8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Spotify’s Podcast Ambitions Are Clear

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Recode:

Not only has Spotify acquired Gimlet Media, a podcast producer and network, for around $230 million but it has also bought Anchor, a startup that makes it easier for people to record and distribute their own podcasts.

The company says it isn’t done — it says it has other podcast acquisitions in mind, and that it expects to spend up to $500 million on deals this year.

Engadget:

Spotify is taking the Netflix model, in short. As the company grows, it’s inevitable that established record labels will start charging higher licensing fees. Podcasts, however, is something that Spotify can buy and own as exclusive content. If it green-lights the right shows, it could pull users away from third-party podcast apps and then slowly persuade them to take out a premium subscription. Anchor, too, gives Spotify the potential to rapidly build a YouTube-style distribution network.

The Gimlet Media deal is a glimpse of where Spotify is headed, but, coupled with the Anchor acquisition, we’re seeing the platform’s transformation into a different kind of company. As Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek says in a press release, “These acquisitions will meaningfully accelerate our path to becoming the world’s leading audio platform …” Thus, it’s no longer a music platform.

🔗→ Spotify has bought two podcast startups and it wants to buy more
🔗→ Spotify finally made a profit and spent big on its podcast future

A.I., Writer’s Block

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A terrific article on Medium by Stuart Dredge occupied my thoughts this morning. The title is provocative, but does accurately convey the piece’s thesis — Music Created by Artificial Intelligence Is Better Than You Think:

Human-created music already spans everything from the sublime to the unlistenable. While an A.I. may not be able to out-Adele Adele (or Aretha Franklin, or Joni Mitchell) with a timeless song and performance, it can compose a compelling melody for a YouTube video, mobile game, or elevator journey faster, cheaper, and almost as well as a human equivalent. In these scenarios, it’s often the “faster” and “cheaper” parts that matter most to whoever’s paying.

These ideas mirror what I was saying the other day. A.I. generated music will create significant problems for the library music circuit. But these ‘fast and cheap’ productions will fuel more soulful, distinctive music from those of us who are up to the challenge. I believe the environment will also create increased demand for highly personal music and songs with relatable stories behind them.

And I admit I’m excited about the idea of generative music in public and private spaces. There are many possibilities for this aspect, and my mind boggles. Yep, it’s Brian Eno’s world, and we’re just living in it.

However, there is one part of the article that I have questions about:

Amadeus Code claims to “enhance your songwriting with artificial intelligence” and is squarely aimed at people who are already writing and recording music. Its pitch: “Get unstuck with your songwriting with the power of artificial intelligence and say goodbye to writer’s block for good.”

I don’t have a problem with A.I. as a collaborator. That’s not far off from other creative games we already use, from Oblique Strategies to sample packs to unauthorized remixing. But I am wary of touting A.I. as a cure for ‘writer’s block’ rather than a tool a creator uses with intention.

I fall into the ‘there’s no such thing as writer’s block’ camp. I see it as a crutch, as the lizard brain screaming, as The Resistance. The cure, if we need one, is showing up and doing creative work with consistency and purpose. Selling A.I. as a remedy to ‘writer’s block’ gives more power to the concept. What are we replacing The Resistance with if we turn to A.I. whenever we’re not ‘feeling creative?’ Will there be a danger of letting A.I. tell us too much — giving us the chords, the melodies, the lyrics — whenever we don’t feel like showing up?

I’ll point to Izotope’s Ozone as an example. This software is a mastering suite that analyzes audio and, using an A.I. engine, creates settings for a mastered output. Ozone is an incredible tool. I bought it. I use it. And the company repeatedly emphasizes that what Ozone comes up with is meant to only be a suggestion, a starting place for your tailored tweaks. But I fear the majority of the software’s users probably default to the suggested settings. For some it provides a tempting fallback, an excuse to take it easy and not push oneself.

And that’s my issue. That feeling of ‘writer’s block’ is there for us to push through — to provide a challenge — and many times the result is our best work. I don’t doubt that collaborating with A.I. tools can result in great work. But, if we turn to the technology every time we feel blocked or in a creative rut, then I think we deny a very human aspect of the process. C’mon — we don’t need an easy cure for writer’s block.

🔗→ Music Created by Artificial Intelligence Is Better Than You Think

Make Way for the Virtual Dance Floor

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On our blog about “music’s place in the 21st century” we rarely get to write about anything as futuristic (in a ‘shape of things to come’ way) as this, via Music Business Weekly:

Yesterday (February 2), DJ star Marshmello played an exclusive in-game concert in Fornite at 2pm ET. Fortnite players could watch the virtual show for free, so long as they made sure their avatar was available at the concert’s location (Pleasant Park).

The numbers are now coming in on the event’s audience, and they’re mighty impressive: according to reliable sources, over 10 million concurrent users witnessed Marshmello’s virtual concert. These people’s in-game avatars were all able to hit the virtual dancefloor in front of Marshmello’s own avatar and show off their moves.

Mark Mulligan in Music Industry Blog:

For my son and his friends this was every bit a shared live experience, each of them talking to each other via Xbox Live and dancing with each other on screen. In-game live experiences like this are nothing new, but it may just be that we are beginning to get to a tipping point in shared gaming experiences for Gen Z that will shape their entertainment expectations for years to come.

and Darren Hemmings in the Motive Unknown newsletter:

I tweeted over the weekend that this brought to mind when US rock bands of a certain age talk about the influence KISS had on them. Often it wasn’t about the music so much as the spectacle of it all, and how much that impacted them as a child or teen. I think there’s parallels here; these are the kind of great experiences that really get fans hooked in, and strikes me as a colossal win for Marshmello as an artist.

At a point where I often grumble that innovation is drying up in music, this proved to be a fine example of how great things can come together to make a massively successful event for all involved.

Marshmello’s DJ set is also now exclusively available on Apple Music, no doubt a high-profile pay-off of the streamer’s association with Dubset.

Video games took some of the blame when music industry profits declined in the late-90s/early-00s. We reasoned that kids who once spent their allowance on music were instead using it on games. There was probably some truth in that, setting up tension between the game and music industries. But we’re now starting to see cooperation in marketing games and music that’s going leaps beyond background songs and Guitar Hero. And as journalist Cherie Hu talks about on a recent episode of the Music Tectonics podcast, the integration of music and non-music media and interactive entertainment may be the big music business story of 2019.

Regardless, we’ve come a long way since this:

🔗→ Marshmello just played a live set to 10m people in video game Fortnite
🔗→ Marshmello Just Live Streamed on Fortnite…So Just What is a Concert?
🔗→ Marshmello’s Fortnite concert shows it should be done

Spotify Strenghtens Podcast Hopes with Gimlet Media

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The Hollywood Reporter:

Spotify is in talks to acquire Gimlet Media, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, as it sets its sights on becoming a bigger player in the podcasting space.

The move by the music streaming giant signals just how seriously it is taking its push into other forms of audio entertainment. Spotify and Gimlet representatives declined to comment. […]

By acquiring Gimlet, Spotify would tap into a podcasting production powerhouse that has churned out such hits as Heavyweight, scripted series Homecoming and Reply All.

This is an interesting development and adds extra context to our earlier post regarding how Spotify can rebrand as an audio platform rather than solely a music platform. Gimlet is a smart company. I am sure they would not agree to this arrangement without assurance that Spotify will prioritize and enhance the podcast experience on the service.

The report notes that Gimlet owns its intellectual property (thus, the content of its hosted shows) which the company can leverage into film and television adaptations, among other possibilities. That adds an extra dimension to Spotify’s plans. One of those shows is StartUp, which, at times, documents the inner workings of Gimlet in real time. I’d love the network to add new Gimlet-related episodes that follow the progress of this Spotify deal.

By the way, I’m a fan of the Gimlet show Reply All. If you haven’t heard it yet, this episode about an Indian telephone scammer is fantastic.

🔗→ Spotify in Talks to Acquire Podcast Startup Gimlet Media

SoundCloud’s Rebirth

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Rolling Stone:

Per the fiscal 2017 filing, SoundCloud has taken “significant steps to improve its financial health,” including renegotiating certain rightsholder contracts, retiring outstanding debt and cutting major operating expenses, and it achieved positive operating cash flow in 2018.

While its 2018 results will not be available until later this year, SoundCloud says it has surpassed its 2018 growth plan and remains focused on two major ideas: expanding its creator business with a suite of useful artist tools and offering a unique listening experience for its “young, trendsetting, global music fans.” The latter will be increasingly tough as Spotify, Apple Music and other big streaming services solidify their place as market leaders, but the former — a focus on music creation — is something in which SoundCloud remains unsurpassed.

SoundCloud is a popular subject on this blog and, yes, there was a time when we contemplated the service’s possible demise. It’s astonishing that SoundCloud once made a go at Spotify and Apple Music, and the ensuing failure was arguably the direct result of an overreach to attract a mass audience.

I’d say ‘SoundCloud rap’ saved the platform’s bacon. This phenomenon was bubbling hard during the depths of SoundCloud’s financial woes and surely pointed the way out: by doubling down on a core user-base of creators, and looking to lead and create trends rather than passively following behind as a mainstream digital service provider. I continue to root for SoundCloud.

🔗→ SoundCloud, Making $100 Million a Year, Is Back on Solid Ground

The Politics of Nostalgia

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I’ve written previously about the phenomenon of music made to sound like it’s playing in a mall and the evocation of fake nostalgia. A recent piece in MEL Magazine examines this oddball subgenre and attempts to make sense of it all:

… Tills’ life at the mall is imaginary. He’s nostalgic for the 1990s, which he thinks was a better time to live. At the core of this mental construction is “mallwave,” a lo-fi subgenre of vaporwave that listeners refer to as “music optimized for abandoned malls.” Like Vaporwave creators, Mallwave musicians use soft drum tracks, ambient sounds and low-quality synthesizers to create soft, calming electronic music. But they also mix in pop music associated with the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, with the purpose of creating a holistic “nostalgic” experience, one that recreates the experience you would have had when visiting the mall. Or, in Tills’ case, what that experience might have been like, for people who lived it. […]

To Grafton Tanner, author of Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, the turn to nostalgia in vaporwave is all about this reflection of contemporary societal trends — whether it’s grappling with late capitalism or dreaming of an allegedly sunnier bygone era. Speaking over Skype, he tells me, “Nostalgia is a popular tool in marketing, and it’s probably the most defining cultural product of our time. You see it in movies and TV with reboot trends, and of course, apps like Spotify use algorithms that recommend music that you’ve probably listened to in the past.”

Simon Chandler, writing for Bandcamp Daily, dares to dig even deeper:

… society for decades has been pursuing consumerism and neoliberal capitalism when it’s often accepted that neither are perfect, and the way some of us have coped with this is through adopting a position or attitude of irony (cf. David Foster Wallace). We’ve mocked politicians on both sides while continuing to elect them and we’ve ridiculed McDonald’s while continuing to buy Big Macs, and vaporwave has masterfully symbolized this social phenomena by subverting clichéd samples while relying on them to a massive extent. […]

Nonetheless, it can be argued in vaporwave’s defense that, like much uncompromising music and art, the genre’s ‘mission’ appears to be focused more on mirroring our imperfect world than on reforming it. It may not offer any solutions, but it almost perfectly depicts a political domain in which media-generated images have alienated us from reality, and in which a minority of us have drifted into self-conscious irony as a way of coping with an imperfect environment (we think) we can’t change.

There’s an interview with Brian Eno (that I can’t find) where he says that he often makes music as a soundtrack to his hopes for a better world. This is like the opposite of that.

🔗→ The Teens Who Listen to ‘Mallwave’ Are Nostalgic for an Experience They’ve Never Had
🔗→ Music of the Spectacle: Alienation, Irony and the Politics of Vaporwave

The Potential of a Podcast Platform

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I’m not convinced that podcasts are the lucrative road to ‘in the black’ that Spotify may be anticipating. But, writing for Hackernoon, David Abramovic makes a strong case that there are untapped rewards in the podcasting space. The platform merely needs to innovate:

Unlike other music streaming services, Spotify actually has podcasts and is focusing more and more on them, but they’re still heavily deprioritized. Perhaps not too strange, it is still a music streaming service. However, if Spotify wants to capture this massive, still-growing user base, it needs to figure out how to become an audio streaming service instead.

And because of the the current audio platforms being so flawed, the opportunity to become one is bigger than it will probably ever be. But to achieve this, Spotify needs to fix both the current flaws, and further create the new innovations that’s going to make up the audio platform of the future.

Abramovic suggests improvements to Spotify’s podcast infrastructure that are obvious but unimplemented. For example, playlists for podcasts — it’s such a no-brainer that it’s hard to believe not a single platform has jumped on the idea. Pandora is spending capital on a music genome-like engine for podcasts to aid discovery, but user-generated podcast playlists would be much more effective. Looking for podcasts with Seth Godin as a guest? How about the best podcasts with music marketing advice? Or a selection of inspiring podcasts to listen to first thing in the morning? Playlists!

I’m not sure how seriously Spotify will consider Abramovic’s proposals but, regardless, a service with similar features is inevitable (and can’t arrive soon enough). These ideas go beyond playlists and into treating the podcaster as a creator, with access to data, interactions with fans, and self-marketing opportunities. Perhaps as an ‘audio app,’ Spotify — or any other platform — embracing these improvements would extend more interactive and personalized features to its original creator class: the artists and musicians who built the service.

🔗 → I’ve Come From the Future to Save Spotify

Don’t Fear the Music Robots

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Advances in artificial intelligence, and its applications in our working worlds, understandably create tension and fear. There is the feeling that no job is safe and, for songwriters and musicians, the development of A.I. composed songs is a substantial threat. Though these concerns aren’t entirely unfounded, I think we can find a way to evade the robots.

Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer and co-creator of Behance, writes in Fast Company:

Creativity is antithetical to the way artificial intelligence works. We develop machine learning by feeding in data about the way people react in certain situations. The point of algorithms is to predict what most people will do and execute that expected action. But what makes something creative is the unexpected. […]

For workers who are threatened by displacement, developing the ability to express ideas in a creative way can help them evolve from a threatened job title to one with more security.

All of my artist clients are eager to break into film and television music. Their first impulse is to create music according to spec — that is, determine a set of rules for music that fits a particular context and write to that. For example, music for a happy product advertisement should contain ukulele and glockenspiel, have a bouncy beat, feature lyrics with phrases like “let’s get together and smile.”

If your goal is fulfilling a spec requirement — whether it’s your own imagined rules or someone else’s — then you’ll be outdone. You’ll have to be faster and cheaper than the others who are also delivering to spec. And, in the future, this includes A.I. The answer is to go beyond spec, to provide something more than the rules require. Something personal and unexpected.

“Then how do I create music for movies and TV shows?” It’s as simple as making the best music you’re capable of and creating it in a way that represents you. This music needs to be distinctive to stand out. It should be from the heart. And it could only have been made by you.

Yes, many projects demand specifications. Ukuleles and glockenspiels are all over online product ads. But soon low-priced music libraries will be filled with A.I. created versions of these songs. No one does spec better than a computer, and that signals a race to the bottom. You don’t want to be a part of that race.

Project managers looking for generic music at the lowest price-point are familiar in our industry. But there are also music supervisors looking for music that’s cool and distinctive, as that will make their projects cool and distinctive. They pay handsomely for that piece of ‘cool.’

The dominance of A.I. in the traditional ‘library music’ field will make the difference starker. The rewards will come to those with a story to tell, with music that’s identifiable and capable of connection. Don’t overthink it. Focus your craft on finding a unique voice and a sound that will continue to inspire you. That will lead to your best work — work that others will seek and appreciate. But following the market’s presumed expectations pits you against the robots. I’ve seen that movie — it’s a futile battle.

Nick Cave may have put it best on The Red Hand Files, his brilliant new Q&A blog:

What we are actually listening to is human limitation and the audacity to transcend it. Artificial Intelligence, for all its unlimited potential, simply doesn’t have this capacity. How could it? And this is the essence of transcendence. If we have limitless potential then what is there to transcend? And therefore what is the purpose of the imagination at all. Music has the ability to touch the celestial sphere with the tips of its fingers and the awe and wonder we feel is in the desperate temerity of the reach, not just the outcome. Where is the transcendent splendour in unlimited potential? So to answer your question, Peter, AI would have the capacity to write a good song, but not a great one. It lacks the nerve.

🔗 → How To Thwart the Robots: Unabashed Creativity
🔗 → Considering human imagination the last piece of wilderness, do you think AI will ever be able to write a good song?

We Would Call That a Demon

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On a fascinating episode of Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human podcast, “technologist, futurist, inventor, and mage” Mark Pesce has a fascinating observation about social media’s knack for social engineering:

What is Facebook doing? It’s watching your responses to build a simulation – simulacra, really – of you and then it can check against that simulacra what your emotional state is. Okay, so, it’s built an A.I. that can essentially read and tamper with your emotional state. If this were the 14th century and I talked about evoking something that could then tamper with you emotionally and that you would feed energy that it would feed back to you in a different form – we would call that a demon.

There’s also a meatier-than-usual post on Kottke.org by Tim Carmody about where the web went wrong and how the spirit of blogging might point to the desired way forward:

A lot of the efforts to reshape social media, or to walk away from it in favor of RSS feeds or something else, are really attempts to recapture those utopian elements that were active in the zeitgeist ten, fifteen, and twenty years ago. They still exercise a powerful hold over our collective imagination about what the internet is, and could be, even when they take the form of dashed hopes and stifled dreams.

These days I’m thinking about this stuff all of the time. I know I’m hardly the only one.

🔗 → Ep. 116 Live at Civic Hall Pt. 2: A Demonology of Algorithms with Mark Pesce
🔗 → How to Fix Social Media by Injecting A Chunk of the Blogosphere

Clean Socks and the Touring Musician

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Here’s an article in yesterday’s New York Times about Hans-Jürgen Topf, a German man who has created a successful business in a microscopic niche — he handles the laundry needs of major touring acts:

His company, Rock ’n’ Roll Laundry, provides equipment and laundry staff for touring productions. […]

When on tour, he often spends three to four hours every afternoon ironing the performers’ clothing, his least favorite part of the job, while simultaneously washing the crew’s garments. On some tours, he spends up to 20 hours a day doing laundry, he said. After a show, the machines go into specially built rolling cases, so they can be loaded onto trucks and brought to the next location. […]

Joe Pomponio, a stage manager for numerous festivals in Europe who has worked frequently with Topf, said by phone that, for many acts that have spent years on the road, comforts like professionally done laundry have become vital. He added that he did not know anybody who offered services comparable to Topf’s, and that Rock ’n’ Roll Laundry was a fixture on the European festival circuit.

The article goes into detail how Topf happened onto this business idea (trigger warning: Ted Nugent is involved). This business is fascinating because, in a way, it’s a no-brainer. When a band is on tour, reliably getting laundry taken care of is a source of much stress. Any major group would be happy to dedicate a portion of a tour budget to have this worry off the plate. That Topf stumbled into this by chance makes one realize all the other unserved niches out there waiting to be filled. It’s also brilliant that Rock ’n’ Roll Laundry travels with their own machinery.

Clean clothes were a constant concern on the four extended bus/van tours I traveled with as a performer. We anticipated and planned for concert venues on the itinerary that had washing machines on premises or nearby — these were the holy grail of touring — and panicked if there was nothing definite on the horizon. On the bus tours, we rarely slept in hotels, but we’d sometimes get a hotel room for a day so we could use the laundry facilities. And then there’s one artist I toured with whose solution was to wear cheap white t-shirts. He’d toss a shirt after a couple of days and, once he ran out, would take a cab to the nearest Walmart to buy another shirt, socks, and underwear pack.

I’m mostly romantic about my touring days, but this article reminded me of all the grit, dirt, and sweat. Tour-life is an alternate reality that helps one appreciate the simple luxuries, like clean underwear.

🔗 → He Knows the Stars’ Dirty Laundry. Because He Washes It.