If In the Air Tonight were released today, we'd never have gotten to that drum fill. As an artist and a producer, I'd like to propose a manifesto:
- We reject streaming revenue (as our slice of the pie will never come anyway) and commit to driving our efforts toward what we consider our artistic vision, not the platform's;
- We refuse to conform to the stripping trend and commit to keeping songs as lengthy as they need to be;
- We prioritize creating meaningful work and giving it the format that makes sense, be it a single or a full album;
- We commit to taking back control over our art instead of tailoring it to others' needs.
I think… if you make music for you… then none of these issues arise. 🤞
Thats not saying you’ll make any money.
But if you make music for you, then eg money is of little importance in that context.
Now ok, I’m retired and part of what I’m doing is going back to my young self dreams of making music. I’m perhaps fortunate enough to not need extra income.
I do tho, want to “do more with my music”.
Right now, I’m back at the beginning trying to work out how to actually record (to a reasonable standard, ie one I’m content with, not necessarily of commercial release standards) what I’ve written. I’ve got a lot to learn.
I can imagine that maybe one day I’ll make some of these recordings published & thus publicly available.
Where of course would be a consideration.
So I guess my thinking could be influenced.
But, I come back to “why”.
“One’s why” is something I seem to write a lot about on here. Because I know that understanding & being true to it, make a huge difference to “success” over the medium and longer term.
Success is, of course, personal. Your criteria, milestones, expectations, goals, outcomes… no one else’s.
So yeah, I’d be in.
But I’d say (think / hope) that in writing what I write about to remind me to do the things I want to do, my aim anyway is to - do it for me.
Whatever the idea / concept etc of the song I’m writing will define its style / length / composition etc… I hope 🤞
That's what I'm talking about. I'm not saying one should refuse making money out of his own music, but I do say I'm not shaping my music to big companies' algorythm only to collect pocket chance.
The best decision I made this year was to start investing in physical LP again. I'm at a weird moment of my life as a stay-at-home mom in which listening to vinyl is oddly the most practical way for me to listen to music. Do I occasionally cringe at the initial $30-$40 investment? Yes. But in the end, I often learn to love the album, and consequently the artist, so much more for the investment of my time and money.
the LP provides more of an experience. Instead of click on and off something, you have to pick out which album, take it out of the sleeve, put it on, flip it. You live with it more.
I was collecting vinyl before it started climbing in price and then switched to CDs primarily. I’ll buy the occasional album but CDs are a much better bargain now and you get a similar experience - intention, investment of time and space, listening to an entire album, etc. If you need a cd player, there are plenty of guides on YouTube for finding the right one.
The first LP that ever arrived in my small hometown in Brazil was Brothers in Arms. I was 9, and I still remember every single aspect of it it (magical) so I understand.
At the same time, as an average mother, juggling and hustling educating a future man in this new fast paced / multi-faceted (directional) world, this is the only way I can introduce my 5yo to quality music, whether it’s (real) bands for children (which are surprisingly hard to find) or the classics from the past.
I do wonder, though, could there be a middle ground? I imagine many of us would be willing to pay more for a subscription model that better protects artists and preserves the integrity of their work. Is that even possible? Because I've tried Bandcamp, but none of content we listen to are there. Yes, I can purchase some albums but it's not organic.
Can Spotify have different memberships for paying mostly to the artist?
I am on the same way I go back to film photography. I seriously think to find an alternative to Spotify knowing they also steal the artists. In Madrid we have some good vinyl shops it is time to rediscover the pleasure of fully living the music experience physically, mentally and aurally this is what the vinyl carries
I think this is all interesting and it is mostly true. I love albums and still do a podcast about albums and I do miss their cultural significance.
There are some things I'd quibble with, like the overall sound quality mattering to most people. It doesn't. It's why YouTube became the top music streamer quite quickly even though the quality sucked.
I think the primary thing I'd say though is that first Napster killed the album by allowing people to just get individual song quickly. Then Apple really killed the album by allowing people to purchase single songs. Spotify is more of a reaction to how the internet economy works and and how most content apps thrive. I think this is an example of hating the player not the game (to be clear I'm not some Spotify defender just how I see it).
Also I think it's interesting to consider that before the albums era it was a singles era. That there is some of the current landscape that is more similar to the 50s and 60s with singles that were pretty short on 45s. I would say given that evolution, it's hard to predict what it will all look like in ten years. Ten years ago reading was dead in the great pivot to video, and now tons of writers have substack careers we'd have never guessed possible.
But isn't the decrease in sound quality for the market leader just overall making music shittier? There should at least be an option to turn it up when you really want to immerse yourself. I find it sad.
True about Napster and Apple and good points about the singles era. Maybe there was just an album era too...
I think it's shittier? I think maybe everything is shittier. But also, I think it's possible that the access to all of this music for everyone all the time is worth the trade off? I think if you had told me 25 years ago that for $15 a month I would eventually have access to every piece of recorded music on demand, and kids would be able to go listen to Guns N Roses or Metallica without having to buy it, I think that would be dream.
I love music probably more than anything (dogs and wife excluded). However when I go and listen to Apple Music rather than Spotify which is supposedly higher quality, I can't tell the difference. Maybe I should be able to, but I definitely cannot.
As someone writing about 60s music, I have to agree that there were albums then but it was a singles culture driven by Top 40 radio and the Billboard Hot 100 until the mid-sixties. The songs were pop, very hooky, and tended to be short and repetitive.
The concept album, from what I understand, was an innovation of the Beatles and Beach Boys in the mid-60s that really took off in the latter half of the 60s and 70s.
The thing that is missing now, sadly, is that there was far more opportunity for artists to interact with the audience in local clubs and regional and national tours, get known, and create a following. They could also appear on national television -- Ed Sullivan , Dick Clark, various variety shows. And of course get played on radio. Everything is over-controlled and fractured now. Not easy to get a song, concept, or message out when the landscape is like this.
Concept albums were very common in jazz, 50s pop related to jazz (singers), and of course extended and multi-movement classical works that millions listened to in the era of bound 78 rpm albums (hence the name) and later 10” and 12” LP records. I don’t know exactly how conscious of that model Brian Wilson or The Beatles were, but they knew some of that music.
Oh yeah certainly not endorsing the current structure as positive, just sort of more that it's unpredictable how it will go and Spotify is more of a reaction to it than a cause of it.
I use the truly aggravating Tidal app solely because of its vastly superior sound quality. I'm stunned when I listen to Spotify. It sounds like it's coming out of a transistor radio!
Behind all this is a larger (dare I say metaphysical?) discussion of how the physical limitations imposed in the history of recorded music impact how we listen, and form our expectations in the present. If only 3 minutes worth of sound can be captured on one side of a 10-inch 78rpm record, the song itself will conform. When the LP was introduced, that 3 minutes per side jumped to 20 minutes, or thereabouts. Oddly enough, most albums thereafter remained rooted in that 10-inch experience, just compiled onto one disc - i.e. ten or so 3 minute songs, making up the entirety of what we call an album. With the arrival of the CD, that available time jumped again, but the format ended up mimicking the LP, mostly because the industry was invested in reissuing older material for the new format, rather than curating new material for the new format. So there's still that lag, that pointing backward toward the initial encounter with recording technology. But now that everything has moved toward streaming, where the only limit is no limit, it's puzzling to see that distance from the original physical limit point toward the song's diminishment, in terms of duration, rather than its increase. Is it because the business model understands better than we do the minimum viable product involved in the exchange? Why shouldn't AI offer us endless songs of infinite complexity? Or better still, communities of living writers eschewing AI to generate together endless songs of infinite complexity. If Borges were alive he could write that story... And Joel, I disagree that you can't fall in love with songs of limited duration: "California Girls," "I Saw Her Standing There," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and "Come On In My Kitchen" all come in under three minutes. I often wish songwriters were more concerned with economy, as it can be a great gift.
Good points! And you had my tail wagging when you mentioned a minimum viable product involved in the exchange of music. What a good analogy.
And Ok- good picks on the songs you love. But all of those are also a part of a bigger picture of an LP. The >2 minute songs coming out now often are not.
No, you're absolutely right - most artists can't write with the necessary economy to make two minutes sound vital. It makes you wish for a Brian Wilson-esque Svengali of TikTok, to see if it could be done, and well. But it would need artists still grounded in the logo-centric world we've almost lost completely, in which language is the primary means of expression. Without poetry, popular music is lost.
I also found that I would give physical music way more of a chance. When I first bought All Shook Down by the Replacements I thought it was a pretty underwhelming album. But I'd spent my allotted music budget for the week on it so I kept listening and pretty soon I really liked the album. It's harder to give music a chance when the supply feels infinite.
Agreed. I'm a big album-listener. My first interaction with the album is unlike any other listen. It's sad to me if folks are only listening to one song once and then moving on. Not only does the album tell a fuller story, but listening to the songs and the album multiple times gives me more information.
My relationship to it, my like or dislike for it, changes while I understand what's coming, pick up on more of the lyrics.
It's not just about the music or the artist but about ourselves and what we learn about our own taste and opinions when we sit with something.
I agree. The album format is just more interesting and rewarding, especially with repeated listens.
I'm a HUGE fan of R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. They wrote the songs while on a huge world tour and they recorded half the album's songs during soundchecks, backstage, or even on the tour bus.
The album is about movement (songs titles include “Leave,” “Departure,” etc) and the way the song were recorded really captures that vibe.
Some of the songs were recorded in a studio, like How the West Was Won, E-bow the Letter, Bittersweet Me, but they just add to the story, IMO.
If you want to be really accurate, it’s the Internet that’s killed albums, not Spotify. Spotify was a response to illegal file sharing (Napster, LimeWire, PirateBay) that was threatening the entire business model of the record industry. Spotify was a legal solution; a superior product to file sharing and a way to give consumers access to the world’s music. It was a technological breakthrough. And - by giving the labels equity, Spotify made sure to keep the label’s focus on shareholder value and not royalty rates or the future of albums. And, yes, that’s very unfortunate.
I miss the Christmas morning feeling of waiting for an album to come out and then going on a pilgrimage to get it. Coming home with it in your hands, practically trembling from excitement.
When I started buying music in the mid-90s, I could only afford cassette tapes. I got so used to the weird rising pitch sound at the start of side A, the leader tape strip, that when I bought my first CD (Everclear's Sparkle and Fade), I was taken aback by how suddenly the music started. Like "wtf?!? where's that weird rising pitch?"
There are signature albums in every music listeners life. The ones I played the most are probably Queen of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf, My Morning Jacket's At Dawn, and Soundgarden's Superunknown. Those two latter albums had really fantastic packaging. Each song had its own dedicated page of lyrics and a photo with a unique color scheme. It really made each song seem like mini kingdoms in a hugeass sonic world.
I liked this article. Too much has been lost with the shift to smartphones. I hate them and I think they suck. They've ruined society.
I know I’m not in the majority here, but I’m always a bit disappointed when an artist I like only releases singles. Maybe it’s my xennial wiring, but I still love listening to full albums all the way through.
When I was making albums with my band, we thought a lot about sequencing and those in-between moments, how everything flowed and felt as a whole. It was meant to be a journey, not just a collection of songs.
I still listen that way. Like with RAYE’s new album, there’s such a strong arc. I love that she opens with a spoken intro, and honestly one of my favourite moments is the final track where she thanks everyone, it feels like she’s making you actually hear the liner notes (because who reads liner notes these days?).
I get why singles dominate now, but I agree that we lose something when we let go of the full album experience! Hopefully some artists will continue to hold the full album experience in reverence like the rest of us!
Thank you for this, well written and wise. 'We’ve replaced the narrative arc with a desperate grab for attention" - totally. Neil Diamond once said: "A good song takes you somewhere and then brings you back home". The sonic snack is over before it begins and when it is over you are still where you were before you heard it.
So very true. In our need to make music more accessible it has become watered down by what you say. I'm apart of that generation that loved the anticipation of racing out to the local music store to get my favorite artists album. The joy was listening to all of it picking out what you liked and reading the credits. I have bought into the streaming age but i do try and force myself to listen to all the songs but yes it's just not the same. Knowing people in the industry who make the music has made me more conscious of how I take in music.
I kept waiting for the part where you remind everyone that this is how the music biz started - you bought a 78rpm single, and hoped there were two different songs instead of just the same song on both sides
The album as a format was always tied to an economy that no longer exists. Spotify optimized for streams, which optimized for singles, which optimized against the kind of immersive listening that built the deepest fanbases in every genre. The underground electronic music world is one of the few places where album listening culture survived, partly because the audience actively resists convenience culture.
If In the Air Tonight were released today, we'd never have gotten to that drum fill. As an artist and a producer, I'd like to propose a manifesto:
- We reject streaming revenue (as our slice of the pie will never come anyway) and commit to driving our efforts toward what we consider our artistic vision, not the platform's;
- We refuse to conform to the stripping trend and commit to keeping songs as lengthy as they need to be;
- We prioritize creating meaningful work and giving it the format that makes sense, be it a single or a full album;
- We commit to taking back control over our art instead of tailoring it to others' needs.
Who's signing it?
Pretty radical idea man…
Well, radical times call for radical measures, I think :)
Se guiar por plataformas. Em troco de nada.
Precisamos nos posicionar. Chega de sermos submissos às plataformas!
I’m in 👍
I think… if you make music for you… then none of these issues arise. 🤞
Thats not saying you’ll make any money.
But if you make music for you, then eg money is of little importance in that context.
Now ok, I’m retired and part of what I’m doing is going back to my young self dreams of making music. I’m perhaps fortunate enough to not need extra income.
I do tho, want to “do more with my music”.
Right now, I’m back at the beginning trying to work out how to actually record (to a reasonable standard, ie one I’m content with, not necessarily of commercial release standards) what I’ve written. I’ve got a lot to learn.
I can imagine that maybe one day I’ll make some of these recordings published & thus publicly available.
Where of course would be a consideration.
So I guess my thinking could be influenced.
But, I come back to “why”.
“One’s why” is something I seem to write a lot about on here. Because I know that understanding & being true to it, make a huge difference to “success” over the medium and longer term.
Success is, of course, personal. Your criteria, milestones, expectations, goals, outcomes… no one else’s.
So yeah, I’d be in.
But I’d say (think / hope) that in writing what I write about to remind me to do the things I want to do, my aim anyway is to - do it for me.
Whatever the idea / concept etc of the song I’m writing will define its style / length / composition etc… I hope 🤞
That's what I'm talking about. I'm not saying one should refuse making money out of his own music, but I do say I'm not shaping my music to big companies' algorythm only to collect pocket chance.
That’s where I stand!!
The real challenge is not letting this digital “infinitude” force us into market formulas that kill suspense and the artist’s vision.
The best decision I made this year was to start investing in physical LP again. I'm at a weird moment of my life as a stay-at-home mom in which listening to vinyl is oddly the most practical way for me to listen to music. Do I occasionally cringe at the initial $30-$40 investment? Yes. But in the end, I often learn to love the album, and consequently the artist, so much more for the investment of my time and money.
the LP provides more of an experience. Instead of click on and off something, you have to pick out which album, take it out of the sleeve, put it on, flip it. You live with it more.
Bingo
So true
Yes
Love that
I was collecting vinyl before it started climbing in price and then switched to CDs primarily. I’ll buy the occasional album but CDs are a much better bargain now and you get a similar experience - intention, investment of time and space, listening to an entire album, etc. If you need a cd player, there are plenty of guides on YouTube for finding the right one.
The first LP that ever arrived in my small hometown in Brazil was Brothers in Arms. I was 9, and I still remember every single aspect of it it (magical) so I understand.
At the same time, as an average mother, juggling and hustling educating a future man in this new fast paced / multi-faceted (directional) world, this is the only way I can introduce my 5yo to quality music, whether it’s (real) bands for children (which are surprisingly hard to find) or the classics from the past.
I do wonder, though, could there be a middle ground? I imagine many of us would be willing to pay more for a subscription model that better protects artists and preserves the integrity of their work. Is that even possible? Because I've tried Bandcamp, but none of content we listen to are there. Yes, I can purchase some albums but it's not organic.
Can Spotify have different memberships for paying mostly to the artist?
I am on the same way I go back to film photography. I seriously think to find an alternative to Spotify knowing they also steal the artists. In Madrid we have some good vinyl shops it is time to rediscover the pleasure of fully living the music experience physically, mentally and aurally this is what the vinyl carries
Brigid you should read my book Body of Work. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/813195/body-of-work-by-keith-jopling/
I think this is all interesting and it is mostly true. I love albums and still do a podcast about albums and I do miss their cultural significance.
There are some things I'd quibble with, like the overall sound quality mattering to most people. It doesn't. It's why YouTube became the top music streamer quite quickly even though the quality sucked.
I think the primary thing I'd say though is that first Napster killed the album by allowing people to just get individual song quickly. Then Apple really killed the album by allowing people to purchase single songs. Spotify is more of a reaction to how the internet economy works and and how most content apps thrive. I think this is an example of hating the player not the game (to be clear I'm not some Spotify defender just how I see it).
Also I think it's interesting to consider that before the albums era it was a singles era. That there is some of the current landscape that is more similar to the 50s and 60s with singles that were pretty short on 45s. I would say given that evolution, it's hard to predict what it will all look like in ten years. Ten years ago reading was dead in the great pivot to video, and now tons of writers have substack careers we'd have never guessed possible.
But isn't the decrease in sound quality for the market leader just overall making music shittier? There should at least be an option to turn it up when you really want to immerse yourself. I find it sad.
True about Napster and Apple and good points about the singles era. Maybe there was just an album era too...
I think it's shittier? I think maybe everything is shittier. But also, I think it's possible that the access to all of this music for everyone all the time is worth the trade off? I think if you had told me 25 years ago that for $15 a month I would eventually have access to every piece of recorded music on demand, and kids would be able to go listen to Guns N Roses or Metallica without having to buy it, I think that would be dream.
I love music probably more than anything (dogs and wife excluded). However when I go and listen to Apple Music rather than Spotify which is supposedly higher quality, I can't tell the difference. Maybe I should be able to, but I definitely cannot.
Enshittification is so real, ha!
As someone writing about 60s music, I have to agree that there were albums then but it was a singles culture driven by Top 40 radio and the Billboard Hot 100 until the mid-sixties. The songs were pop, very hooky, and tended to be short and repetitive.
The concept album, from what I understand, was an innovation of the Beatles and Beach Boys in the mid-60s that really took off in the latter half of the 60s and 70s.
The thing that is missing now, sadly, is that there was far more opportunity for artists to interact with the audience in local clubs and regional and national tours, get known, and create a following. They could also appear on national television -- Ed Sullivan , Dick Clark, various variety shows. And of course get played on radio. Everything is over-controlled and fractured now. Not easy to get a song, concept, or message out when the landscape is like this.
Concept albums were very common in jazz, 50s pop related to jazz (singers), and of course extended and multi-movement classical works that millions listened to in the era of bound 78 rpm albums (hence the name) and later 10” and 12” LP records. I don’t know exactly how conscious of that model Brian Wilson or The Beatles were, but they knew some of that music.
Oh yeah certainly not endorsing the current structure as positive, just sort of more that it's unpredictable how it will go and Spotify is more of a reaction to it than a cause of it.
I use the truly aggravating Tidal app solely because of its vastly superior sound quality. I'm stunned when I listen to Spotify. It sounds like it's coming out of a transistor radio!
UGH
To some degrees you’re definitely right but the difference between even Apple Music from Spotify is more than easy to notice
Apple Music and even SoundCloud sounds way better than Spotify no matter what the output is
Behind all this is a larger (dare I say metaphysical?) discussion of how the physical limitations imposed in the history of recorded music impact how we listen, and form our expectations in the present. If only 3 minutes worth of sound can be captured on one side of a 10-inch 78rpm record, the song itself will conform. When the LP was introduced, that 3 minutes per side jumped to 20 minutes, or thereabouts. Oddly enough, most albums thereafter remained rooted in that 10-inch experience, just compiled onto one disc - i.e. ten or so 3 minute songs, making up the entirety of what we call an album. With the arrival of the CD, that available time jumped again, but the format ended up mimicking the LP, mostly because the industry was invested in reissuing older material for the new format, rather than curating new material for the new format. So there's still that lag, that pointing backward toward the initial encounter with recording technology. But now that everything has moved toward streaming, where the only limit is no limit, it's puzzling to see that distance from the original physical limit point toward the song's diminishment, in terms of duration, rather than its increase. Is it because the business model understands better than we do the minimum viable product involved in the exchange? Why shouldn't AI offer us endless songs of infinite complexity? Or better still, communities of living writers eschewing AI to generate together endless songs of infinite complexity. If Borges were alive he could write that story... And Joel, I disagree that you can't fall in love with songs of limited duration: "California Girls," "I Saw Her Standing There," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and "Come On In My Kitchen" all come in under three minutes. I often wish songwriters were more concerned with economy, as it can be a great gift.
Good points! And you had my tail wagging when you mentioned a minimum viable product involved in the exchange of music. What a good analogy.
And Ok- good picks on the songs you love. But all of those are also a part of a bigger picture of an LP. The >2 minute songs coming out now often are not.
No, you're absolutely right - most artists can't write with the necessary economy to make two minutes sound vital. It makes you wish for a Brian Wilson-esque Svengali of TikTok, to see if it could be done, and well. But it would need artists still grounded in the logo-centric world we've almost lost completely, in which language is the primary means of expression. Without poetry, popular music is lost.
good point.
I also found that I would give physical music way more of a chance. When I first bought All Shook Down by the Replacements I thought it was a pretty underwhelming album. But I'd spent my allotted music budget for the week on it so I kept listening and pretty soon I really liked the album. It's harder to give music a chance when the supply feels infinite.
Agreed. I'm a big album-listener. My first interaction with the album is unlike any other listen. It's sad to me if folks are only listening to one song once and then moving on. Not only does the album tell a fuller story, but listening to the songs and the album multiple times gives me more information.
My relationship to it, my like or dislike for it, changes while I understand what's coming, pick up on more of the lyrics.
It's not just about the music or the artist but about ourselves and what we learn about our own taste and opinions when we sit with something.
It's like revisiting a painting in a museum.
Amen
I agree. The album format is just more interesting and rewarding, especially with repeated listens.
I'm a HUGE fan of R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. They wrote the songs while on a huge world tour and they recorded half the album's songs during soundchecks, backstage, or even on the tour bus.
The album is about movement (songs titles include “Leave,” “Departure,” etc) and the way the song were recorded really captures that vibe.
Some of the songs were recorded in a studio, like How the West Was Won, E-bow the Letter, Bittersweet Me, but they just add to the story, IMO.
If you want to be really accurate, it’s the Internet that’s killed albums, not Spotify. Spotify was a response to illegal file sharing (Napster, LimeWire, PirateBay) that was threatening the entire business model of the record industry. Spotify was a legal solution; a superior product to file sharing and a way to give consumers access to the world’s music. It was a technological breakthrough. And - by giving the labels equity, Spotify made sure to keep the label’s focus on shareholder value and not royalty rates or the future of albums. And, yes, that’s very unfortunate.
You’re definitely not wrong!
I miss the Christmas morning feeling of waiting for an album to come out and then going on a pilgrimage to get it. Coming home with it in your hands, practically trembling from excitement.
When I started buying music in the mid-90s, I could only afford cassette tapes. I got so used to the weird rising pitch sound at the start of side A, the leader tape strip, that when I bought my first CD (Everclear's Sparkle and Fade), I was taken aback by how suddenly the music started. Like "wtf?!? where's that weird rising pitch?"
There are signature albums in every music listeners life. The ones I played the most are probably Queen of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf, My Morning Jacket's At Dawn, and Soundgarden's Superunknown. Those two latter albums had really fantastic packaging. Each song had its own dedicated page of lyrics and a photo with a unique color scheme. It really made each song seem like mini kingdoms in a hugeass sonic world.
I liked this article. Too much has been lost with the shift to smartphones. I hate them and I think they suck. They've ruined society.
Good picks! Glad you liked it..
I know I’m not in the majority here, but I’m always a bit disappointed when an artist I like only releases singles. Maybe it’s my xennial wiring, but I still love listening to full albums all the way through.
When I was making albums with my band, we thought a lot about sequencing and those in-between moments, how everything flowed and felt as a whole. It was meant to be a journey, not just a collection of songs.
I still listen that way. Like with RAYE’s new album, there’s such a strong arc. I love that she opens with a spoken intro, and honestly one of my favourite moments is the final track where she thanks everyone, it feels like she’s making you actually hear the liner notes (because who reads liner notes these days?).
I get why singles dominate now, but I agree that we lose something when we let go of the full album experience! Hopefully some artists will continue to hold the full album experience in reverence like the rest of us!
this is why I listen to ambient.
Amen
Thank you for this, well written and wise. 'We’ve replaced the narrative arc with a desperate grab for attention" - totally. Neil Diamond once said: "A good song takes you somewhere and then brings you back home". The sonic snack is over before it begins and when it is over you are still where you were before you heard it.
Good quote!!
Spotify Killed the Video Star.
Ha!
So very true. In our need to make music more accessible it has become watered down by what you say. I'm apart of that generation that loved the anticipation of racing out to the local music store to get my favorite artists album. The joy was listening to all of it picking out what you liked and reading the credits. I have bought into the streaming age but i do try and force myself to listen to all the songs but yes it's just not the same. Knowing people in the industry who make the music has made me more conscious of how I take in music.
It was inevitable I guess- I don't really blame them. Just a part of the evolution
Spotify's popularity is relatively recent. I think it started with YouTube and torrents
For sure
Beautifully stated. Now I need to go cry into a cocktail.
Happy Saturday 🥂
I kept waiting for the part where you remind everyone that this is how the music biz started - you bought a 78rpm single, and hoped there were two different songs instead of just the same song on both sides
Haha- so true. I didn’t go back that far..
The album as a format was always tied to an economy that no longer exists. Spotify optimized for streams, which optimized for singles, which optimized against the kind of immersive listening that built the deepest fanbases in every genre. The underground electronic music world is one of the few places where album listening culture survived, partly because the audience actively resists convenience culture.
So true
the album wil be there long after spotify has died.