
The Problem with Muzak – Spotify’s bid to remodel an industry - davezatch
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-muzak-pelly
======
ryandrake
Such a long, meandering article, but the meat of it seems to be here:

“The more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s
challenging music? Nah,” he says, telling me about all of the experimental,
noise, and comparatively aggressive music on his label that goes unheard on
the platform. “It leaves artists behind. If Spotify is just feeding easy music
to everybody, where does the art form go? Is anybody going to be able to push
boundaries and break through to a wide audience anymore?”

I get that the author wants to listen to "challenging" music that "pushes
boundaries" and laments that Spotify's algorithms are surfacing up Muzak
instead. But there are other places to go to find your challenging music. For
lots of other people, however, music is not some intimate connection with an
artist's soul, it's simply something that goes on in the background while
you're trying to get something else done or just relax. People seem to want
Muzak--who are you to argue with the market when it has spoken?

~~~
exDM69
The issue is twofold.

Like you say, most people want their easy music and Spotify delivers. The
downside of that is the fact that commercially produced music is now targeting
Spotify consumption aggressively and using all those fancy analytics Spotify
provides. This makes new music more and more alike each other.

Because of this tight feedback loop on Spotify and the producers, I think it's
only a matter of time when they cut out the middle man and start producing
music with AI algorithms. I'm sure that algorithms can keep the muzak-
consuming masses happy. I've already heard some convincing sounding music
(sheet music played with synthesizers) and audio (music produced directly as
audio waveforms) produced by algorithms.

The second issue is what's described in the comment you quote. Anyone making
niche music is suffering. It was never easy for musicians taking this route
but the algorithm based recommendations engines is making it harder to be
discovered while taking a bigger cut from the small income.

It's not like there is another viable platform out there. Spotify has a near
monopoly and they dictate the terms. People aren't buying a second
subscription service or buying songs separately let alone buying a physical
album.

I find one positive in this all. Because there's no more income from record
sales, musicians are performing live more than in decades. I really like live
music, so that's nice.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
> Spotify has a near monopoly and they dictate the terms. People aren't buying
> a second subscription service or buying songs separately let alone buying a
> physical album.

That's not even close to being true. Google Music, Apple Music, Amazon Prime
whatever it's called, regular ol' Youtube videos and playlists, services like
last.fm or Pandora.. There are lots of ways to discover music that don't
depend on record labels and their marketing.

If your music is independent and you want to stay away from the man, you have
to put work into marketing your music. That's the step that you'd normally
hand off to the record label. At least now you actually have a viable way
(lots, actually) of making money as opposed to the past when distribution was
much more difficult.

~~~
exDM69
> That's not even close to being true. Google Music, Apple Music, Amazon Prime
> whatever it's called, regular ol' Youtube videos and playlists

The others have pretty small consumer base but more importantly, suffer from
all the same issues as Spotify. To reach the widest audience, you need to be
with all of those. Most consumers have only one music subscription service.
That's what makes it a near monopoly for them.

YouTube is a bit of an exception, and my favorite for niche and rare music and
forgotten live performance recordings of more popular music. But YouTube is
not very good for providing income for musicians who don't want to be
predominantly 'tubers.

~~~
zaphar

        But YouTube is not very good for providing income for 
        musicians who don't want to be predominantly 'tubers.
    

The question here is whether it's better at providing income for niche
musicians than the alternatives. It has always been hard to make money doing
niche music. Youtube has made it much easier. Complaining that it doesn't make
it profitable enough is beside the question. Some products are never going to
be profitable no matter what the distribution mechanism is. For those products
it may be sufficient to make it possible for an artist to recoup some costs
for their hobby.

------
pdpi
My experience is precisely the opposite: Spotify has been instrumental in
exposing me to niche bands and expanding my taste. The "2017 Wrapped" email
says I listened to 6944 different songs by 1426 different artists across 103
different genres this year.

~~~
pfd1986
Yes but with a caveat.

Many of the artists I discovered via Spotify / Google Music make pennies from
these sites. The truth is that unless you're buying an album (1) or other
merchandise, you're not contributing significantly for the artist's survival.

I was chatting with Brock Van Wey last week (aka bvdub, my favorite choice of
background music when programming) and he was describing how challenge it is
to stay in business nowadays. I naïvely thought these apps were helping those
folks...

I for one will try to buy more albums, even if digital, of the bands I listen
to all the time.

(1) directly from the artist (e.g. via bandcamp). Google Music, at least,
doesn't really give you the mp3 but only a protected file that can solely be
played in their software.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
_Many of the artists I discovered via Spotify / Google Music make pennies from
these sites._

Yet Spotify is not only still unprofitable, they're still all but setting
money on fire. Some of the more recent reports I've seen are that they're
trying to negotiate for _lower_ music royalties.

I can't help but wonder if the ultimate problem here isn't with the idea of
all-you-can-eat streaming, but with the idea that all-you-can-eat streaming is
only worth $10 a month. What if the earliest services in this space had priced
their services at $20 a month? I know, the immediate reaction is "they would
have had no customers and it would be a death knell because no one would
possibly pay that much," but is it possible we have that reaction because
we've just internalized the notion that "$10 per month" is the "proper" price?
Back in the Dark Ages--the 1990s and early 2000s--I knew many, _many_ people
who were spending $20 or more a month buying individual CDs. If in 1994 I'd
have been told, "Hey, what if you could listen to _nearly every song ever
recorded_ for the price of _only two CDs a month!?_ " then I'd have been on
board.

~~~
jakelazaroff
All four major record labels are investors in Spotify, so the lack of
profitability isn't a huge issue if you look at it from their perspective.

Since Spotify wields an enormous influence over what music becomes popular,
labels can treat it as a loss leader and keep pumping money into it that they
make back from album sales/tours/merch/etc on their top artists. The issue
with this is that it vastly favors labels who can leverage this economy of
scale, and independent labels for whom album sales are a larger slice of their
income can't weather the decrease in payment as well.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that Spotify divides payment per
stream up by the total number of streams. Simplified example: if I stream two
songs in one month, an indie artist once and a major artist once, they'll each
get $5 of my $10. If I stream the indie artist once but the major artist
_twice_ , however, they get $6.66 and the indie artist only gets $3.33, even
though I the amount I listened to them didn't change. (edit, the pool is
actually comprised of all users, I just used one in this example for
simplicity)

All this adds up to a system that is heavily stacked in favor of major labels
and their respective artists at the expense of independent ones.

~~~
calt
As of a while ago (they took down the page explaining it), it's not even split
up per user. It's split up per total Spotify streams. Those people that leave
their Spotify playing Muzak all day long are diluting your dollars.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150219221341/http://www.spotif...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150219221341/http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-
explained/) The "Royalties in Detail" section.

~~~
eric_h
> Those people that leave their Spotify playing Muzak all day long are
> diluting your dollars.

/me gives a sidelong glance at every WeWork streaming Spotify 24/7

------
whiddershins
TL;DR payment for number of plays favors certain kinds of music over others,
but it is not really anyone’s fault.

My observation is that there’s an underlying flaw in the compensation model. I
think it was non-obvious and a solution is even less obvious so I don’t really
_blame_ Spotify or other services.

Some music is made to be listened to over and over. This category includes
ambient and background music, but also any catchy pop-like song (in the
broadest possible definition of pop).

Other music is more narrative and challenging. It might be very important and
emotionally impactful, but the listener tends to consume it more like a movie.
They might listen to it once or twice.

This is a piece of mine I really am proud of. I don’t expect anyone to have it
on repeat or add it to a bunch of playlists:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRQk7TWndBw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRQk7TWndBw)

It is deliberately challenging.

Back when the model was buying records, there was potential for some
remuneration for creating challenging recorded work. Even if it was niche, if
enough people appreciated it one could hope to cover costs.

But at a fraction of a cent per play, even if a dedicated listener base
absolutely adores your challenging recordings, it’s completely unrealistic to
hope to make money from it.

Possibly Patreon or something like it can fill that gap. But I really don’t
think being frustrated with Spotify is a productive avenue.

------
pavlov
Spotify is frustratingly dishonest about what’s paid placement on their
service.

Recently they introduced a feature called “2017 Wrapped”, which contains a
playlist named “Your Top Songs 2017”. I imagined this list would contain the
songs I actually listened to most. Instead it’s biased so that many of my
favorites don’t appear, yet there are major label songs that I don’t even
remember actively playing.

It’s borderline misleading advertisement to pretend these are “my top songs”
when obviously the list is a pay-to-play for labels.

~~~
pdpi
My 2017 wrapped is a pretty accurate reflection of what I did listen to, and
barely any of it is the sort of stuff you'd think of when you talk about
"major label songs".

There is, however, a "The Ones That Got Away" playlist, that, while still not
heavy on anything particularly popular, could fit in with your experience.
Maybe you were looking at the wrong playlist?

~~~
pavlov
No, I wasn't.

Maybe I'm just unlucky to be in a user cohort where promoted songs are
inserted into my top 2017 songs (to test how many extra plays they can get
this way). It sucks that they do this to paying customers though.

~~~
kingosticks
Do you scrobble your plays to last.fm? If so, it should be simple to show how
right or wrong they are.

------
dsschnau
The best alternative to spotify? Bandcamp.
[https://bandcamp.com/](https://bandcamp.com/)

~~~
kingosticks
Except they have no streaming API so I can't use it with my normal audio
player software. I am forced to stream it in a browser. I'm out.

~~~
thirdsun
It's not a streaming service. You buy your music there and own it.

~~~
kingosticks
Nope. The streaming API used to be available to 3rd parties but they closed it
all off some years ago.

"Digital Album Streaming + Download Includes unlimited streaming via the free
Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more."

~~~
thirdsun
Well, yes, you can stream your purchases (via browser or bandcamp app), but
it's obviously not their focus, and certainly not comparable to all-you-can-
eat-services like Spotify.

~~~
kingosticks
You are totally right. I'm just ticked off about the fact that lots of bands I
like make their new stuff streamable on there before it's released elsewhere.
I find it very awkward to access that stuff. For me, in that situation,
bandcamp just feels like a botched attempt at a streaming service. Especially
when I remember it used to be better in this regard.

~~~
thirdsun
My guess is that streaming isn't a key feature for Bandcamp users/listeners.
They use the platform to actually purchase, download and own music, to add it
to their offline collections and libraries that will still be there when a
streaming service shuts down (rip rdio) or licensing deals change and your
favorite albums disappear from Spotify and Co. (It happens).

At least that's how I, as a frequent music buyer and collector, use Bandcamp.

Concerning the artists that prioritize Bandcamp: Don't forget that most
artists don't make any money via streaming - of course they push the channel
that actually provides revenue and actual, meaningful sales.

------
fortythirteen
One of the hardest things for an artist to realize is that most people don't
give a shit about what you do and, while what you do can be important to some
people, it is not _objectively_ important.

The author of this article hasn't come to that realization yet.

~~~
plussed_reader
Yeah, who needs another iteration of Windows?

------
te_chris
I'm often baffled at the way Pitchfork et al have embraced Spotify when it so
clearly wants to own everything to do with music so it can extract value
everywhere.

I love Spotify the product, but it's a terrible, impersonal experience in a
lot of ways, and also doesn't feel very sticky to me. Sure, I need access to
the catalogue, but the playlists leave me cold and I could easily switch to
another service. I feel like there'll be opportunities for instagram-like
upstarts to chip away at their base, offering things that their big,
impersonal machine can't as it's so focused on scale.

~~~
svantana
Totally agree, though it's not viable to start a small-ish spotify alternative
today because of the licensing situation. The rights owners really need to get
together and create a generic streaming license, similar to what is offered to
radio stations.

------
CoolGuySteve
Every other sentence in this article reads like something from
/r/iam14andthisisdeep

~~~
coredog64
> This worker is teaching people to use the iPads that will one day replace
> her. It’s an awkward phenomenon that now pervades a growing cross-section of
> industries, a type of techno-solutionism that’s unbearable because it
> insistently capitalizes on quick fixes for problems that didn’t exist to
> begin with.

These devices are awesome. When I go to lunch with my co-workers, it's easy to
split the check. I don't have to give my credit card to anyone. And if we're
in a time crunch I don't have to flag down the wait staff. Nor do they have to
wait for their shot at the payment terminal.

~~~
magic_beans
Let's be honest here: how many airport waitstaff out there have ever
brightened anyone's day?

Slim to none.

I suspect this artist has never actually eaten at an airport restaurant -- the
staff, at least at JFK and LAX, are some of the most demotivated, spirit-
broken people I've ever encountered.

------
terryf
The main problem with Spotify is their payment structure to artists. When I
pay their monthly fee, I want that money to go to the artists that I listen
to. There would be a simple way to do this - take the money I pay, minus the
Spotify cut to provide the service and then proportionally divide it among the
artists that I listen to.

Do they do that? Oh no! Instead, they aggregate together all the music
listened to and all the money paid them, take off their cut and then divide
the total amount proportionately to artists.

Effectively this means that I'm paying for music that I don't listen to. I
hate the fact that some of my money is going to Justin Bieber.

~~~
arketyp
What's the difference if it's proportional in the end anyway? Then some
Belieber is paying your favorite artist in return.

~~~
terryf
If you calculate it out, then the long tail gets much more money in my
scenario.

------
magic_beans
I'm not in the music industry, so it's hard for me to feel the pain for many
of the writer's muddled points:

> As an industry insider once explained to me, digital strategists have
> identified “lean back listening” as an ever more popular Spotify-induced
> phenomenon. It turns out that playlists have spawned a new type of music
> listener, one who thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking
> out, and instead connects with emotions, moods and activities, where they
> just pick a playlist and let it roll

I can't see what's wrong with this. Is it a sin to consume music to meet an
emotional need or match a mood?

> One independent label owner I spoke with has watched his records’ physical
> and digital sales decline week by week. He’s trying to play ball with the
> platform by pitching playlists, to varying effect. “The more vanilla the
> release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s challenging music? Nah,”
> he says, telling me about all of the experimental, noise, and comparatively
> aggressive music on his label that goes unheard on the platform.

This artist doesn't have to be on Spotify.

> If Spotify is just feeding easy music to everybody, where does the art form
> go? Is anybody going to be able to push boundaries and break through to a
> wide audience anymore?”

Again, Spotify is a platform whose interests are for itself.

> Spotify’s ambition to superannuate labels is evident. In its quest for total
> power and control, Spotify has prioritized its own content, and it has made
> it notably more difficult to find albums rather than playlists.

Of course Spotify prioritizes its own content. No one forces independent
artists to be on Spotify.

The writer is lamenting the death of an entire industry, but to blame Spotify
is absurd. Blame big labels for pushing Top-40 pop nonsense for the past
twenty years. Blame every single person for not valuing art. Blame modern
culture for consumerism. Blame the internet for creating an expectation of
instant gratification.

~~~
mywittyname
Artists kind of do have to be on Spotify. Not in the sense that there's a gun
to their head, but in the sense that the gun is pointing to the head of their
career.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Artists hardly make any money from album sales, unless it's direct payment to
them, trough services like Bandcamp. The labels and management take way too
big cuts.

Most bands make their money from touring and merch, and it's been this way for
a long long time.

~~~
mywittyname
Artists get screwed over touring too. Live Nation owns most of the arenas they
can perform in as well as the places they can sell their tickets through, so
most of the money you pay for tickets go to them instead of the artist. And
record deals usually include a % of merch sales, which is the reason t-shirts
are like $30.

~~~
KozmoNau7
That depends a lot on the size of the venue. Most of the smaller and medium
sized venues here are outside of Live Nation's grip.

And LN seems to be a lot more benign here, compared to their behavior in the
US.

------
dmschulman
Spotify's model is driven by what users consume the most, so it sounds to me
like this isn't something Spotify is driving but instead the market is
driving.

"Challenging" music is good and necessary to further art, but it's not a kind
of music that the majority of Spotify's audience go out of their way to
consume.

------
creaghpatr
The author is trying to frame a cultural 'music discovery' problem as a
Spotify UX problem.

I don't think Spotify's netflixified playlists are a big issue. In fact, I
think they are decently curated.

The 'music discovery' problem stems from the centralization of music radio (in
the late 2000s), causing a selected handful of superstars to reign supreme
protected by the centralized barriers to entry.

Spotify has created the inverse problem. Instead of a handful of superstars
(other than the ones grandfathered in before streaming became commonplace),
the US Top 50 chart (over a given 10 week time period)is fragmented with 100%
interchangeable rap songs with DIY production chops. 'Interchangable' is the
key word here- none of these artists are able to rise to headliner status and
major music festivals are in jeopardy because they are running out of legacy
headliners to keep them afloat.

TLDR: Centralized radio enabled labels to conspire to make superstars. Spotify
(not intentionally) prevents artists from becoming superstars. There are
exceptions, of course, but the revenue numbers from previous generations dwarf
those of, say, Fetty Wap.

------
mywittyname
> The band was happy to be included and inspired to see their peers push back
> against corporate exploitation. “The difference now is that, if you don’t
> bow down to Spotify, you might as well tell whoever runs the guillotine
> that’s above your neck to just let her rip,”

The punk thing thing to do would be to release a song called "Fuck $Brand"
that outlines all the scandals and abuses the brand has been involved in over
the years.

Yeah, it's kind of passive aggressive. But when execs at $Brand find out about
it, maybe they'll start a corporate blacklist and put your band at the top of
it.

------
CaptSpify
> How can artists distribute and sell their work in a digital economy beholden
> to ruthlessly commercial and centralized interests?

Well the distribution side is easy. Unless you have something special, you can
just put it on a torrent and have other people help you distribute it. It's
the making money part that is hard.

It's still amazing to me that we have things like Spotify trying to control
distribution. We don't need any more gatekeepers trying to block users from
digital media. Instead we need to start figuring out how our economic models
are so broken that they led us to our current situation.

Virtual goods are so fundamentally different that we have companies who don't
even realize that they've been automated out. And even worse: We have users
who don't understand that and are willing to give these companies money.

------
tarsinge
The author doesn't differentiate between the contexts of music listening, but
when you're at work and need concentration, in a bar, at a party, or doing a
workout background music is great and playlists based on moods are on point.
Personally I don't see the incompatibility with algorithmically generated
playlists and appreciating every song being listened to when appropriate, in
fact I find them great to discover new artists and songs, especially in niche
genres.

------
exelius
I had been thinking this exact same thing -- streaming music has changed my
consumption habits, and I noticed that my musical tastes started trending more
and more toward the "muzak" spectrum (simple beats, repetitive melodies,
minimal vocals). "Chillhop" is basically the muzak of 2010s; I mean it has
been for a while but its popularity seems to have surged alongside streaming
music.

Or maybe it's just me getting old. :)

------
mnx
There might be some insight in this article, but the tone makes it unbearable
to read for me. Halfway between apocalyptic and condescending.

------
gumby
Yet another complaint that the brief period of musicians as occasional break-
out stars is over. What the author describes is the baseline position of
musicians: mostly background performers. And when she writes of “music” she
really means pop music, as classical musicians have by and large never made
serious money.

------
maxscam
This is really true. I used to use grooveshark, which is very similar to
spotify in terms of functionality, but what it had that spotify lacks is user
generated playlists. I find spotify horrible for finding new music, however
once you know who you want to listen to its great.

~~~
thirdsun
So you don't consider those playlists you can create and share on Spotify as
user generated? However I agree that they could be featured more prominently.

Apart from that Grooveshark was a service without legitimate content. As a
streaming service you can't rely on user uploads and ignore the whole
licensing aspect of the business.

------
fuzzfactor
Live. Music.

Eliminate the middleman.

Get out and support your local bands.

~~~
radix07
What do you listen to in the car??

~~~
fuzzfactor
The radio when driving by myself, preferably news to stay up to date or bring
in new information rather than having my private listening material isolate me
from the outside world.

When I commute, there are a number of venues along the way which offer live
music 7 nights a week, I have my favorite and a couple preferred backups, with
no to low cover charge except for weekends, when I'm not commuting anyway.

A mixture of familiar and new musicians usually more than one night a week.

I tip the bands who I appreciate and if no one is dancing then I get out there
and boogie which brings more people out front and the musicians love it.

Also only drink alcohol in this environment, never at home or anywhere else,
and always in very limited amounts just to socialize and support the venue,
since I want it to wear off before driving afterward. Tip the bartenders too
at least 30 percent.

I don't make time for this, more like happy hours after working late so I can
keep up a 50 to 60 hour week (to accomplish twice as many scientific
breakthroughs compared to 40 hours).

The alternative would be fewer breakthroughs and almost as many hours in
traffic when leaving the lab at 5.

I am now acquainted with hundreds of musicians and other music lovers, many of
them engineers or amazingly brilliant in many different ways. A while back one
of the visiting bass players turned out to be the chairman of the math
department for a major university a few hours from here.

Turns out I could start a new company as easily as my own band with like-
minded exceptional individuals whom I have much deeper insight into than most
founders.

Yes it is costly, about as much as a few CD's a week, more if I eat at the
venues having excellent kitchens.

Musicians still often just give me a CD even though I tell them I only listen
to it once before passing it on to some one else.

