Streaming is changing the sound of music

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/streaming-is-changing-the-sound-of-music-182dc907

by lxm • 3 years ago

72 120 3 years ago

wsj.com

archo• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/uTnYi

thunderbong• 3 years ago

For some reason that link didn't work for me.

https://archive.ph/uTnYi

piker• 3 years ago

Fascinated / saddened by the effect of modern economic trends on music, but it is what it is. However,

Before the Temptations sing a word, an instrumental introduction featuring organ, guitar, bass, and a hi-hat cymbal ebbs and flows for more than four minutes.

Seems like this should refer to about 2 minutes of instrumental intro based (ironically?) on my listening to the ca. 7 minute version on Spotify. Am I missing something?

spatley• 3 years ago

This article is pretty sloppy. There are 2 different versions. The 7 minute release has vocals coming in just under 2 minutes. The 12 minute version has vocals kicking in just under 4 minutes. So the characterization that the intro "ebbs and flows for more than four minutes" is incorrect in all possible counts.

And in aggregate pop music has always been objectively terrible.

plorkyeran2• 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJV2pWFyfn4 has the vocals come in at 4:02 which I guess very technically is over 4 minutes, but it's a vinyl recording that starts ~5 seconds before the beginning of the song.

rchaud6• 3 years ago

An oldies band from the 1940s, The Ink Spots, would play a 3-second bass guitar melody before every song. Back then, if the DJ did not announce the name of the band or song, the melody would act as an identifier.

carrozo• 3 years ago

Oh wow! Found here: https://youtu.be/rzTFKTi_cZ4?si=R514OgVC-I0vXTFf

crooked-v• 3 years ago

This seems like a repeat of everything I've seen about the effects of radio on mass music.

gdulli• 3 years ago

If technology through streaming, AI, and other enshittifying forces are scaling up pre-existing bullshit from annoying trends into absolute omnipresence, that's worth recognizing and talking about as its own phenomenon.

Spivak• 3 years ago

This take doesn't resonate with me at all. The music is scene is fantastic right now and the insane amount of collaborations will be remembered in 20 years as a musical era.

Literally everyone's preferred era of music is someone's "todays music is bad rabble rabble." Even classical was considered inferior and simplistic by people who preferred music from the baroque period. Like its original critics literally said that classical was too repetitive.

dave4420• 3 years ago

Yes, but… it used to be that the leading radio station in each local market would have their own idiosyncratic variation of what they demanded from songs, so the edges would get softened.

Now there is a single leading global music streaming service. You don’t just have to deal with the generalities of the medium, you have to deal with Spotify’s specific idiosyncraticies.

rhabarba4• 3 years ago

I will _not_ listen to music made for people with a short attention span.

xav_authentique• 3 years ago

Who says you’ll have that choice?

dmonitor• 3 years ago

soundcloud

rhabarba4• 3 years ago

My vinyl player.

plorkyeran2• 3 years ago

There's already more recorded music in existence than you could listen to in a lifetime. There is also a vast amount of music being created today which is not pop music and is not following current pop trends.

kouru2252• 3 years ago

Why is it that a “play” is defined by a discrete threshold line 30 seconds? Isn’t it way more logical to define some continuous relationship between amount of time played and amount of money generated like it’s done on YouTube?

crazygringo2• 3 years ago

Should a 6 minute song pay 50% more than a 4 minute song?

Most people would think not. So you should pay by play, rather than per minute.

YouTube is different because number of ads shown is roughly proportional to video length. Variance in video durations is much, much higher than variance in song durations.

And 30 seconds is much longer than most people skipping through songs, and much shorter than most songs, and a nice round number.

naniwaduni2• 3 years ago

... why not? It's occupying 50% more listening time, isn't it?

comprev• 3 years ago

The business model of classical streaming company Primephonic was based on minutes streamed rather than first 30s units.

The company became Apple Music Classical, so I guess it worked well?

djaro• 3 years ago

On YouTube I'd assume pay for music videos is generally similar, because music videos don't really have mid-roll ads (at least I've never gotten an ad in the middle of a song). Maybe due to post-roll ads people finishing the song could lead to extra revenue though.

cloudking• 3 years ago

This is why most new pop, trap, hip hop etc songs are only 2 minutes, more streams.

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

Famously "She Loves You" (The Beatles) was unusual in kicking the song off with the chorus.

Way ahead of their time, as usual.

Seriously though, it does suggest that having a "hook" early in a song was always a good idea, commercially speaking.

dietrichepp2• 3 years ago

Whenever I've done analysis of classic popular songs, songs that I like, I'm always a bit shocked by how quick they tend to be. If there's an intro, the intro is often super short, like 4 or even 2 bars. Like you said, having a hook early in the song was always a good idea.

Some of the iconic classical pieces start with a "hook" too. Or, at least, a very compelling motive.

musicale6• 3 years ago

This exactly. Beethoven's fifth symphony drops the hook/motive as the first five notes. It's no coincidence that Mozart's Dies Irae (Requiem) or Orff's O Fortuna (Carmina Burana) are frequently repurposed since they start with a bang.

cole-k• 3 years ago

This is what radio edits help with, no? Like Boston's Foreplay / Long Time (although I'm not sure if that has a radio edit, it's what comes to mind).

musicale6• 3 years ago

I immediately thought of Revolver with Eleanor Rigby (chorus), Good Day Sunshine (chorus), and Paperback Writer (chorus hook) at least.

Speaking of classics for the ages, Nickelback's How You Remind Me drops the hook (and title) at about 15s.

Classic (especially 1980s?) rock seems to have lots of chorus first songs from the likes of Guns N' Roses, Cheap Trick, Journey, Stevie Nicks, Bon Jovi, Slade/Quiet Riot, David Bowie, etc.

WalterBright3• 3 years ago

"Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, probably the best intro evar.

musicale6• 3 years ago

The hook comes before the chorus, and it's very good. But I think the Kinks' You Really Got Me from the previous year (1964) hits harder out of the gate.

Many rock songs start with great hooks/riffs though. I am particularly fond of 20 foot tall guitar riff hooks/intros as practiced by classic hard rock and metal bands, often by doubling the riff/hook on lead guitar and bass.

Rock bands seem to excel at intros, and even the lengthy ones can be riveting.

And some song intros are so great that they overshadow the rest of the song.

pacbard• 3 years ago

Not an expert, but isn't most classical music like that? Most long pieces (e.g., concertos?) start with the main theme that gets unpacked in later parts of the performance.

dsubburam• 3 years ago

Kinda but also true that most long pieces have one or two movements that are the popular ones and you have to wait till you get to it. e.g. Ode to Joy is 45+ minutes into the Ninth symphony, Mozart's Rondo alla Turca is the third movement of the K 331 sonata, etc.

Though I feel very bad writing ^^^. The rest of those pieces are very worth listening to. I listen more often to the first movement of the Ninth.

semi-extrinsic• 3 years ago

"Don't bore us, get to the chorus" is a standard trope, no?

datavirtue2• 3 years ago

That's just basic good writing.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

I think it's less than the effect of people listening to music on small phone speakers. There's a definite shift to mixes that are listenable on a phone speaker.

bsder• 3 years ago

As far back as the Rolling Stones, they used to have an old 4 ohm AM car stereo speaker on the console to check the mixes.

moritzwarhier3• 3 years ago

Still better than phone speakers :D

I once read something about a famous music producer and/or mastering engineer who said his mixing and mastering goes through two first passes: first on his studio monitors, then - before testing the final master on real-world speakers for final polishing - he would adjust everything in the mix again to sound good one his cheapest Mackie studio monitors.

Can't seem to find the original article, so maybe I mixed up some details.

Instead I found this 2011 forum thread:

https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/720856-mix-engin...

Also, I agree with OP, I hate how mainstream productions nowadays target the lowest common denominator of speakers. Of course they have to, but in this current age of phone speakers it really starts to show annoying effects.

Small BT speakers and even in-ears have become surprisingly OK though, also for music which doesn't participate in the loudness wars as much. Also seems like these might be what most music is consumed on.

cortesoft2• 3 years ago

Do many people listen on phone speakers? I would figure most people use headphones.

rchaud6• 3 years ago

Tiktok/Shorts/Reels is a big source of music discovery, and those are frequently listened to via phone speakers.

callalex• 3 years ago

It sure seems like it based on my experience riding the bus/train.

zoklet-enjoyer2• 3 years ago

Recorded music has always been written for the limitations of the format it was being released on.

rhabarba4• 3 years ago

The newest album by NǽnøcÿbbŒrg VbërrHolökäävsT is 44 hours long. I guess that the format is not the limit anymore.

zoklet-enjoyer2• 3 years ago

A 44 hour album wouldn't be practical without modern data storage

cortesoft2• 3 years ago

Recorded music changed music, as did radio.

rchaud6• 3 years ago

The parallels aren't that similar.

"Radio" played an infinitesimally small amount of the music that was being produced. If you wanted to discover new music, the last thing you'd do is turn to the radio. Spotify is both 'radio' and a music discovery service, and global in nature, so its impact is much greater. And unlike radio stations that tend to specialize in a certain sound (pop, classical, rock, jazz, hiphop), Spotify mixes everything together. A lot of contemporary music is 'genre-less' as a result. That was never the case with radio.

BoorishBears• 3 years ago

You're claiming radio didn't really affect discovery, when radio music discovery was being regulated by federal law and driving congressional hearings by the 1950s.

Radio changed music as much as streaming did, and before streaming, MTV did too.

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

the last thing you'd do is turn to the radio.

The BBC's John Peel: Peel was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio. He is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of many genres, including pop, dub reggae, punk rock and post-punk, electronic music and dance music, indie rock, extreme metal and British hip hop. Fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini described Peel as "the most important single person in popular music from approximately 1967 through 1978. He broke more important artists than any individual." [wikipedia] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geI2TbD3ihM

jzb• 3 years ago

“If you wanted to discover new music, the last thing you'd do is turn to the radio”

Really? What would people do, then?

I grew up in the 70s/80s in a small town. No music store, not even a Walmart until the mid-80s.

Pre-MTV, radio was pretty much the only mechanism for hearing new music, excepting maybe small doses of new stuff via SNLs musical act or someone on the talk shows.

I don’t think much (popular) contemporary music is genre-less. Fair number of crossover songs, maybe, but that’s not new.

a_bonobo2• 3 years ago

Streaming definitely destroyed sampling as a musical method: every sampled recording house wants their slice of the pie, and if the income is low as it is with streaming records, you minimise your sampling to keep more pie to yourself.

Many early great hip hop albums that rely heavily on sampling are not on streaming services because the sampled record companies can't come to an agreement, and I'm sure today's artists see the hassle and minimise their sampling.

Examples are Frank Ocean's 'Nostalgia, Ultra' and De La Soul's '3 Feet High and Rising'

Jonnston• 3 years ago

De La Soul's discography came to streaming this year. Including 3 Feet High and Rising.

a_bonobo2• 3 years ago

Yes and it took a long time!

De La Soul’s sampling artistry made digitizing the catalog they built over their career a monumental task, as samples previously cleared for use on vinyl, cassettes and CDs had to be redone for streaming.

https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2023/03/03/de-la-souls-music-cata...

My argument is that people would rather avoid doing this kind of thing

bobthepanda2• 3 years ago

This is an interesting take. A lot of the big artists these days (Doja Cat, Megan thee Stallion, Charli XCX, to name a few) all heavily sample.

In some cases the new hits have multiple levels of sampling; Latto’s Big Energy has a remix with Mariah Carey’s Fantasy, and both sample Tom Tom Club’s Genius of Love. Charli XCX interpolates both Hey Mickey and Robyn for her new song from the Barbie movie.

mhh__• 3 years ago

They have the money to pay the bills. They're all either plants or giants.

The barbie soundtrack has a massive budget so you can just pay for the samples.

WalterBright3• 3 years ago

Don't forget the 12" disco versions of songs in the 70's and 80's! The disco version was lengthened and mixed with a much heavier bass line. The grooves on a 12" single were spaced further apart to accommodate this.

odiroot• 3 years ago

It wasn't even just disco, that was a general fashion back then.

I remember Trevor Horn writing in his book, labels asked him for 12" mixes of singles he produced in the 80's. And it was mostly new wave and pop stuff.

I guess the purpose was the same though, to produce a more danceable version.

w-ll• 3 years ago

I think streaming killed the "album", sure there were always singles, but they would be used to promote an upcoming album, now musicians and labels keep it at that. I miss the days of getting a new cd and moving the last one from my cars cd player to the visor cd sleeve.

BurningFrog• 3 years ago

The album was an artifact of the limitations of the LP format.

I prefer to think of it as that streaming liberated music from those restrictions.

That said, some files on a Spotify server do feel a bit empty compared to a physical LP with an artful cover.

sashahilton• 3 years ago

Behind the scenes there is a lot more going on than just songs getting shorter. I'll focus on Spotify as it's the firm I'm most familiar with. The article briefly touches on the hook being moved to the beginning, so I'll skip that part - much the same thing is happening on streaming platforms for movies/tv shows, where analytics are used to determine the ordering and features of a piece of content to maximise engagement/minimise churn - at the expense of directorial freedom.

There are 2 other significant factors at play. The first is that not all streams are created equal. It is relatively well known that the large studios have cut deals on payouts per stream, eg. $0.0029 vs $0.002, depending on the artist's following, age of the album, etc. But, a lesser known fact is that not all streams are created equal in a number of countries. Songs played is sequence on an album, or as part of a playlist, may attract a lesser premium than individual plays, and radio broadcast format pays less still. How it works depends on the jurisdiction/contract. With this in mind, consider how you listen to songs on Spotify. You may search for songs and albums, but a large proportion of the music you hear probably comes from autoplay, where Spotify matches what it 'thinks' you might like to hear.

With the above in mind, Spotify has been acquiring podcast companies and building them into their client for several years. There is undoubtedly an audience for podcasts, but the business case is that they do not have any of the licensing legacy issues that music has, where Spotify gets to keep a bigger piece of the pie.

The point in the article - that 'songs are getting shorter, albums are getting longer, and artists are collaborating across genres' is mostly a result of artists producing to satisfy a recommendation algorithm that balances retaining listeners, whilst minimising licensing costs.

The collaborating across genres is also explainable; several years ago, Spotify bought a company called Echonest (amongst others), which was essentially a large graph database mapping songs and their musical attributes (genres), onto which a recommendation engine was built - it's worth looking up their whitepapers on matrix factorisation at scale if they still exist. The corrolary though, is that similar listening habits could be used to cross-recommend songs with a good degree of accuracy.

There are also a smattering of other considerations to take into account - a lot of the large playlists not operated by Spotify are pay to play - if you're a new artist, you can pay to feature on playlists for a given genre. There is no official channel for doing this, but the practice is widespread. These playlists make more money if they have 50 x 3 minute songs, than 30 x 5 minute songs.

I'm sure you can see where this is going - a cost/engagement optimisation engine, along with a recommendation engine where artist remuneration is more or less directly proportional to the number of people that are happy to listen to it if it is played for them.

The artist is rewarded if they produce a larger number of songs, suitably homogenised to appeal to the mass market and sound familiar to what they already listen to, and to hit as many of the genres possible to maximise inclusion in recommendations. Unless you are one of the few exceptional artists, you are going to be punished for creativity vs. playing it safe.

There's no easy fix for this, assuming it needs fixing. All media streaming platforms in the long run chase the marginal user, who by and large wants average content almost by definition.

Tweaking the remuneration model would be a good starting point, where instead of Spotify taking eg. 30% of the subscription, and paying $0.0018-0.0032 per stream depending on artist, if instead the model worked as Spotify taking 30%, and each artist payout for a user's streams was calculated as ($10 * 0.7) * (number of plays by user of artist songs / total plays in given period), one would likely see artists serving niches or esoteric music to be better remunerated, albeit at the expense of the studios managing household name artists.

jsnell• 3 years ago

The thesis of the article is that the payment structure is incentivizing artists to record shorter songs.

But this also means that the platforms should have an equal incentive to make listeners listen to longer ones. Spotify seems to pay out about $7 billion / year in music licensing. If they can make the average song listened to by a user just 1 second longer, they reduce that by about 0.5%. That's saving like $35 million / year for each second! Move the average up by 10 seconds, and it's enough to actually make Spotify profitable.

Considering how much of the modern music listening is driven by algorithms either directly or through recommendations, it seems like it'd be incredibly easy for a streaming platform to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the longer songs being what gets listened to. That in turn should make the artists record longer songs. Why isn't that happening?

Or is it happening, and the current state is just the equilibrium we've arrived at when those competing incentives were resolved?

rm999• 3 years ago

If they can make the average song listened to by a user just 1 second longer, they reduce that by about 0.5%.

This isn't how music royalties work - rather, Spotify (and most other on demand streaming services) pay out a % of their net revenue to rights holders. This % does not change based on how many streams there are in total, but it IS distributed proportionally based on the number of streams, so it's more profitable for a music rightsholder to have more streams (the topic of the article).

Some high level information: https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/

morkalork2• 3 years ago

Seems like they should measure proportions using seconds streamed vs units streamed?

wryun• 3 years ago

But also:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/06/deezer-and-...

lotsofpulp2• 3 years ago

Can you define “net revenue”? Do you mean gross revenue, because Spotify does not earn profit (aka net income)?

MuffinFlavored• 3 years ago

Is a stream defined as wonderful listen through the song or like maybe halfway through?

thenickdude• 3 years ago

YouTube Music has a "(From Youtube:) Long Listening" section of recommendations on the homepage feed that could support that idea.

mbg721• 3 years ago

Any longer than 2:40, and the needle might jump the track on the 45.

PopAlongKid2• 3 years ago

Many vinyl 7-inch 45 RPM releases were much longer than that and played just fine. For example, Hey Jude (Beatles) was over 7 minutes long.

d--b• 3 years ago

Haha reminds me of Lorenzo, a French rapper who split his album into 68 30-second tracks just to mess with Spotify. The album got withdrawn within minutes but the buzz worked well!

ChatGTP• 3 years ago

So much for “art”, eh? I consider what he did art.

I think it’s cool he played with the system, that is art to me, shame “the central committee” deemed it as unorthodox.

benrutter• 3 years ago

I listen to a lot of more left field music styles, and it seems like the trend is almost in the complete other direction. Styles and genres like ambient music or field recordings, that aggressively don't try to capture your attention immediately are definitely having a bit of a heyday. I'd be interested whether this is to some level a reaction to mainstream music's getting shorter.

verisimi• 3 years ago

Hasn't corporatisation/marketing of music always 'changed the sound'? I can't even think what non-commercial music would sound like, unless it's classic folk tunes, and even then...

defrost• 3 years ago

Every part of the world has it's own local sound, although perhaps less and less and less these days.

There's always been "music people play to be social" with a line from that to "music people play to make some extra cash at the local shindig" which is the essetial core of commercial music - if you want the money you have to appeal to the crowd.

Anyhow, for what it's worth - back in the day we'd drift into the nearest big town once a month or so and typically have an all night get together | jam session with these people (and others) .. it's classic folk but particular to a specific bit of the world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgBgQQXoUw8

spondyl• 3 years ago

While not directly related, fellow readers might also find the memo titled "Dave Goldberg on music"[1] to be an interesting prediction around the future of music as it comes to streaming.

As a bit more background, it was a memo sent to then-CEO of Sony Entertainment Michael Lynton by Dave Goldberg[2] who was most recently known as CEO of SurveyMonkey but had been the Director of Marketing Strategy at Capital Records in the early 90s.

I'm not entirely sure when it was sent but according to my notes, it was originally sent in the form of an email, and was released as part of the Sony Pictures hack from 2014.

Anyway, the gist of the memo recommends that back-catalogue becomes the core of the business, as that's where the most streams occur with the new release business being greatly scaled down with a focus on music that will have longevity.

Music is becoming a purely digital product. A digital-only recorded music company will be a much more profitable one after one-off restructuring costs.
Catalog needs to be defined much more broadly to include all music that hasn¹t been created in the last 2 years
With catalog providing the base profits, new releases need to be cut back dramatically to the point where the new business either breaks even or loses a small amount of money (justified by the long term catalog income stream of those songs)
This will bias new releases to genres like rock and country that typically have had strong catalog. These also happen to be the genres that don’t have expensive producers so more music can be created for the same A&R dollars
Artist contracts that have large fixed marketing costs will need to be restructured or sold off as there will no longer be headcount to do the work. New releases will be tested on consumers before added money is spent to ensure that it isn’t wasted.
Internationally, most local repertoire will probably have to be eliminated. The record company will want to sell off the local repertoire or spin out the local labels and focus on English language repertoire globally, unless there is some country that has managed to be profitable on its local repertoire (i.e.Japan)

Not all of this necessarily came to pass, and some of it sounds a little miserable, but it's an interesting peek at some thinking at the time, at least from a consultant.

[1] https://sriramk.com/memos/goldberg-music.pdf

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

PedroBatista• 3 years ago

The sound/structure was changed many times before to make an album sellable, for the radio, to make venues sell more beer, to help the graphical aspect when shown on MTV and the list goes on.

Streaming is changing the sound of music

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