
Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro? - tosh
https://news.osu.edu/news/2017/04/04/streaming-attention/
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rainbowmverse
I do instrumental exclusively, unless you count weird vocal synths. Maybe the
author of this study shouldn't have constrained it to the top 10...

There's a huge world of music out there. The most popular stuff is a tiny
little sliver meant to appeal to the greatest number of people. For me, things
have only gotten better since discovering a bunch of weird niche stuff in the
'00s, especially since Bandcamp and Soundcloud gave indies a place to find an
audience without investing in the infrastructure needed for streaming and
sales.

~~~
noobermin
I was going to say something similar but not as harsh. I definitely think that
the internet has made finding niche music that less of difficult a thing, but
when the set you normalize over is the set of popular music rather than all
music, his argument is sound.

An interesting question (and more difficult one to answer) would be whether
access to niche music has increased and more people pursue niches in general
today than before.

~~~
chiefalchemist
I would think you'd have to argue that the answer is more. The crux being that
mega companies no longer have absolute control over a limited number of
distribution channels (e.g., traditional radio).

That has to have led gaps for other genres to edge in. Look at EMD a couple
years ago. That, I don't think, was driven by top down marketing dollars. I
think you're likely talking about less accessible genres, but I think the EMD
example still applies.

~~~
ibotty
EDM? The resurfacing of 90's Eurodance? Is there anything more commercial?
Maybe that's my European viewpoint, so please elaborate if I am wrong.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Yes. But in the US it was never given much respect, and thus no mainstrean
viability. That changed. I'm suggesting it could be because the gatekeepers
lost their control.

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dhimes
[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-
time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long
interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.

~~~
pradn
I think that was true for the iTunes years before Spotify and other streaming
services came along. Before, you had to pay for each song so you picked just a
few you liked. Now, it's just as easy to play the whole album as to play one
song. (In facts, it's easier to queue up an album than to play one song at a
time since you have to choose what to play fewer times per time interval.)

Anecdotally, we've seen whole-album concepts become big hits in recent years:
Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, Kanye West's Life of Pablo, Chance the
Rapper's Coloring Book, etc.

On top of that, almost all hip-hop songs these days have intro tags (which
producers worked on the song.) Not instrumental of course, but non-song
content none-the-less.

~~~
ghaff
On still the other hand though, an awful lot of people these days just cue up
some music style or artist as opposed to choosing what specifically to play. I
know that's what I tend to do. I think it's hard to argue against the idea
that the album concept has mostly declined in relevance since its heyday.

~~~
Kadin
I'm sure lots of people do that, but it's actually easier with the streaming
services to listen to an entire album than it was a few years ago when iTunes
99c/song was the dominant model.

Pay-per-song encouraged playlists and "greatest hits" type mix CDs, but didn't
encourage anyone to purchase B-sides or interstitial tracks. At least with
services like Spotify et al, you aren't paying per track, so you have the
option of listening to a whole album as a single body of work.

Of course, not everyone _wants_ to do that, which is cool.

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nxsynonym
I think it comes down to personal preferences.

I love listening to entire albums. I don't have favorite songs, I have
favorite artists. If I like the artist, I listen to an entire album by them. I
have never once in my life paid for a single song. If and when I buy music,
it's by the album and not by the song.

~~~
microcolonel
Yeah, I've been loving Bandcamp quite a lot for this. Finally there's a truly
dignified way to buy and sell copies of albums. I'm free to reencode, batch
modify the tags, add replaygain tags based on EBU R128/ITU-R BS.1770, copy
freely to all my devices, stream it anywhere.

It's always sad to me when a band moves off the platform, because generally
speaking it means that I will not buy their album at all, except maybe on CD,
or if they have a similar website which allows me to get an archive of the
whole disc in FLAC.

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pwinnski
I recall reading that the push for shorter intros and 3 to 3.5 minute songs
was radio, pre-streaming.

~~~
saghm
This is purely anecdotal, but there are a bunch of songs I can remember
hearing on the radio growing up (15-20 years ago, although the songs were much
older than I was) that had extended instrumental intros that were almost
always cut out; offhand, "Jump" by Van Halen and "Fly Like an Eagle" by Steve
Miller come to mind, although I'm sure there are others I can't quite recall
(technically the intro to "Jump" was listed as a different track on the album,
but it wasn't ever played on its own, as it was only about 30 seconds long).
There are also plenty of songs where the radio would play the shorter "single"
version of the song, which would usually have instrumental parts cut out,
rather than the album version. Although the radio format definitely encouraged
shorter songs, there were plenty of workarounds already in use for longer
songs.

~~~
dctoedt
Also from the 70s: _Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding_ by Elton John
(on the Yellow Brick Road album, vocals start at 5:35) and _Foreplay / Long
Time_ by Boston (on the debut album, vocals start at 2:30). Of course, each of
these is really an instrumental piece prepended to a vocal song.

~~~
puzzle
Yes' masterpiece, Close to the edge, has nothing but "nature" sounds for the
first 57 seconds. The first human vocal sound (”aaahhhh") is at 2:00, while
the first lyrics are at 4:01. But then the song, or suite, really, is 18:45
long. I'm too lazy to check their other long works.

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B1FF_PSUVM
It's, like, been over 50 years since "the medium is the message" popped out
loud and clear out of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)
\- not bad, but the original short book also delved in classifying media as
'hot' or 'cold', which is an interesting idea in itself. Not sure I buy it,
but interesting.)

Is it out of fashion at media studies joints?

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matt_j
If you're prepared to look beyond popular music services, there is a whole
world of music out there, of all genres, that is perfectly healthy and doesn't
necessarily conform to whatever is in vogue this particular minute.

I haven't listened to a popular radio station in a long, long time, and I
don't use any streaming services either. I find music the old fashioned way I
guess, but I wouldn't have it any other way. There's no real substitute for
getting your hands dirty and digging around for the gems. I found 3 excellent
new (to me) bands just this month!

We all have our passions, however, and it takes considerable time and effort
to dig. For some, I guess they have other hobbies that consume that time and
they're happy to hear whatever comes their way on the radio (or the stream).

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byron_fast
The conclusion of the article seems a bit of a stretch. I'd guess long intros
existed at least partly for radio DJs to talk over.

But maybe it's still right: the structure of music is dictated by who spins
the media.

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mar77i
I've about had it with these "Has X killed Y?" headlines. My clickbait
detector is tingling.

~~~
noobermin
You're missing out. It's a shitty title but the content is pretty interesting.

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conatus
I run a record label[1] and for our music that we think could have a broad
appeal we are at pains to ensure there isn't too much of a instrumental intro
for the reasons this article describes. It makes me a little sad that this is
the case, but it is. We can watch the drop off stats after a long intro-ed
song.

[1] Records On Ribs - [http://recordsonribs.com](http://recordsonribs.com)

~~~
Moru
Yep, I hear it all the time. "No, that song is boring! No, not that one
either!". Daughter with friends trying to find good hardrock songs, listening
to Nightwish and such. They are 9 years old. Parents cringe and have a lecture
in intros.

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fineline
New Model Army, Vagabonds, around 1.15M hits:

[https://open.spotify.com/track/41bdgBL7tjwQOl7RpwubKU](https://open.spotify.com/track/41bdgBL7tjwQOl7RpwubKU)

The "real" version, with a fantastic build-up violin intro that to my ear at
least, makes this a truly great song. Not sure how many hits, but it doesn't
make it into their "top 5", so presumably below 350k hits:

[https://open.spotify.com/track/3WBwyZLd4hzMibFg6tVqh9](https://open.spotify.com/track/3WBwyZLd4hzMibFg6tVqh9)

Just one datapoint perhaps - but a great sounding one :)

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dangerboysteve
intros have been poorly done by many artists. When Pink Floyd does it, wow.
When The Tea Party does it it's gimmicky.

I could not imagine VH's Hot for teacher without that intro.

~~~
EADGBE
5 year old: "Daddy, what's that??!?!??!"

Me: "A drum solo"

Two minutes later: "Daddy, I want to play drums!"

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n8n3k
If anything there's more purely instrumental music now.

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thomasruns
Contrarian view: Instrumental intros weren't ever that popular, we just didn't
have an easy way to skip them 2 or 3 decades ago.

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frostirosti
What? This is absurd. Trends in music change over time. New instruments, new
musicians and new styles.

~~~
goialoq
... and new formats

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EADGBE
And the last change really changed music itself.

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gozur88
Radio DJs have been cutting out intros for at least 50 years. When I was a kid
I didn't have enough money to buy albums and got all my music from the radio.
When I finally _did_ start buying music I heard all sorts of intros I never
knew existed.

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Raphmedia
Simply put the long musical intro in a separate track. A lot of albums do
this.

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FlyingSideKick
It’s no wonder that Fela Kuti (though legendary) and Antibalas have never gone
mainstream with most songs being purely instrumental for a good five minutes
or more before the vocals start.

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rdiddly
I love Fela's long intros! They're long enough that you start to think they're
the song. And then here comes this whole other groove and THAT'S actually the
song.

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koskaj
people not wanting to here intros killed them.

~~~
ssttoo
"Don't bore us, get to the chorus!" :)
[https://youtu.be/YFHD7kuAqu4?t=2m0s](https://youtu.be/YFHD7kuAqu4?t=2m0s)
(D.Grohl on writing a hit)

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smnplk
Stoned Jesus - I'm the mountain

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droopybuns
The music business as we knew it died. It has been replaced with this
streaming content business. We're lucky we get any new music at all.

~~~
Roboprog
You have not spent much time on soundcloud or the like then?

Most of it lacks polish, but there is still a lot of good, fun, stuff being
made in many genres.

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PatientTrades
I haven't bought a physical album or digital song in years. Most of my friends
haven't either. I am always shocked whenever I see an album sell over 1
million in the first week. These labels have to be buying their own music,
there is no other explanation.

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jrowley
I've started buying CDs again for my car. I have bluetooth on my phone but
don't want to be distracted by it and I find the built in controls on my
player nicer to use. Also I see it as a way to more directly contribute to the
artist vs streaming on spotify.

