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thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

Tag: Streaming

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The Counterintuitive Environmental Cost of Digital Streaming

Items of Note

File this story under ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,’ via Billboard:

Published on Monday (April 8), the research — a collaboration between the University of Glasgow and the University of Oslo –found that despite a sharp drop in the use of plastics in music production over the last two decades, the “storing and transmitting” of digital music files has actually led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by the industry.

“These figures seem to confirm the widespread notion that music digitalised is music dematerialised,” said University of Oslo Associate Professor and lead researcher Dr. Kyle Devine in a statement, referencing statistics citing the decrease in plastics use since the year 2000. “The figures may even suggest that the rises of downloading and streaming are making music more environmentally friendly. But a very different picture emerges when we think about the energy used to power online music listening. Storing and processing music online uses a tremendous amount of resources and energy — which [have] a high impact on the environment.”

More parade-raining from the original report in The Conversation:

Obviously this is not the last word on the matter. To truly compare past and present, if it were even possible, you would have to factor in the emissions involved in making the devices on which we have listened to music in different eras. You would need to look at the fuel burned in distributing LPs or CDs to music stores, plus the costs of distributing music players then and now. There are the emissions from the recording studios and the emissions involved in making the musical instruments used in the recording process. You might even want to compare the emissions in live performances in the past and the present – it starts to look like an almost endless enquiry.

Even if the comparison between different eras ultimately came out looking different, our overriding point would be the same: the price that consumers are willing to pay for listening to recorded music has never been lower than today, yet the hidden environmental impact of that experience is enormous.

I don’t see any mention of the environmental burden of additional landfill created by excess physical media so I wonder if that was a consideration. Regardless, it would seem the solution is not a change in consumption but in the sources and production of energy.

🔗→ Digital Music Consumption Has Led to Increase in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, New Study Finds
🔗→ Music streaming has a far worse carbon footprint than the heyday of records and CDs – new findings

Spotify’s Auto-Play Means Less Royalty For Songwriters

Items of Note

An astute observation by Billboard:

Although songwriters, publishers, or everyday people may not be aware, Spotify — like YouTube — has now moved to a model that auto-plays songs after a user listens to one they selected. […]

On the plus side, what this does is keep listeners engaged on the site, which is a benefit that Spotify likes. And it has the potential to turn listeners on to more music, a benefit that all rights owners, publishers, songwriters, labels and artists should like. And it steers payments to artists and songwriters whose songs weren’t chosen to be played.

But it represents a downside in per-stream payments for songwriters and artists, too. Since the payout pool is divided by streams, the more streams that occur in a month, the further the per-stream payout decreases. In addition to songs that users choose to play, their devices will automatically play other songs after they hear the song they wanted. Who knows how many additional plays accrue due to automation — but it’s safe to say those plays are further diluting the per-stream payout for artists and songwriters whose songs the consumer chooses to play.

I also believe Spotify’s auto-played songs fall under ‘non-interactive streaming’ (AKA ‘internet radio’). This means that mechanical royalty does not apply. So this auto-play feature may partly serve to lessen a user’s amount of ‘interactive’ streams, allowing the platform the decrease its overall royalty pay-out.

Please correct me if I’m wrong. But if I’m right, and you’re a Spotify user, maybe think about turning off the auto-play mechanism in the app’s settings.

🔗→ The CRB Rate Trial Explained: How Publishers, Digital Services Weighed In At The Time

Spotify is “Effectively Suing Songwriters”

Industry News

Music Business Worldwide:

Yesterday (March 7), it emerged that four major owners of digital music services – Spotify, Amazon, Google and Pandora – had lodged legal appeals against the US Copyright Royalty Board’s recent decision to raise streaming royalties for songwriters (and music publishers) by 44%. That royalty rise, which previously looked locked in, is now in serious jeopardy.

Apple Music, in contrast, has accepted the new rates, and declined to challenge what’s viewed as an important pay hike for songwriters.

Remember when Kendrick Lamar and (reportedly) other artists threatened to pull music from Spotify over the arbitrary ‘hate conduct’ ban policy? Spotify quickly backtracked. This might be another opportunity for artists to show Spotify and the streaming industry who really needs who more.

And, as with privacy, Apple continues to brand themselves as the company that does the right thing. I’ll contain my cynicism (which I have for any corporate organization) and say ‘good on them.’

🔗→ Wait… Spotify is ‘suing songwriters’? What the heck is going on?

Two Things That Don’t Go Together

Commentary

Chris Rizik of Soul Tracks is understandably frustrated:

… in the modern world of streaming, with literally thousands of new songs being uploaded onto platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal every week, confusion is the norm. So a young rapper who calls himself Babyface can put his music up on the site, and the automated systems don’t realize that this is definitely not the Grammy winning Tender Lover. Consequently, not only does “Y2K” show up in my Release Radar, it shows up on Babyface’s Spotify artist page, leaving his fans scratching their heads, or maybe even complaining that ‘Face’s new music is awful. Putting aside any trademark issues (and I’m sure there are some), this is a mess for both the original artist and for the streaming service.

I run across this all of the time. Recently I was looking for an album to listen to by jazz legend Sam Rivers on his Spotify profile. Nestled among his sizable catalog were a few ‘new releases’ of thinly produced R&B/pop, placed at the top of Sam’s artist page. Of course, these releases were from a pop artist also named Sam Rivers.

I don’t have a problem with more than one artist with the reasonably not-rare name Sam Rivers. But having Spotify (and other services) combine them is wacky stuff. Jazz Sam is sadly deceased, so he doesn’t care, but doesn’t Pop Sam check himself out on Spotify? Does he think it’s okay for his smooth R&B-ness to sit alongside late 20th-century free jazz?

It’s possible Pop Sam doesn’t know what to do about it. I decided to tell Spotify about the mix-up, using Twitter, and they were immediately responsive. They referred me to a page where I could submit the error for review. But these are a lot of steps for Pop Sam.

There is a ‘report’ option hidden on the artist profile, but this goes to a page for infringement issues. There’s no link or redirect to report mistakes. And this report option doesn’t exist for songs or albums, making it more difficult to flag individual releases that are in the wrong place (or infringe, for that matter).

But that’s far better than what Apple Music offers. Spotify acted on my request and separated Pop Sam and Jazz Sam, but Apple Music has them combined thanks to one stray Pop Sam EP. I looked for a way to report this through iTunes on MacOS. The only option I could find is a menu item under ‘Song’ (in the top menu, not in the player). The option is titled ‘Report a Concern.’ I can’t tell you what this does as it’s grayed out and inactive. I tried highlighting the song, playing the song, adding it to my library — nothing would activate this option. And it’s completely missing on the iOS app.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about how streaming doesn’t feel like a personal, fan-friendly experience along with conjecture about how to make it more so. I don’t think there’s one magic answer. Instead, I feel many smaller actions could make the platforms feel more welcoming. Keeping the artists and their releases straight — and giving fans a clear way to interject when they’re not — is a good start.

🔗→ “Wait a minute, that’s not Babyface” – Artist confusion abounds online

SoundCloud’s Rebirth

Commentary

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 Digital Evolution of Bootleg Culture

Commentary

When I owned a record store in the early ‘90s, a guy would pull up in his van once a month and hawk a selection of bootleg CDs. These discs contained recordings of live concerts, out-of-print rarities, and unreleased demos of your favorite band. I admit that I bought and sold more than a few, as the super-fans prized these limited (and often high-priced) CDs. It was a small scene — though morally precarious the distribution of these discs was regulated by extreme scarcity.

Napster and other file-sharing sites eliminated the scarcity, to a degree, but access was still for those ‘in-the-know.’ But as the internet crossed the chasm, technical inexperience was less-and-less a barrier to finding the unreleased stuff.

Distribution barriers have also crumbled — overwhelmingly a positive development — and pay-to-distribute services like Distrokid and CD Baby now supply releases to streaming platforms with minimal vetting. More-and-more of these instant-distribution services are popping up, with Spotify recently announcing their own direct-to-platform portal.

It’s not surprising that these technological advancements have bolstered seedier elements. That’s the story of the internet, and bootleg culture’s exploitation of the available tools is inevitable. Both scarcity and exclusivity of access have been eliminated, and so we can probably get used to episodes like this (via Music Business Worldwide):

The two [bootleg Beyoncé] albums, released under the name “Queen Carter,” were on Spotify and Apple Music for around a day, long enough to generate furious traction from Beyoncé fans on social media, before being taken down. And the albums came out shortly after R&B star SZA also “released” music under a fake name (“Sister Solana”) that turned out to be stolen demos as well.

Soundrop, an independent DIY distribution service through which both Beyoncé and SZA’s tracks were apparently uploaded via different accounts, says it is working with authorities in an investigation into the “potential intellectual property theft” and that it took down the music as soon as it was aware that it breached the company’s terms of service.

… and then there’s this, via Film School Rejects:

[The movie] One Cut of the Dead should never have been on Amazon Prime to begin with. In an email to Film School Rejects, Third Window Films owner Adam Torel confirmed that the film had not been uploaded by either his company or Nikkatsu, the organization in charge of sales for the Asian marketplace. “I saw some posts on Twitter saying it was available on Amazon Prime in both the US and UK,” Torel explained. “Considering the UK theatrical [release] is January 4th, and as it was very hard to get an Asian independent film into cinemas, you can imagine how much I started to panic and fear for my chances of getting Asian indies into cinemas from now on.” […]

For many, this was an ugly introduction to Amazon Prime’s dual nature as both a streaming platform for Amazon’s high-profile acquisitions and a self-distribution platform with little oversight. “Amazon has this whole section that effectively operates like YouTube,” explains Todd Brown, head of international acquisitions for XYZ Films, “and is governed by the same laws as YouTube, which really absolves Amazon of a lot of responsibility for what people do on the platform — but, from the outside looking in, appears almost exactly the same as the fully Amazon-controlled, curated service.”

There is a delicate balance between ease-of-access (and democratization of distribution) and the illicit exploitation of these tools. On the one hand, it’s incredible that anyone can have a self-released film on Amazon Prime next to Hollywood blockbusters. I’m 100% in favor of that. On the other, IP owners may be looking at an endless game of whack-a-mole on platforms with the perceived legitimacy of, say, Apple Music. That’s troubling.

The services, both on the distribution and DSP sides, should look at a robust method for spotting these oversights. Ideally, there would be an independent watchdog organization that worked with all DSPs to remove infringing or bootleg content. Of course, that will never happen because there’s no one to pay for it, and there’s no money to be made. The more conspiratorial of you may argue that actively eliminating this content is seen as money lost, explaining the lackadaisical takedown environment. But reputation and authority are at stake. In the short-term, the profits matter, especially to shareholders, but the absence of prestige and position will create destructive long-term problems. Just ask Facebook.

Which brings us to Beatport and the logical next step in the evolution of the digital bootleg. 5 Mag has been reporting on a ‘prolific’ dance music producer who isn’t simply plagiarizing — he’s releasing other artists’ material as his own. And he’s been doing it unimpeded for at least a decade:

Incredibly, it appears [Flavio] Lodetti’s alleged plagiarism was first discovered when Lodetti sent demos of stolen tracks to the person who made them. On January 7, Gábor Szeles, proprietor of Witty Tunes, posted a warning on Facebook addressed to label managers and producers that “an artist called FLOD” was claiming other people’s work as his own. […]

Multiple producers have posted screencaps of their inboxes with a “flood” (sorry) of emails from Lodetti submitting a half-dozen or more demos at a time. Apparently quite a few bit: new tracks from Lodetti are still being identified and traced to earlier releases from other producers as we speak. “Unfortunately as a result of this post I double checked the upcoming single I signed from Flod and as you would expect it’s a stolen track from 2015,” one label manager wrote in the comments of Szeles’ post. “There’s not even any changes made to it.”

I’ve heard of this happening before but not at the scale that Lodetti has achieved. A follow-up by 5 Mag confirms that a release as far back as 2010 was a master recording stolen outright from another producer. How widespread is this practice? I fear it’s more common than we imagine, and extends to all the independent platforms — Bandcamp, Traxsource, etc.

It’s curious that Beatport doesn’t have a Content ID-like tool in place to identify the resemblance of newly submitted tracks to releases already on the platform. Beatport may see the problem as infrequent, thus not warranting the investment. But, again, there are numerous examples of pirated tracks showing up on Beatport in the past — tongues are wagging on dance music producer forums — and it’s going to get worse. Lodetti’s exposure may shame him into obscurity, but, as with the One Cut of the Dead and Queen Carter incidents above, it also shows how easy this is to pull off without much repercussion.

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Streaming’s Song Disparity

Commentary

Buzzangle Music’s 2018 U.S. Music Industry Report has tongues wagging this week as there’s a lot of information to analyze and digest. Everyone agrees it shows a music industry in transition (though, when was it not in transition?) and growing financially. I may highlight other aspects of the report in future posts but, for now, let’s focus on this nugget via Rolling Stone:

The most popular 10 percent of songs accounted for 99 percent of all audio streams. … Flip that statistic around: 90 percent of streamable music is responsible for just one percent of actual streams.

That concentration was only a smidgeon less severe at the top of the distribution in 2018, according to BuzzAngle’s latest report. The top 500,000 most popular songs in 2017 accounted for 93.6 percent of all streams. The comparable number in 2018 fell the tiniest bit, to 92.4 percent of all streams.

Music Business Report takes a rosier view of these statistics:

The interesting bit: in 2017, the USA’s Top 500,000 tracks racked up 14.6-times as many audio streams as every other piece of music. In 2018, however, this multiple had fallen significantly, down to 12.2. Despite on-demand audio streaming’s overall volume growing by 41.8% in the US in 2018, the actual number of plays dedicated to the Top 50 tracks fell harshly – down by a pretty shocking 74.6%. […]

In other words (give or take a couple of billion streams): pretty much all of the growth in the US audio streaming market last year came outside the Top 500 tracks (aka outside the weekly Top 10 chart).

I suppose that could be interpreted as great news for independent labels though the popularity of back catalog on streaming platforms might cancel out some of the joy. But is this disparity really a consequence of streaming? Twenty years ago, I’m not sure if 10 percent of songs represented 99 percent of what was played on the radio, or sold in all record stores, but I bet the statistic was close. I’m not as alarmed by the statistic as some.

And if the disparity has indeed gotten worse, then that may also be representative of other factors than the platform. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I was pleased to see Rolling Stone hit the nail on the head with this easily overlooked sentence:

… the fact remains that the rampant inequality that has become pervasive in other aspects of American life is similarly acute in the streaming-verse.

A Punk-Rock Gut Punch

Daily Update

Another dispatch from out in the sticks. Howdy. Proverbial country road pictured above.

There’s a fantastic photo in NPR’s In Memoriam 2018: The Musicians We Lost. An emotive Glenn Branca is pictured in the center, and this is one of the best concert photos I’ve seen in a while. There’s so much energy there, like a jolt of Jolt. I assume Glenn is pictured in the midst of conducting his guitar-based ‘orchestra.’ 

The In Memoriam piece is striking, as these tend to be. There are a lot of special music folks we’ll be missing in 2019. For me, in addition to Branca, losing Mark E. Smith and Pete Shelley in one year is a punk rock gut-punch.

I don’t need another ‘favorite albums of 2018’ list — going through the ones I have bookmarked already could last well into next summer. I should be listening to 2019 music! But Austin Kleon, via his amazing blog (another inspiration for what I’m trying to do here), turned me onto a tantalizingly diverse ‘best of 2018’ list from music writer Ted Gioia.

Kleon titles his post ‘The Agony of List-Making’ and expresses a frustration with making public recommendations under the scrutiny of the internet mob. Gioia eases his own misgivings by presenting his list alphabetically, not allowing any title to receive a crown above any other. Kleon highlights this quote from Gioia’s list post:

Like any music lover, I enjoy sharing my favorite music with others. But in the last few years, a different motivation has spurred me. I believe that the system of music discovery is broken in the current day. There is more music recorded than ever before, but it is almost impossible for listeners to find the best new recordings …

I believe we are entering another era of music discovery, as listeners experience playlist fatigue and blogs continue to lose sway. These personalized lists, from close friends and selected ones from respected total strangers — chefs, movie directors, music writers, etc. — will hold the real power. Recommendations like these have always been the truest source of discovery. But we — as music fans rather than casual listeners — lost our way for a bit as streaming took hold, fascinated by algorithmic playlists and unlimited access.

Optimistically, these personal interactions of recommendation foster more intimate relationships with our music. On the other hand, this could all be my imagination as friends have been recommending music online since those early-90s message boards. But I do feel like there’s a dissatisfaction with playlist culture and how it’s pushed on us by certain platforms. This is a reason I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, something I’ll write about in the future. And this dissatisfaction will grow as playlists and platform features bow further to corporate influence. I used to wonder why Bandcamp didn’t have a playlisting feature — now I get it.

In other news, Big Shot Magazine kindly asked for a 2018 recap and I delivered a few reflections. I mainly talk about the launch of 8D Industries but I also touch on curbing the news diet, a recurring topic around these parts. The Ryan Holiday quote in the piece should be mentally taped above every screen at home, whether it’s a TV or a laptop:

Perhaps it’s time we realize that consuming more news about the world around us is not the way to improve it (or ourselves), personally or politically.

Holiday has written a few articles on why we should abstain from breaking news. They’re all worth a read. 

I’d also like to point out that I meant to refer to the long album version of “Bunny’s Dream” as a favorite song of the year. The video edit embedded in the article doesn’t quite have the majesty or the sprawl and, like many unsuccessful edits, feels rushed in comparison to the original. 

A question I posed to my social media friends: will people be playing Paul Hardcastle like they were playing Prince on NYE 1998? Of course, this is meant as a joke but I know I gave some DJs an idea for a midnight song on Monday. Please report back if you took the bait.

The Album, If You Want It

Commentary

The streaming model has led to many changes in how we create and consume music. One impact debated as much as any other is the supposed decline of the album as a format. From the outside, streaming seems tailor-made for singles, and many artists are taking advantage of this, consistently releasing one-off songs on streaming platforms, effectively building hype and, in some cases, hits. Some are suggesting the music industry is experiencing a throwback to the ‘50s when singles ruled, and the idea of a self-contained long-form artist statement (i.e. an album) was distant at best.

Billboard is looking back to 2018 as a harbinger of what’s to come:

In case you hadn’t heard, streaming is now king, and 2018 was a case study in how abandoning old-school recording cycles in favor of experimental, fan-favoring workflows can yield tremendous success, even when physical music sales continue to plunge. […]

Executives from both the recording and streaming industries agree that it is no longer the restraints of a physical medium (vinyl, CD, etc.) or shelf space that dictate the impact or capacity of an artist’s work; the real battle is now fought against fan distractions.

I would agree with this, and I also agree with the article’s leaning to the opinion that the rulebook for albums is torn up, thrown out. It’s not that albums are old-fashioned; it’s that we’re at a place where an artist is free to create a statement that best suits her music and fans.

Looking to the past, we can remember purchasing a ten song album — CD, cassette, or vinyl — and finding out there were only one or two good songs. It felt like the record companies were conning us. Arguably, a factor in the quick rise of Napster was dissatisfaction with high-priced CDs featuring only a couple of ‘good’ songs.

I submit that it wasn’t necessarily a record label con. The ‘one good song’ artists shouldn’t have been releasing albums in the first place. There are artists adept at crafting brilliant singles, and there are artists able to make a stunning album statement. Sometimes an artist can do both (mid-80s Michael Jackson or Prince are obvious examples), but I think that’s rare. And a lot of artists had no choice but to wrap a mediocre album around their great, hit single. That’s how things were done before streaming.

In 2018 (going into 2019), artists have the freedom to create in a way that best suits their output and their fan expectations. Childish Gambino can impactfully drop “This Is America,” and Drake can succeed with a 25 track album. Nine Inch Nails can release a 30 minute EP and call it an album, and it’s cool (keep in mind, Van Halen didn’t release an album that clocked in over 35 minutes until David Lee Roth quit.).

Monta At Odds

Just as a singles artist doesn’t have to release albums, an artist best suited for albums is free to still work in that format. Take our 8D Industries artist Monta At Odds — the album Argentum Dreams is intended as a cohesive piece for listening from front to back. There are a couple of songs that might work as one-off singles, but the Monta At Odds fanbase expects an album and expects the band to take them on this 40-minute journey. If Monta At Odds started releasing a single every month, their fans would be confused and probably listen elsewhere. And an artist finding success with consistent singles would lose fans if she took eight months off to record a concept album.

Once again I’m emphasizing freedom as the defining element of our new music landscape. The album isn’t dead — it’s there if you, or your fans, need it. Be intentional, and understand what you’re trying to say and how your fans want to listen. If that warrants a series of four-song EPs, or a weekly single, or a sprawling 20 track album, then you’re golden. You can do any of that. You could even do all of it if it works. Or, most importantly, you can come up with your own format and schedule — a new expression that might be a single, or it might be an album, but it’s definitely all you.

The Best of Music to Check Out

Commentary

How have end-of-the-year album lists changed since the advent of streaming? I think they’re entirely different, both in how the lists are compiled and how we, as music listeners, read them.

‘Best Of’ lists weren’t as freewheeling as they are now. There was pressure for the publication and its critics to have selections in the top slots that were familiar to the reader, even if just casually. And it seemed that lists were limited to a top 10 or 20 — 25 if we’re feeling crazy. After all, these were suggestions of music you should buy. Previewing these releases, if you were so bold, meant taking the list to the record store and asking the person at the counter to play a little bit off each record. You’re out of luck if there aren’t any open in-store play copies.

These lists are no longer meant as suggestions for purchasing — it’s music to check out. Fire up your favorite streaming service and take the top ten for a stroll. Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, sample the entire list. But that can take a while as today’s end-of-the-year album lists can go to 100.

The differences don’t stop there. While the pre-internet year-end music lists in Rolling Stone or The Village Voice included selections that generally spanned all genres, online publications offer specialized options. It’s curation, in a sense — find the site or blog whose taste you trust, and that’s the ‘Best of’ list meant for you. And these specialist sites (and even more general music sites) have no attachment to keeping things safe and familiar — it’s not rare when an album you haven’t heard of occupies the number one slot.

I’d argue that, in most cases, these are no longer ‘Best Of’ lists, but they’re more like playlists. That is, playlists of albums rather than songs (though there are ‘best song’ lists, too), curated by the taste that guides a blog or a site’s editorial staff. A top ten has always been subjective, sure, but now we’re talking about albums that we should sample, not purchase with hard-earned money. In a way, this makes these lists less subjective. “These are the albums that we enjoyed this year and, if you like our site, perhaps you will, too.” The difference is listener investment, and, though there are also some negatives to that (which we may discuss someday), it does inspire risk-taking.

I’m not saying the critic doesn’t believe his or her #1 album is the best of the year. But I do feel the path to making that choice and the other choices that populate the rest of the list are less determined, less rigid. And I’m happy with that.

I’ll be sampling a handful of ‘end-of-the-year’ lists over the next several weeks. It’s a December tradition. I’ve picked my favorite lists, and I’m going through them, giving each album at least a three-songs-chance before I decide “yay” or “nay.” I’ll make a note of the ones I like the most and will go back to them later for repeated listens.

This last part is essential. One significant difference in charts then and now is that if you purchased the #1 album, it had better be good. You lived with it for weeks and got to know the album, sometimes even if you weren’t crazy about it. That’s the attachment of investment that streaming doesn’t offer. As music fans, we now have to be intentional in our listening. Streaming is nothing more than a tool for access, but it encourages a casualness by nature. The majority of music listeners have always listened to music casually, so there’s nothing lost there. But if we’re die-hard music fans, it’s necessary to be aware and vigilant in our habits as streaming users.

OK, here are the ‘end-of-the-year’ lists I’m listening through:

Once I’ve exhausted those (unlikely, as it’s a lot!) then I may explore what I haven’t listened to in the more general lists, such as Pitchfork’s The 50 Best Albums of 2018 and The Best Electronic Music of 2018, and NPR’s Best Music of 2018.

Happy hunting! I’d be curious to know your go-to end-of-year lists … and your #1 album picks.

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about

 

Howdy. I'm Michael Donaldson.

I'm a consultant for the music industry, working with emerging artists and labels. I also manage a label of my own, named 8D Industries, and publish + license music under 8DSync. Sometimes I'm a Q-Burns Abstract Message. But mostly I'm just trying to keep these damn cats out of my office.

Michael Donaldson

I like to send postcards to my friends, and if you'd like I'll send one to you.

Oh, and here's what I'm working on now.

 

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