songs, and I guarantee you'll find a boatload of great new music you never knew existed.

WalterBright4• 11 years ago

I sometimes wonder where is the 2015 equivalent of Led Zeppelin?

craigching4• 11 years ago

I'm old. And I know what you're feeling, I have many friends who are stuck on 70's, 80's, 90's music (you can guess my age cuz I didn't mention 60's ;) ). But as an oldie, I can tell you that there is good music out there.

I don't know, I don't know you at all, but explore, get out of your comfort zone and give music a chance.

So a little about myself, maybe 20 years ago I couldn't imagine loving music that didn't have lyrics. At that time I thought that having words was important, sort of like poetry. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy lyrics, but lately I've discovered more experimental music, ambient music. Artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and Tim Hecker. Of course Boards of Canada which are probably better known than either Hecker or OPN (though OPN recently toured with NiN and Sound Garden, go figure!).

Point is, if you enjoy what you enjoyed in the past, go for it. If you're lamenting that music today "ain't what it used to be", you may need to expand your horizons a bit, there is good shit out there! Give it a try!

jmcphers• 11 years ago

+1 for Tim Hecker and Boards of Canada, especially for music while programming. Goregous, heady sound art.

venomsnake3• 11 years ago

It is easy because only the good music from the era past survived. In 20 years we will know what the good music of today is.

20 years ago macarena and coco jambo were bigger than "smells like teen spirit" or "rape me"/"self esteem"/"come out and play"

teh_klev• 11 years ago

But as an oldie, I can tell you that there is good music out there.

I agree there is a ton of great music out there (I too am an "oldie", having reached 48 this year). You just need to know where to look.

I recommend listening to Stuart Maconie's Freak zone programmes on BBC Radio 6. He does a two hour "Freak Zone" [0] on a Sunday evening and an extra one hour "Freakier Zone" early Monday mornings [1], they're packed with all sorts of goodies.

Thanks for the tipoff about OPN (been on my list for a while) and Hecker (brand new to me).

If you prefer the more melodic sounds of BoC then you should check out the Ghostbox label [2]. Lots of good stuff there and with a nod towards hauntology [3] from a British perspective (see also works by Robin The Fog and Howlround [4] if that's an aural itch you need to scratch). I also particularly recommend King of Woolworths[5], an incarnation of Jon Brooks who also records as The Advisory Circle [6]. Ming Star is very bloody good.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06chqml

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06chp7h

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Box_Music

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology

[4] http://robinthefog.com/

[5] http://www.discogs.com/artist/16510-King-Of-Woolworths

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advisory_Circle

glittershark• 11 years ago

The refrain that music in its entirety has done the same cut and paste thing as pop music in the last 25 years is really frustrating to me. There's tons of absolutely brilliant, innovative musicians out there. Sure it's not on the radio, but that doesn't mean for a second that it doesn't exist. Off the top of my head there are artists like Flying Lotus, Beck, Autechre, hell even artists more in the realm of accessible pop like Jamie XX who are writing and producing all their own music and it's all relentlessly interesting and innovative

bluthru• 11 years ago

Mediums mature. We can't expect mediums to exist in perpetual glory days, always building off of the past.

Pizza can only be invented once. The Beatles can only happen once.

RyJones• 11 years ago

KBiRD 680 AM is streaming 24/7 out of Olympia. The story of the music selection is amusing.

noonespecial• 11 years ago

I do too. I take the music of an entire decade, throw out 99.99% of all of it, make the rest into a big mix tape, and then call it a golden age.

Even when they're pumping out commercialized, mass-produced dreck, sometimes a little quality leaks in at random. Take a big enough sample, filter out the crap (and try to forget it existed), and you've got yourself the good ole days.

pakled_engineer2• 11 years ago

I look for music from the future like Purity Ring https://youtu.be/qHTeiYtlS8s

The manufactured pop has never been good, the difference is now I'm no longer a prisoner to MTV/Radio like I was in 1990, I can actually source and stream music worldwide and bypass major label pushed junk. A lot of music I used to mail order in the early 90s was all confiscated by border guards for either "obscene" album art or banned lyrics. Just happy the musical dark ages are over.

ams61102• 11 years ago

The phenomenon described is not new. In the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s -- probably back to the beginning of the genre -- most pop hits were written by a relatively small number of unknown-to-the-public songwriters.

Maybe it's even more common today -- but it's not anything new.

ksml• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, and I guess I'll probably get downvoted for this, but why the heck is this #1 on HN?

Edit: I'm not saying the article is not interesting, but it is hardly related to tech.

anigbrowl2• 11 years ago

Example of the inner workings of a system being very different from what you might expect, plus the weekend.

waterlesscloud• 11 years ago

I think it's interesting that even after two decades of very intense and traumatic disruption, the pop music business is still essentially controlled by a handful of men.

noobermin• 11 years ago

someone already suggested ML generated pop. All we need is an overfunded startup from sv to do it.

PhantomGremlin3• 11 years ago

I'll probably get downvoted for this

An interesting dynamic here on HN. You are being downvoted. In contrast, in yesterday's slashdot, the quickest way to get modded +5 insightful was to start off by saying "I know I'll get downvoted for this ...".

detaro• 11 years ago

HN is not just for tech.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

infiniteseeker• 11 years ago

The more years I live on this planet the more I realise how smoke and mirrors a lot of things are. Its all an illusion??

chillingeffect• 11 years ago

Yeah, it's mostly all an illusion and mostly it works for most people. The standard script our rulers provide gratifies our emotions, giving us just enough safety to raise our children and just enough of a glimpse into the fearful world (think: police shows) to make us never question them while the billionaire rulers fly from house to house, from beach to beach, with a short stop at the schools to make sure as few as possible of us learn how to self-govern (hint: by emphasizing answers rather than questions).

If you look, at least at American music culture since the beginning of the industrial age, you'll see cycles of people seeking authenticity (the beats, hippies, hip-hop, grunge, etc). Generally, that authenticity gives birth to some consumable form, such as the stuff that passes for hip-hop nowadays, as well as the "corporate grundge" of the 90s. I'm not as familiar with other eras, but I understand authenticity to be a huge point of critique w/r/t 60s pop culture.

My favorite (ironically-meant) part of this article was when they pointed out the music was engineered for shopping malls, as opposed to home stereos and that it is "more captivating than virtuoso musicians." The fact that a cybernetic artifact (pop-by-committee) can supplant the intimacy of a live performance by a master is astonishing and disturbing. I hope it's not true... but if you think about it, even the concept of a virtuoso is an economic artifact of a ruler/leader with excess capital to support the specialization of a lifelong performer. I believe the same or more authenticity can be had from amateurs or mid-level players, although that's probably my own bias.

venomsnake3• 11 years ago

Punk -> Metal -> Hair Metal/Ballads

philwelch2• 11 years ago

If you look, at least at American music culture since the beginning of the industrial age, you'll see cycles of people seeking authenticity (the beats, hippies, hip-hop, grunge, etc). Generally, that authenticity gives birth to some consumable form, such as the stuff that passes for hip-hop nowadays, as well as the "corporate grundge" of the 90s. I'm not as familiar with other eras, but I understand authenticity to be a huge point of critique w/r/t 60s pop culture.

I think this is the beginning of understanding what is so loathsome about hipsters. Hipsters are some awful Hegelian synthesis of the impulse towards authenticity and the culture of irony. Hipsters mostly express the urge for authenticity as a type of consumerism, but then immediately undermine authenticity through their commitment to irony.

mpdehaan2• 11 years ago

I'm not a songwriter, but I play a bit around with synths and stuff for fun a bit. What little I've learned implies crafting a good hook is definitely an equation (that I fail at), and some people in the music industry have figured out that equation better than most people, in a way that targets a large swath of people's brains really well. It goes beyond notes to timbres, themes, lyric content, etc.

It's definitely an art - and the writers of such things probably deserve a lot more money than the auto-tuned singers that get really rich from it do.

As people who write music/songs/etc refine their craft, they can choose to make something that sounds the best to them, or they can figure out the equations for other people, and sometimes that music that works for all those masses of people also works for them, and if so, that's still pretty darn authentic and just trying to be good.

Ergo, I don't think trying to make a song better is a loss in authenticity, but maybe intentionally going in and reusing the same formula, rather than experimenting, is a bit of the same thing we'd say about a band that always sounds the same.

If you just chase success, rather than soul or experimentation, you risk something - or at least you risk the opportunity for creating something new that could be even better.

Likely though, you're still making a lot of people happy.

I think all of these folks are still experimenting, trying to refine that equation, but it's just music that personally doesn't target me, and that's ok. For some reason it works for giant chunks of people, but music I like probably often doesn't work for them.

sixQuarks• 11 years ago

Music is targeted for the masses. Politics is targeted for the masses. Music is manufactured. Can you guess what else is manufactured?

javert• 11 years ago

Hmm... Noam Chomsky books? For gullible college students?

kalleboo2• 11 years ago

Hacker News comments?

cbd1984• 11 years ago

Yes, some music is literally made to be popular. Some people desire to be famous. Some people desire to be rich. Some people have mainstream tastes, believe it or not.

It's difficult to imagine, I know, but the reason million-selling hit singles are called that is because on the close order of a million people purchased them.

Other music is made for the sheer joy of making music, and is never released. You very likely won't hear it, though, because it was never released. Perhaps someone should disrupt that, and find a way to release that music, maybe in a fashion which generates profits for the musicians and the people who establish the businesses needed to release and distribute music. Sounds simple enough.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

There are entire communities and industries of artists, musicians, etc. that are outside the popular media machinery. There's plenty of authentic art out there, and it's plenty popular, but things like radio and tv provide a very, very narrow view on the world, like looking through a straw.

atom-morgan• 11 years ago

It's like working for a digital agency and realizing how little work Big Name companies actually do with respect to their brand. So much of it is handled by other companies.

pat2man• 11 years ago

It seems incredibly hard to "discover" an artist these days. There are so many musicians out there that aren't quite good enough. To be able to pick out the good ones pretty much requires dedicating your life to it: http://www.npr.org/people/2100252/bob-boilen

Its much easier just putting together a dream team of writers and musicians that have made hits in the past.

That being said there is still an amazing amount of great music out there that doesn't hit the charts. Live music seems to be the best place to discover and contribute to those artists. Too bad its mostly focused in a few major cities.

wmt• 11 years ago

There are more good artists today than there ever has been, but the issue is that the Jimi Hendrixs of today are typically tossed to the "not quite good enough" -pile by those who professionally discover new artists. It's unfortunate that nowadays to listen to good new artists you'll need to be active and follow genres where an artists become popular through word of mouth and good music.

pakled_engineer2• 11 years ago

University radio playlists http://www.earshot-online.com/charts/citr.cfm?intChartTypeID... this is the most played this week http://faketearsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/second-wind

Or follow independent labels you like, let it be their F/T job to find artists. I follow Warp, Asian Man Records, Mint Recs, few others.

mafribe2• 11 years ago

     There are so many musicians out there that aren't quite good enough.

I disagree with you. There are more good enough artists than ever. Pop music orchestrates the transition from childhood to adulthood. It helps structure sexuality, make it more predictable. In order to fulfil this function, the musical quality is not too important, as long as a certain standard is met. And modern production technology can help just about everybody to achieve these minimal standards. What is much more important is achieving a critical mass of fans, which is to a substantial degree a question of marketing, and hence access to capital. Even though modern production outfits like Max Martin's are highly skilled, most of their artists fail. But the 1 in 10 who make it big recoup the loss by the 9 others. The music industry's main business model is thus this: find 10 young (hence cheap) musicians, try to make all of them a star, live on 1 of 10 unicorns.

As you can see, that's the Y Combinator business model. The music industry got there first. I would not at all be surprised if Y Combinator were consciously following in the music industry's footsteps.

catshirt2• 11 years ago

"There are more good enough artists than ever."

also more bad ones.

addisonj• 11 years ago

Incredibly fascinating article. The article mentioned both the 'sameness' of pop music as well as blatant copying, but what I find the most interesting is how they pop industry has somehow found some magical rate of evolution to keep most people interested while not changing too fast to alienate certain demographics.

A few years ago, when dubstep was still fairly new, a build up and shift as dramatic as the typical dubstep 'drop' would have been fairly jarring for most pop music. Fast forward to today and you hear elements of it almost everywhere, but it all happened gradually enough to make it feel familiar but different enough to be exciting.

otis_inf• 11 years ago

A few years ago, when dubstep was still fairly new, a build up and shift as dramatic as the typical dubstep 'drop' would have been fairly jarring for most pop music. Fast forward to today and you hear elements of it almost everywhere, but it all happened gradually enough to make it feel familiar but different enough to be exciting.

Agreed, and that's what's bugging me: I missed a bit in the article the following: how do they get massive groups of people buying into the products they are selling, every time? If you look at the whole pipeline, from writing the 'hit' to recording / mixing / mastering to getting it on iTunes (record store?) and the shows live in the halls / stadiums, where and more importantly: how, are they getting the people that far that they part with their money to 'own' a copy of these, often dreadful (music wise), songs?

It is, IMHO, that part of the whole pipeline that they have mastered, not the song writing/recording: the product isn't the music, the product is something else, the front person ('artist') + the whole entourage around it, but it's fascinating how they manage to construct _that_ entourage that is sought after by people with money to burn. they must know an answer (which is sold in the form of the artist+entourage+shows+music) to an unknown question / benefit sought a lot of people have.

guscost• 11 years ago

The piece you're not quite mentioning is that for a very long time now, mainstream pop culture has been mostly about getting adolescent kids to lust after the celebrities or musicians or whoever. That segment of the market sells (images of) people as sex objects, not any particular creative media on its own merit. It's a bit disturbing but there you go.

coldtea2• 11 years ago

how, are they getting the people that far that they part with their money to 'own' a copy of these, often dreadful (music wise), songs?

With a combination of marketing, and, how about it, people actually liking them.

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

Dubstep was invented in South London in the late 1990s.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/an-oral-history-of-dubstep-vi...

It was only new recently in the sense that it became a mainstream pop genre.

The article kind of misses the point - pop is a packaging and marketing industry, not a music invention industry.

The invention happens in subcultures, mostly in the UK and US. Then it's discovered, reinvented, and popularised by the industry.

At least, that's how it used to work. With mass exposure to the same online influences everyone is listening to the same stuff and moving in the same directions. There's a lot less original experimentation happening, and that's a much bigger problem for pop than the fact that the industry is making product, because it means there's not much coming down to feed the production line.

I really enjoy finding undiscovered new music on SoundCloud. Amateur production values are incredibly high now - infinitely better than a cassette demo of 20 years ago.

But if anything a lot of the writing sounds professional and safe. It's slick, polished, beautiful/grungy/glitchy/ironic/whatever and good listening. But it's not often amazingly surprising, or fresh enough to kickstart a subculture into orbit.

tripzilch• 11 years ago

The invention happens in subcultures, mostly in the UK and US.

Really? Or is it just invention of genres that go and influence pop music? Which is better explained by the fact that most pop music is indeed produced by the UK and US.

While I can think of many musical (sub)genres that were invented in the UK or US, I know them because they got quite popular (in or around the hit charts).

But there's also others, the ones I know are from my personal tastes over the years. Isn't electro from Germany and the Netherlands (The Hague)? Or Suomisaundi, a bouncy subgenre of psy-trance from Finland. Israel being a big influence on certain styles of goa-trance. "Lounge music" (there may be a better term) got big from Yonderboi (Hungary), and then Balkan beats appeared. And "filterhouse" came from France (Cassius, Daft Punk). And I'm not too familiar with the genre but I'm sure that Scandinavia has quite a few subgenres of metal on their name?

(disclaimer: I probably got the "proper" names of the subgenres wrong to some people)

huuu• 11 years ago

This also reminds me of Carol Kaye, a female bass player who, because she is a woman and too old for the industrie, remained unknown while playing a lot of songs for the famous.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye

jdietrich• 11 years ago

I can highly recommend "The Manual" by The KLF. It cynically documents how they wrote and produced one of their many hit singles. It was written in 1988, but proved to be remarkably prophetic.

http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/

omnibrain• 11 years ago

There is a german audio play "Tophit leichtgemacht" http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/389813234X based on this book. It's rather hilarious but one has to admit that there is some catchyness to the tune they end up producing.

david-given2• 11 years ago

It's a great read.

For reference, here is the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk

And, simply because it's awesome, even though it's totally unrelated to the conversation, here's... a thing... with the KLF, Daleks, George Bush, and Green Day in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzzhJeTp-I

colordrops• 11 years ago

This is no different from a car company using the same chassis for multiple cars. They've got a money making formula so why change it.

snarkyturtle• 11 years ago

There's a great Planet Money piece about which touches upon this process of pop song creation: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-m...

devit• 11 years ago

Doesn't really seem a bad thing.

It seems natural that picking the best performer and the best song writer would give a better result than having the same person do it all.

It's a bit like complaining that in a videogame, the programming, game design and graphics are often done by different people.

look_lookatme• 11 years ago

What is sad is how critics, like the Times Jon Caramanica, are complicit in this system.

IkmoIkmo• 11 years ago

A lot of the reactions in this thread remind me of Bourdieu's book La Distinction.

It's one thing to say that these songs are algorithmic and not deeply creative which is objective fact, it's another thing to say the songs are crappy, not good to listen to and indicative of poor taste. It's these latter statements - that I came across in this thread - that La Distinction touches on in a very interesting way, I can recommend everyone to read it.

ams61102• 11 years ago

there are no musicians anymore, at least not human ones. Every instrument is automated.

There really aren't vocalists either. In pop music today, the vocals are processed through an Auto-Tune[1] device resulting in perfectly on-pitch vocals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune

orbitur• 11 years ago

It's not true to say there are no singers, since the existence of Beyoncé and Ariana Grande contradict you. Recordings might be fine-tuned to remove imperfections but there are plenty of legit singers at the top of the pop charts, and probably not any less than previous eras.

erichmond• 11 years ago

Country pop is not spared by this formula:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o

marincounty• 11 years ago

In freshman Psychology, I happen to have an Instructor at a community college that worshiped B.F. Skinner. Mr Goddard, worked part time as a landscaper. He wasen't a tenured teacher yet. He definitely tried to help us understand the world, and knew the majority of us--never had anyone one who really cared about our education, or future. He wanted to prepare us for a deceptive, complicated world. A world we would be forced into very soon. (Hell, most of us were already working adult jobs at the time, trying to just get through school, and get a four year degree somewhere?)

Well, my take on B.F. Skinner was we all copy in one way or another? There are few original ideas, or thought in B.F. skinner's world? When I read an new author, listen to a new artist, look at a new website; I always see a lot of copying. Be it subconscious, or conscious the results are the same; the work looks similar?

I don't know why we act so suprised when someone points out similarities in an artist's/inventor's/scientist's work?

When I do find anything remotely original, I'm honestly impressed, until I find they stole someone's idea. I don't think seen, or heard anything truly original. I didn't know it was even debatable? I sometimes think we need to go to sheltered communities in order to get anything related to originality? Maybe the indigenous people of the rain forests? Let's not though? The last thing they need is our diseases, and white men stealing their original ideas?

jccalhoun• 11 years ago

Adorno was talking about this back in the 1940s in "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/cultu...

kevinwang• 11 years ago

For what it's worth, Taylor Swift is a songwriter.

gcv• 11 years ago

Is or was? The article explicitly mentions several of her tracks as having come from the pop production machine.

Jedd• 11 years ago

A couple of points.

Boy band (and girl band) often seem to conflate the word 'band' with an entity that produces / creates / makes their own music ... with a group of people that can sing or mime to a song someone else made, without needing to play any instruments.

In 2002 there was a story about Carly Hennessy[1] (who later made at least one somewhat contentious 'comeback' on a pop TV show in the US) who'd basically been financially destroyed by a wager the music industry had placed on her at our (and her) expense.

We don't seem to be making much progress on this front.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1014678641479060480

mwsherman• 11 years ago

No mention of the Brill Building [1]? Pop music has always been factory-produced.

Also, multiple hooks per song is a better song. We like pop music for the hooks. If we don’t like the hooks, we don’t like pop music.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_Building

coldtea2• 11 years ago

Pop music has always been factory-produced.

Correction: pop music has always had factory-produced hits. It also had other hits.

morgante3• 11 years ago

This is a great article, but I don't understand the undercurrent of judgement and the overt judgement here on HN. Yes, songs are produced by teams of people behind the scenes who adopt common formulas and churn out hit after hit. So what? They're a product just like anything else.

My enjoyment of the latest movie isn't lessened by the fact that the actors didn't write the script. I don't dislike my iPhone just because it's a mass-produced item which is just a small tweak from its previous iterations.

Just because music is a product doesn't mean it's not enjoyable (or worthy of enjoyment).

emsy• 11 years ago

With each one of these products it's clear that they weren't produced by the "figureheads". the iPhone is not a Tim Cook/Steve Jobs product but an Apple product. This isn't the case with music.

morgante3• 11 years ago

I'm not sure I entirely agree.

Steve Jobs was definitely portrayed as an iPhone figurehead. His personal image was highly tied to the Apple products. Likewise, movies put leading actors/directors forward as figureheads for the production.

However, I do agree that there is more widespread misunderstanding of how music is made. What I don't agree with is that this misunderstanding is essential to the popularity or enjoyment of music.

I'm fully aware that music is produced and I still enjoy listening to it.

Or take the example of K-pop/J-pop, which is more overtly produced than American music. In some cases, fans literally vote on who gets to be included in the band. Despite the "production" process being in full view, fans still love the music and artists.

donall• 11 years ago

I think the difference is that the actors in movies aren't trying to give the impression that they wrote the script, whereas musicians talk about "their" songs like they conceived them in a process of true artistic expression. Revealing that they are actually manufactured in a formulaic manner by the same people who wrote all the other hit songs can leave a sour taste in the mouth of a fan who is perhaps emotionally invested in a song or artist...

morgante3• 11 years ago

I agree that some fans might have a negative reaction to realizing that the performers don't write their own music, but it's hardly a secret. Songwriting credits exist for a reason.

Even if they do find that out, the music is still enjoyable. I'm literally listening to mass-produced music as I write this comment, fully aware that it's produced but still enjoying it.

analog312• 11 years ago

Perhaps in a few years, we'll read an article about how all of the tweets, interviews, and off-stage antics of pop stars are also the creative work of 4 middle aged guys from Scandinavia.

The impression that I form, on rare occasions when I'm exposed to what those musicians say about their work, is that it's just as formulaic as the work itself.

skywhopper• 11 years ago

Agreed. And more importantly, this is nothing new. It's been going on since recorded music was invented. And even before that, in the era of sheet music and live music performance of all sorts. Music is not unique, either, among entertainment formats.

copsarebastards2• 11 years ago

Just because music is a product doesn't mean it's not enjoyable (or worthy of enjoyment).

This is true, but it's a straw man, at least for me. I don't care that I'm consuming a product. I do care if I'm manipulated, or if other people are being manipulated in a way that affects me. In this case, I don't like any of the music these people create, but I'm forced to listen to it quite frequently because the formula they've created manipulates so many of my peers into liking it.

a3n2• 11 years ago

If you care about being manipulated, then you're probably not being manipulated overly much, and it's worth it to just not worry about it, because no one is going to stop them from trying. It's just music or clothes that people wear or hair that they style, and it will all change, but always be there. It means nothing.

biehl• 11 years ago

However that music is just a product is not what many of the slogans around copyright say ("protect the artists etc").

rdslw• 11 years ago

I always give a two months quarantine to an article about some theory which is nice to hear (celebrities are fake), groundbreaking (they're doing it so long and are bald swedish vikings!), and on the verge of conspiracy theory (the're hiding), WHILE THE ARTICLE IS BASED ON THE BOOK "INCIDENTALLY" ;-) JUST TO BE RELEASED (AND BOUGHT BY US ;-).

Two months it's a great time to wait and decide if it was book promotion or worth read.

danbmil99• 11 years ago

There has been crap pop music churned out by modest talents for decades. 90% of commercial music is completely devoid of any redeeming artistic merit.

Great music is produced by every generation. All you have to do iisten for it.

mynegation• 11 years ago

Even more succinctly, funny, and cynically: "Four Chords Song" by Axis of Awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

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