Spotify created this mess. And the other music platforms are no better.
Boredom is built into the platform, because they lose money if you get too excited about music—you’re like the person at the all-you-can-eat buffet who goes back for a third helping. They make the most money from indifferent, lukewarm fans, and they created their interface with them in mind. In other words, Spotify’s highest aspiration is to be the Applebee’s of music.
Because, when you get excited about an album you might want to, well, get into it, you know, maybe by owning the files or a CD and by having a decent PDF or paper cover that you can look at, and which contains information about the musicians and the instruments they performed with, the studio, the producer, the engineer, the method of recording. Not to mention photos of the instruments, the players, the microphones that were used…
But getting into that one album means that you might not want to listen to that playlist of artist X, which the streaming company created, and which is usually sprinkled with “sounds like X” artists who signed away any payment, or a significant portion of their payment, because they were promised that they would appear on the playlist with X…
For discovery, streaming is a great option, but for getting into an album or an artist it really is not. I find myself searching the internet for credits and anything else I can find out about any album I like.
I have to suppose it’s only going to get more so… because, until a law suit proves otherwise, AI will be able to compose in the style of artist X and won’t require ANY royalties.
For light listening streaming is perfect. I have long playlists of guitar music or ambient music that I listen to during flights.
Playlists created by the streaming companies are similar to the algorithm-produced feeds for social media. It may be fine for occasional discovery but you can’t see under the hood, you can’t tweak it and it often feels like someone paid to be included.
>They make the most money from indifferent, lukewarm fans, and they created their interface with them in mind.
Seems like this is true of … pretty much … all subscription based online “content” that I have interacted with.
Even Substack has a really yawn-inspiring interface.
> I find myself searching the internet for credits and anything else I can find out about any album I like.
For specific albums, where do you go to get the liner notes? Discogs.com? something else? Apple music has bupkis for liner notes.
I search Discogs or Allmusic but neither are complete. Perhaps someone should start a wikipedia for album credits? I’d be happy to contribute.
My membership site won’t be super polished and there won’t be a phone app but at least it will be original and home-made. :-)
I hoped that after adding hi-def files to Apple Music they might do something about the lack of liner notes next but after reading Gioia’s article I think it might go against streamer goals to offer a path into depth. Maybe he is right and the streaming companies just want to do playlists… width instead of depth.
>I hoped that after adding hi-def files to Apple Music they might do something about the lack of liner notes next but after reading Gioia’s article I think it might go against streamer goals to offer a path into depth. Maybe he is right and the streaming companies just want to do playlists… width instead of depth.
Based on Gioia’s description, I am probably the wrong customer for streaming I think. For example, I never just “stream” something. I always have a copy loaded onto the device and I listen with all antennas off to keep from being interrupted. By default I always use hi-def. I will often put a recording into “infinite repeat” mode and listen to a single recording all day. I had hoped the same thing that you did, and I’m actually quite disappointed that they didn’t add more detail and refinement to their service. Superficially it looks like a half-hearted effort, but again, if Gioia is right, then no … they are doing exactly what they set out to do.
I am interested in artists/musicians/composers I am already familiar with and I want to go as deep as I can with them. I want to know as much as I can about a given track or piece of music or how something was recorded or whatever. For example, recently there has been new music unearthed of John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy at the Village Gate in August, 1961. The surrounding events and such that go along with this recording are fascinating to me and I love to read about that stuff.
I don’t have any playlists, but I don’t listen to music when I fly either. I just put on some pink noise and go to sleep or read a book. :^) … Bad customer.