The prolific Ted Gioia has just done us a very big favor in digging into the issue of fake artists on streaming media. I'll refer you to his post to get the whole story: The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize. Here is a key segment:
The streaming model allows for abuses beyond anything a pirate ever envisioned. Algorithms now determine how a huge portion of song royalties are allocated, and if you can manipulate the algorithms you can send enormous sums of money into your bank account.
The root of the problem is the increasingly passive nature of music consumption. People will often ask Alexa, or some other digital assistant, to find background music for a specific task—studying, workout, housework, relaxation, etc. Or they will rely on a pre-curated playlist for that purpose. They don’t pay close attention to the artists or song titles, and this is what creates an opportunity for abuse.
What kind of abuse? Ted got a lot of information for his story from this source: AN MBW READER JUST BLEW OPEN THE SPOTIFY FAKE ARTISTS STORY. HERE’S WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY.
Long before your first article about fake artists in 2016 there was already a huge growth trend in people listening to mostly instrumental “mood music”. Even Sony and Universal Music created playlists for these types of use cases under their Digster and Filtr brands long before Spotify ever did. In fact many majors started releasing music by “fake artists” in the early 2010s and have continued to do so...
Interestingly, all of these ‘artists’ are all discovered on Sony-controlled playlists with very generic search-optimized titles, and millions of followers if you add all the small niche playlists together.
There is a lot more material there, but the bottom line seems to be that there are huge revenues to be earned by creating generic music that will turn up in typical searches. Back to Ted:
Hara Noda seems to be a real person, working as a producer and drummer in Sweden—which, by pure coincidence, is the same place where Spotify has its headquarters. In fact, the number of fake artists whose music comes out of Sweden is extraordinary. But even the numbers may be misleading. According to one survey, “about 20 people are behind over 500 artist names.”
And keep doing it over and over. At the end of the day, these "artists" can get more plays and hence more royalties than Grammy winners. As Ted says, the world has changed.
This kind of scam wasn’t possible before streaming. People obviously listened to music while studying or working, but they either picked out the record themselves, or relied on a radio station to make the choice. Radio stations were sometimes guilty of taking payola, but even in those instances a human being could be held accountable. But with AI now making the decisions, everything can be hidden away in the code.
Music is especially susceptible to passive consumption and in that regard it is like wallpaper or commercial design, something that is designed to be just a comforting background. This is a useful function in many, or perhaps most, people's lives. Music is something to relax to.
What is different today is that this kind of generic, fairly easily cranked out music, is now getting more and more revenues even as it preserves an essential anonymity. Historically, that's new. The pick-up band at the medieval banquet got paid a lot less than the famous composer writing masses for the cathedral. In the medieval world (here I am using "medieval" as a generic term for that period before the middle class became an important economic factor) the high, middle and low musical forms were compensated similarly. But in the world of algorithms, the most generic and least original, the least creative, in other words, can win the biggest earnings.
I think that this is, in an odd way, an argument for aesthetics. People who develop their aesthetic sensitivities become more active listeners and would tend to skip over the generic and seek out the original and stimulating. They look for music that challenges more and rewards more. They are actively engaged in listening. With engagement comes judgement, aesthetic judgement in particular.
This sounds rather elitist, doesn't it? Yes, I'm afraid it does and elitism has a bad name these days. But passivity can also be bad, apparently.
Here is Hara Noda with "The Beauty of Everyday Things". Four million plays on Spotify.
There's nothing wrong with wanting people to be active, critical listeners, but I sincerely doubt that passive listening is anything new. I doubt that too many eighteenth century European aristocrats were hanging on every note of Vivaldi, you know?
ReplyDeleteOh no, quite so. But the 18th century music that was the background soundtrack to aristocratic lives, was not Vivaldi, a famous performer, but nameless working musicians.
ReplyDeleteAnd most people are always going to be passive listeners. The ones when you ask them what kind of music they like will answer: "I like all music!" It's music educators like you that turn some of them into active listeners.
As writers like Manfred Bukofzer and also Jacques Ellul have put it, back in the days before arts criticism developed there was the patronage relationship between the patron and the musicians. In other words, there may have been a ton of passive of listening in audiences and distracted listening but the educational gap on music, for instance, was smaller between a duke or bishop and the musician commissioned than the gap between the composer and the ticket-buying audience member of the 19th century and onward.
ReplyDeleteThose nameless musicians were often under contract, had stipends, and contracts that legally bound them to serve their patrons. If there was no relationship between those nameless musicians and the patron then the whole "point" of Haydn's "Farewell" symphony would have been inconceivable. The 18th century aristocrats weren't hanging on every note of Vivaldi, maybe, but Vivaldi was writing for them. Haydn was writing directly for Esterhazy nobles, a few of whom could play. Then there were the upper or upper middle class women who were playing music as amateurs to host guests. Music performance and hospitality may have been a bit different back when if you wanted to hear it you had to be able to play it yourself.
So I hesitate to say that it was more "elite" if by that the idea is that "aesthetics" was what was different. Not entirely coincidentally I picked up a monograph on Biedermeier musical culture and hope to learn a bit more about the hausmusik idioms. That can be the kind of stuff that maybe doesn't get a ton of discussion in US music education. I literally never heard of the whole hausmusik side of things as a student.
What I take from the Ted Gioia piece is that the commercialization of music is entering a new stage where a great deal of what people pay for music is going in places that are mostly unknown and anonymous--this is pretty new I would think. And as Ted says, there is going to be a large impact. "...the charges deserve close attention. They suggest that a huge systemic and structural shift in industry payouts is happening—one that has tremendous impact on the livelihoods of working musicians."
ReplyDeleteSometimes when I ponder my horribly underdeveloped musicality I wish I had chosen music as my path back in youth, so I'd be somewhere good by now. But then I look at how music is really a JOB for professional musicians and I feel relief that for me it where I go to escape the world, not make my way in it. Like athletics, music might be a frightening field for parents to learn is their child's ambition. Oh the beautiful poverty! Of course it also makes me like an an amateur surgeon hanging out with the pros....more inferiority complex than Renaissance Man.
ReplyDeleteAs for public tastes...it isn't just a musical question but in all literature and arts and entertainments....the recent idea of "universal literacy" has already brought us to a post-literate society where virtually everyone can read but relatively few do read beyond the instruction manuals they need. Same with active consumers of any other cultural medium...always will be a minority. It could be said of any of us here for so many things NOT music...do you actively design your own clothes or tableware or furniture or motor cars? No, we passively consume most of our culture but make valiant battles for personal taste in whatever niche "strikes a chord" in the person.
ReplyDeleteWill, music is a cruel profession for most, except for those tiny few that have an enormous talent. But it has rewards! Apart from the aesthetic joy of spending most of your time doing what you love, there is the accompanying joy of doing it in company with others who also love it. As you undoubtedly know, the pleasures of chamber music are really unique and worth all the effort required.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely Bryan, "chamber music" is where I want to go, in the sense of playing in small spaces mainly for the joy of making music together rather than for an audience. Consort music was very much that, an evening pastime for gentlemen, comparable to playing cards or....whatever one did when they weren't working and couldn't get alone with a lady in waiting. Like the garage bands of our rock and roll youth, I'll be looking to start up a garage consort of other amateurs, hopefully getting good enough to play parties. Definitely will be looking for a nice unemployed (or unemployable?) mezzo-soprano or alto too.
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