8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

Surviving Spotify’s Future Landscape

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There’s a lot of chatter about Daniel Ek’s recent interview with Musically’s Stuart Dredge. There are more than a few nuggets to dissect, but this one is getting the most attention:

“There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough,” said Ek. […] “I feel, really, that the ones that aren’t doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release music the way it used to be released …”

As Liz Pelly has explored on The Baffler, Spotify seems intent on influencing artists to tailor their music to benefit the platform. Yes, some point out that in past decades artists used to release 1 or 2 albums every year, so what Ek proposes is nothing new. But the difference is that artists now almost solely rely on touring for income. It’s impossible for most acts to frequently take months off to record a succession of albums without dire financial risk. No doubt you’ve heard the common refrain that bands used to tour to promote album releases, and now it’s the other way around. 

PRS’s Tom Gray illustrates this using The Beatles as an example. The Beatles stopped touring to concentrate on their studio work and, to Ek’s satisfaction, released a lot more than an album every few years. It’s doubtful a 2020 Beatles could do the same. Without touring income, they would be in the hole. Here’s Tom’s take (click here to read the full thread):

Tom’s numbers get a little fudgey — studio costs and such don’t need to be that high these days — but the point stands. The Spotify age is not kind to bands that camp out in studios. (The streaming model is even crueler to those who write songs but don’t perform, but that’s a whole other harrowing tale I’ll save for another time.)

Damon Krukowski challenges Ek’s statement by looking at current Spotify earnings from his former band, Galaxie 500. Krukowski points out that the band hasn’t released anything in over 20 years so, by Ek’s reasoning, they shouldn’t do well in ‘this future landscape.’ But they get more than one million streams a month. That’s pretty good, right? God knows I wish my catalog got half those monthly streams. 

You might think those numbers put Krukowski and Galaxie 500 in the musical middle class. Instead, those streams amount to about $1250 per band member a month. Here’s Damon (click here to read the full thread):

The concern isn’t what Ek refers to as the ‘top tier’ artists. Those are doing fine. The top artists have always done fine. And, for a variety of factors, they can (for now) live off Spotify royalties and the other compounding advantages of fame and exposure. The problem is the disruption of music’s middle class. This sector relied financially for most of this century (so far) on touring. And with COVID-19 in the air, the absence of touring and the diminished value of recorded music creates a crisis. Music’s middle class was already disappearing — in 2021, it could be gone entirely.1Be sure to put a pin on the idea that this disappearing middle class is reflective of income disparity in our society at large.

That’s what this interview — and Bob Lefsetz’s defense of Spotify — glosses over. Of course, wildly successful artists, with tens or hundreds of millions of plays a month, make good money from streaming. And it’s disingenuous to imply that artists complain because they feel entitled to the same. I can confidently speak for most artists that we just want an opportunity to earn a living through our music. Opportunity is not entitlement. Even though an artist’s ‘middle class’ was always precarious, there’s very little chance now to make it work. 

The implication from Ek is — and he’s not that far off — in the eyes of Spotify, you’re either a superstar or an unknown. The insult is Ek saying that the latter position is mostly the artist’s fault because she’s a Luddite who’s not “putting the work in.”

(I’m reminded of this insightful quote from author Nancy Baym: “It’s amazing to me to see how so many careers, in music and beyond, have shifted such that it’s no longer enough to do the work. Now you have to do the work of making sure everyone is seeing that you’ve done the work.”) 

But I’m not placing all the blame on Ek, streaming, and the Napster guys who let this genie out of the bottle. All of that became inevitable as soon as the first ones-and-zeroes were digitally encoded on a compact disc. But as listeners and recording artists, we play a part by accepting the notion that Spotify is unavoidable and necessary. Yes, I believe that Spotify is not going anywhere. And I doubt they’ll change anything except notch their monthly price up a dollar or two in a few years. What it’s essential also to understand is we’re not obligated to play along. 

As concerned recording artists, we don’t necessarily need to remove our music from Spotify (though, if you do exit the platform, good on you). The key is to treat streaming as the entrance of a marketing funnel to lead potential fans to our sites and mailing lists. Let’s look at it as if it’s radio. Radio in the US egregiously doesn’t pay a royalty to performers, but performers still allow their music on the radio as it’s an entry for new listeners. But they never say, “You should only listen to my music on the radio.” 

Or as a more musically-inclined Tyler Durden might say: “The first rule of Spotify is you do not talk about Spotify.” Only post links to your site or a store like Bandcamp. Seriously — there is no reason to send your fans to Spotify. The distant hope that the company will return the favor by adding your song to one of their big playlists is a broken motivation.

As listeners, we have a responsibility, too. I frequently write about the seductive appeal of streaming — I know I can’t resist effortlessly accessing an album or band that I just learned about. But we should also support the artists we enjoy by directly purchasing their music, ordering their merchandise, and signing up for their mailing lists. It’s not that difficult, and these gestures mean a lot to the artists. And, like musical Tyler, we should spread the word by posting to our favorite artists’ websites and Bandcamp pages, not Spotify players. 

We’ll all benefit the sooner we start thinking of Spotify as an occasional sampling tool instead of a go-to listening necessity. Let’s happily hand the platform over to the ‘top tier’ with their frequent releases and domination of playlists. It’s evident from the interview that’s who Ek has in mind for his company, anyway (besides Joe Rogan, of course). 

Oneness of Juju’s Music for the People

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I’m having a deep listen to Strut’s new reissue of African Rhythms 1970-1982, a collection of classic tracks by Oneness of Juju. The Richmond, VA, based band is led by saxophonist/flutist James “Plunky Nkabinde” Branch, with its roots in the early ’70s avant-garde jazz community of San Francisco and the NYC loft scene. As part of the former, he met and collaborated with South African exile Ndikho Xaba who introduced Plunky to the concepts and philosophy of African music. Inspired, Plunky incorporated these concepts with his jazz influences and developed a ‘music as devotion’ mindset. He brought these ideas to New York, where he worked directly with Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra. A move back home to Richmond stirred more ingredients into this already flavorful stew as Plunky sought to build a music for the people: 

“In the Richmond, Virginia, area, there was not as much of a market for avant-garde jazz as you might think,” Plunk says with a laugh over the phone. “So we incorporated some R&B elements, and a drummer playing a drum set, and a guitar, and added a female vocalist. We had to meet our audience halfway. We started bridging this line between R&B and funk and avant-garde jazz. I was conscious of trying to find an audience for the message we had in our music, and trying to serve the community and make a living, which is how we ended up with this convergence of styles.”

Richmond’s vicinity to Washington, DC, allowed frequent performances by Oneness of Juju in the nation’s capital. DC’s audiences were receptive to the diverse stylistic palette the band offered. Plunky thinks this is because “all these embassies and people coming from all over the world for various reasons … different parts of their culture were based in DC.” And these performances often took place at protests rather than concert venues, exposing a political subtext to Oneness of Juju’s cultural mixture. Again, the band sought to provide the music of the people:

”… all of those dudes, Gil Scott, Chuck Brown, Oneness of Juju, Experience Unlimited, a big part of what we did in those days was not just parties and nightclubs, but also participating in demonstrations. There were any number of other community-based activities in the public parks; summer-long festivals and weekly concerts that all those acts would participate in. They started out as street concerts and would get thousands of people to come out. And music was the drawing card.”

Plunky’s mission to deliver his people’s music continues to this day. Since the beginning of The Strange Times, he’s given impromptu concerts on the porch of his Richmond house nightly for neighbors who require musical relief.

African Rhythms 1970-1982 is a spirited listen, its songs moving effortlessly from funk, afro-rhythms, disco, rock, spiritual jazz, and in between tangents. The supercharged disco of the Larry Levan favorite “Every Way But Loose” will probably ring a few bells, as will the undeniable classic “African Rhythms,” famously sampled and reworked by none other than J Dilla. I’m also taken by the collection’s ‘unreleased version’ of “Bootsie’s Lament” which sounds not too far off from a lost Sun Ra Arkestra nugget. Percussive jazz workouts like “Sabi” are also here and extraordinary, as is the slow, night jazz of “Space Jungle Funk” — a classy instrumental made strange via some wild stompbox effects on Plunky’s saxophone. 

In its physical form, the collection is a triple vinyl album, featuring over two hours of music. Despite the variety of sounds and influences, these 24 tracks distinctively belong to Oneness of Juju. Listening from beginning to end is an illuminating and coherent journey — you can hear Black music’s history and its future steps. Uplifting and combative, audacious and resilient, African Rhythms 1970-1982 is the music of a turbulent past and suitable — while optimistic — for our stormy present.

🔗→ Oneness Of Juju Were The Collision Of Jazz, Funk, African Music And The Avant-Garde
🔗→ Oneness of Juju: How an Avant-Garde Jazz Group Created A Cult Classic in the Black Arts Movement

The Soundabout

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I’m thinking a lot about how listening creates spaces, both shared and solitary. In the Strange Times, with no concerts and shuttered venues, you might think isolated listening is the only game in town. But, unexpectedly, live-streaming is opening up new opportunities for a shared listening experience, and I’m not talking about the facsimile of hanging out with distant Zoom-mates. 

If there’s one thing live-streaming is bringing back, it’s shared listening in our homes. I thought about this last Thursday when I caught Rishi from Elephant Stone live-streaming from his basement. As I listened, I scrolled through the top bar in Zoom, checking out the other attendees. Many had their kids, family, and friends enjoying the stream with them. Eventually, Caroline joined me in our video square, snow-white cat in tow, and we listened together as Rishi rocked out on sitar.

I know we still (sometimes) watch television shows together, but we’re focused on the music in this case. The video might draw us in, but upon our arrival, the image is an afterthought. We’re silently listening, paying attention to sound, occasionally breaking the spell to comment in the ‘chat’ stream on what we’re hearing. In a way, it’s a replication of meeting at a nightclub (though a coffeehouse is more apt) but only with our family and closest friends.

We’ve all seen those vintage photos of the family crowded around the radio, presumably listening to audio theater — but sometimes it’s music that’s holding their attention. And in pictures from the ’50s and ’60s, we see a gathering of teenagers, one placing the record on the turntable while the others gaze at the album cover or dance around the bedroom. Listening was only private if no one else was around. One could wear headphones (now appearing comically oversized), but there was no mobility. Headphone listening could pass for teenage rebellion if the family were also in the room, but mostly it was awkward.

Maria Schneider with Headphones

The transistor radio — and, to a degree, the car radio — allowed the music to travel as the immediate surroundings changed. This movement created the first personal soundtrack, though other people could pop in and out of our movie (in the licensing world, the phrase ‘interstitial music’ refers to music that all the characters in a scene can hear). Then, of course, the cassette and the Walkman added a new way to listen — a genuinely private listening experience. We choose the music, and we choose where we want to go with it. The combination puts us inside the movie, shifting the soundtrack to our inner lives.

The Walkman (briefly called the Soundabout) debuted in most places outside of Japan in 1980. The early versions were bulky and — in a misunderstanding of how the device would change listening — came with an extra headphone port for a friend. A button paused the music and activated a microphone so the paired listeners could talk to each other. Sony jettisoned these features once it was clear users preferred to listen on their own in sonic isolation. 

In a way, the Walkman and its successors aren’t too different from a psychedelic device, like an audio Dream Machine, altering a state of awareness and heightening perceptions of the moment. Music production had already gotten trippy thanks to a chemically-enhanced counter-culture and studio-as-instrument innovations. Once the music appeared in the middle of one’s head with a wider-than-wide stereo field, things got extra-groovy. As we wander about, the brain’s penchant for connecting images with sound adds meaning and color to the more expansive music. 

In the academic paper Make a Sound Garden Grow: Exploring the New Media Potential of Social Soundscaping, the authors cite a 1993 quote from writer William Gibson: “The Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget. I can’t remember any technological experience since that was quite so wonderful at being able to take music and move it through landscapes and architecture.” The paper continues:

As William Gibson suggests, the Walkman was a revolutionary technology when it was released in 1979 that allowed people to impart a personalized soundtrack over shared public spaces. The Walkman was a significant departure from another popular mobile technology of the time: the boom box. The boom box made private tastes public by merging the music one listened to with the shared sounds of a public space. The Walkman, on the other hand, made possible a more private form of listening.

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I remember a time in New York City in the mid-90s. I was walking the avenues with a friend who made especially jarring sheets-of-layered-noise slow techno. He handed me the headphones to his Walkman so I could check out a new track. The music began filling my head with all these textures and brutal sound blasts. Then we turned a corner, and suddenly we were at the edge of a crime scene — yellow tape everywhere, smoke hugging the pavement, men in dark uniforms excitedly talking on radios. I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to be there — it seemed dangerous. And the music instantly became a part of everything around. It was the glue combining the whole of my perception at that moment. We passed the scene right as the track ended. I took the headphones off, looked at my friend, and said something like, “whoa.” Twenty-five years later, that’s still one of my most potent and memorable music moments.

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Walkman-adjacent means of listening — today’s earbud activities — seem ideally suited for social distancing. Amanda Petrusich, writing about the approaching ubiquity of headphones four years ago, predicted:

It seems possible, though, that we are slowly reconfiguring music as a private pleasure—that, in fact, all pleasures, soon, may be private. We are all the lone stars of secret films, narrated by and in our own minds, and we seek out music that validates that position: separate, but forever plugged in.

That may have been our trajectory. And beyond facilitating an intentionally isolated experience, earbuds acted as a stay-six-feet-away signal. In co-working spaces, I used headphones to imply, ‘I’m hard at work.’ The seat next to me often remained empty. Headphones on walkers, joggers, and public-transported commuters keep the inquisitive, bothersome, or flirtatious at bay. Headphones became an extension of ‘the bubble,’ a signifier of our personal space.

I know that we’re often not walking around with headphones in our homes — though I occasionally do, don’t judge — but one might think social distancing signals the apex of private listening. But we could have easily anticipated the need to experience things together once again. Staying home for months accentuates the lack of concerts or nightclubs or even a chance encounter with a great song in a retail shop or through the window of a passing car. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself listening to — and commenting on — music with family, partners, and friends in my ‘social pod’ more than before. I’m not talking about interacting with music through things like Tim’s Twitter Listening Party. That’s fun and fabulous and, yes, another form of shared listening that feels kinda radical. Besides Twitter parties, I feel like we’re starting to listen together again, live, and in person. I admit the concept is subtle, and you might not notice that it’s happening. And it’s not just through enjoying live-streams together. Our lockdown-inspired shared listening feels new, distant from that family engrossed in radio theater, but operating in a similar momentary environment. 

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The music critic Amanda Petrusich, who I mentioned above, also thinks a lot about the spaces we create by how we listen. Back in 2010, she was interviewed for NPR under the Get To Know A Critic banner. The correspondent asked, “What’s your ideal way to listen to a record?”

… it’s true — some music is easier to type to, and some music rewards repeat listens in different ways. My knee-jerk tendency is to want to listen to music on vinyl, through headphones (no earbuds, never earbuds), all alone, with the lights turned off (in other words, the way I listened to music when I was fifteen), but I fight that whenever possible, because it’s really not fair. Music doesn’t function that way; it needs to breathe.

If I’m stuck on a record review, I’ll put something on my iPod and ride around on the subway for an hour, listening on my headphones. I think almost all music sounds better on the subway or in a moving car with the windows rolled down. Or I’ll go for a run with it — there’s no better way to get inside the rhythm section of a song than by running to it. It’s not always practical to implement, but I do at least try to think about where and when something was meant to be heard.

I like the idea of thinking not only about why we listen, but also where and how. We’ve all got favorite songs for specific environments and situations — playlists we make for driving or studying reflect this. But it’s also useful to think about how listening technologies affect one’s perception of songs, whether its headphones or shared speakers or a platform like Spotify. Inevitably these combinations color music and invite context. Deep listening (which I’ve talked about before) requires intentionally tuning these variants, increasing opportunities for meaning and connection. However, surprises that fuse with an unintended soundtrack — like my NYC crime scene episode — can offer the most powerful associations.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.