The SW&D Music Appreciation Thread

[kjb]

been quiet here...

 

[Fuuma]

 

[Fuuma]

 

[Superb0bo]

been on an a huge And also the trees kick this summer and fall

 

[JewishAmericana]

Celebrating being clean from opioids and heroin for two years today so I figured I'd play some of my favs from the time.




And Finally my fav(the music video is really good too)

 

[Fuuma]

Oh and congrats @JewishAmericana on your two yr anniversary.

 

[Rookoobay]

layering isn't just for clothes

 

[Bromley]

 

[domdomdomdom]

 

[endorphinz]

hmm, posted this in another thread, I didn’t realize S&D had its own music thread

 

[Rookoobay]

@endorphinz re: spotify.

I think it's fine for consuming music in a quick/accessible manner (fwiw I have never really dug in. my wife has an account so I am only vaguely familiar as a user). the quality isn't very good, but people can share playlists easily, etc. however, algorithmic discovery is heavily tilted to fraud/pay-to-play. if people think they are finding stuff "organically" by letting it randomize (or however they do it), they are probably mistaken.

the real problem I have with the platform - esp as a (mostly former) musician who has played on albums on there - is the extremely meager earnings given to artists. here's a recent piece on them proposing lowering royalties to a record-low. the payout scheme essentially pits musicians against each other - there's a finite pool of money that is divvied up between all artists, based on fraction of plays. it's a major issue for 99% of artists when they're up against Drake/Adele/Ed Sheeran/the sound of rain playlist (who buys all of his clicks, thus taking away from other artists - see next). there is also widespread fraud on the service, mostly in the form of bots. you can google services that will charge you $4 for 1000 plays on up to numbers that allow someone to essentially double their money.

meanwhile, Spotify is valued at ~$47 billion.

 

[endorphinz]

@endorphinz re: spotify.

I think it's fine for consuming music in a quick/accessible manner (fwiw I have never really dug in. my wife has an account so I am only vaguely familiar as a user). the quality isn't very good, but people can share playlists easily, etc. however, algorithmic discovery is heavily tilted to fraud/pay-to-play. if people think they are finding stuff "organically" by letting it randomize (or however they do it), they are probably mistaken.

the real problem I have with the platform - esp as a (mostly former) musician who has played on albums on there - is the extremely meager earnings given to artists. here's a recent piece on them proposing lowering royalties to a record-low. the payout scheme essentially pits musicians against each other - there's a finite pool of money that is divvied up between all artists, based on fraction of plays. it's a major issue for 99% of artists when they're up against Drake/Adele/Ed Sheeran/the sound of rain playlist (who buys all of his clicks, thus taking away from other artists - see next). there is also widespread fraud on the service, mostly in the form of bots. you can google services that will charge you $4 for 1000 plays on up to numbers that allow someone to essentially double their money.

meanwhile, Spotify is valued at ~$47 billion.

Thanks for the reply. I expected these to be your criticisms

I LOVE spotify. I had a approximately 1000 vinyl albums that I gave away, most just left in the basement of my apartment building for anyone to grab. Many were worth $$ but I was pressed for time and just didn’t care. I had replaced most titles and added many more by downloading... newsgroups & torrents. I had about 1 1/2 terabytes of stuff.... and THEN CAME SPOTIFY.... just about everything I had or wanted was on it and accessible in mere seconds on my phone and computer. I VERY RARELY download anything anymore.

As for quality, it’s fine. Let’s face it ,most people use stock apple earbuds, or bluetooth buds. Some connoisseurs “ upgrade” to BEATS which are horrendous. For the record, I listen thru pretty good IEMs Shure SE 846. Also, most music is consumed while doing other things. Gone are my daze of listening ,with undivided attention, on a perfectly curated system in an acoustically perfect environment. In other words, the complete ease of access FAR OUTWEIGHS any loss of quality . BTW, AB tests show most people can not differentiate between decently encoded mps files and wav , flac etc.

As far as the business side ($$) goes, I invite you to subscribe to The Bob Lefsetz newsletter & podcast who, in some entries completely dispels the notion that Spotify is bad for artists. (search his archives) Lefesetz is a long time independent music industry insider/ writer and his newsletter is read by MANY artists & music executives . The podcast is an absolute gem.

Oh, I very rarely listen to Spotify playlists. I enjoy going down rabbit holes and digging to find my own stuff so algorithms mean nothing to me.

 

[Rookoobay]

I can totally understand the ease of use. I probably only have 1200 albums left after selling 2/3 of my collection before moving houses - records are awful to move! most of my online consumption comes via bandcamp at this point. even outside of their 100% Fridays they compensate artists very well, employ a bunch of great music writers, and make it a joy to discover new sounds.

As far as the business side ($$) goes, I invite you to subscribe to The Bob Lefsetz newsletter & podcast who, in some entries completely dispels the notion that Spotify is bad for artists.

never heard of him. just glossing over a piece now and I feel confident in saying I won't be going much further with his work.

 

[endorphinz]

never heard of him. just glossing over a piece now and I feel confident in saying I won't be going much further with his work.

LOL. I don’t know what you read or what turned you off but the dude knows his shit and is very well respected by most. I have a feeling you read something political which I understand can be polarizing but if you just read his music stuff I think you’d dig it. In any event search through the podcast episodes. If you’re into music I’m positive there are episodes that you’ll find really, really good.... many with artists and some with music execs.

*EDIT* sorry, didn’t see the link to what you read. All I can say is many artists agree with him & not just big ones.. but it’s all good... listen to the podcast

 

[kjb]

ibibio sound machine have a new song, which features hot chip, which is really fun


that reminded me that hot chip did a song last year with jarvis cocker, which is also really fun