
The economics of streaming is changing pop songs - RachelF
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/10/05/the-economics-of-streaming-is-changing-pop-songs
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tjansen
The article describes what used to be called a 'radio mix' or 'radio edit':
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_edit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_edit)

The only difference is that today it is less common to have several mixes of
the same song (which mostly existed to fill singles) and people will often
stream the album version, so everything is a radio mix today.

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wil421
I used to notice radio songs would be played slightly faster than the CD or an
MP3 ripped from the CD I downloaded. Sometimes I woundnt like the slower tempo
of certain songs. Now that I steam a lot I don’t notice it. Maybe the
streaming services play the radio edits or, as you said, it’s much less
common.

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lbotos
No, radio stations would pitch up songs (play them faster/make them more
"upbeat") to get more ad time:
[http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/thread/58007](http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/thread/58007)

You'll know the difference between a radio edit and the "original" because one
will be ~3-4 minutes and the other can be somewhere from 4-9 minutes for the
DJs to mix with.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUjE9H8QlA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUjE9H8QlA4)
\- 3:51

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2Q62uMew0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2Q62uMew0)
\- 7:22

~~~
munificent
I think you're talking about slightly different things because of the
different genres. You can think of there being three flavors of a track:

* A "dance mix" is specifically designed to be played by a DJ at a club. It's designed for mixing — overlapping with the previous and next songs so that dancers can continuously dance through multiple songs. It has a long intro (often only drums and nothing tonal to avoid clashes between different keys) and a long outro.

* An "album mix" is designed for personal listeners. It can be as long or short as the artist wants because they can assume the listener wants to hear this exact song because they chose it.

* A "radio mix" is designed to be played by radio DJs. Artists want to get played as much as possible and radio stations want to have plenty of time for ads and avoid boring dead air, so the incentive is to make this really short and punchy.

Electronic dance music often only has a "dance mix", especially in the niche
subgenres. If a track is popular enough, it might have a "radio mix" that's
actually closer to an album version — its intended for personal listening with
less need of a mixable intro/outro.

Pop and rock used to often have both an album and a radio mix. Now that radio
is dying and randomized streaming is growing, those two are converging (which
is what the article hints at).

Many of these, especially upbeat ones will have longer "dance remixes", often
many, often radically different from the original. A lot of times all that's
kept from the original song is some of the vocals or the hook. These are
usually created well after the original produced version (hence " _re_ mix").

So the "original" version of a song depends a lot on the genre. Most original
versions of rock and pop songs are either the shorter or middle-length one and
the longer dance mixes and shorter radio edit (if there is one) come later.
Most EDM songs are longer in their original for-DJs version and the shorter
edit comes out later if the track gets big enough to get popular adoption.

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neonate
[https://outline.com/h6yP2M](https://outline.com/h6yP2M)

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toastal
Thanks. Between my screen cut in half for cookies accepting (with no decline)
and an immediate paywall, I was going to skip this.

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ssttoo
“User-centric system” is when I listen only to a small indie band whole month,
they get all of my $9.99. As opposed to the current state where the chart
toppers get 9.98 and my indie favourite gets 0.01. But

> Spotify’s former director of economics thinks it neglected to account for
> higher administrative costs

I don’t get it. How are admin costs higher if you simply change the formula?
To a simpler one IMO.

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zck
I don't know if they're higher administrative costs, but it requires more
trust in Spotify.

In the constant stream revenue model, you take the total revenue Spotify is
paying out to artists, and divide it by the total number of streams, and
that's the cost per stream. Multiply that by the number of streams an artist
had, and that's how much money they get. You only have to trust three numbers
from Spotify, and two of them are global numbers, so other people will look
into them.

In the stream cost per user revenue model, you do that _for each user_, and
then sum up each artist's revenue. That's a whole lot of math to be done. Now,
computers can do that, but auditing this will be far more complicated.

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ssttoo
Thank you, makes sense. I was wrong that the per-user is simpler. Yet, it’s
only fair. I wouldn’t buy a Rihanna album, in the old physical model, why
would she get get my money in the new one? And it’s probably very likely they
already have the userId -> songId logs for recommendations and such

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codeulike
That 40 second intro to Where The Streets Have No Name that the article
mentions was probably only on the album version and not the single, I'll
wager. Songs that wanted to be played on the radio a lot also had to get to
the point quickly.

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pnongrata
And finish before people lost interest too.

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jihadjihad
By my count, 11 of the 27 songs on the "Beatles 1" album start with the
chorus. Granted, in those days a short and sweet single was the goal so you
had to cut to the chase. Seems like history is merely repeating itself

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wwarner
The article surprised me. I was forming an opinion that streaming has the
opposite effect. When I work at my coworking office, they play a continuous
stream of indie rock aimed at adults. Muted guitars, raspy whispers, for well
adjusted Nirvana fans. It's like an algorithm found the balance between muzak
and the sex pistols.

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billsmithaustin
Reminds me of how long songs used to be trimmed to fit on a 45rpm record.

