✘ Algorithm unbound - press escape and listen
And: Make streaming (listeners) pay; GenAI + T&Cs; Music Healthtech; An answer to music's monetization problem; EU Action Grant for repository of public domain works
Culture has flattened to the point of everlasting boredom. Most songs sound the same, every TikTok looks the same, every Instagram post looks the same. We’ve been desensitized and abhor diversity. In the words Kyle Chayka, we live in Filterworld.
“It’s that algorithms have shaped the overall cultural landscape, conditioning our tastes. Everything exists within the algorithmic context of passive, frictionless consumption.”
We often hear how social media thrives on authenticity, but it’s an authenticity that’s specific to driving the metrics the platform makes their money off: engagement, engagement, engagement. Whether that’s likes, watch time, or reposts, it means that we’re fed more of the things that will give us that reaction. Last week, I wrote about trust, and how the need for that in establishing relationships won’t go away. This week, I’ll talk about how we can escape beyond simply deleting every app on your phone.
Slow down
The Internet won’t go away anytime soon and nor will our interconnected lives. What’s more, connectedness will probably increase in the next couple of decades. That’s hard, because all those connections make the present we live in pretty hard to deal with. The countermovement to that complexity is our flattening culture. We can’t be challenged by a labyrinth while we also, at the same time, need to untangle a gordian knot. Our brains will simply stop, and that’s actually not a bad reaction.
Whenever I talk about communities, there’s two things I always try to press home: 1) have an exit strategy, or know how to let the community die; 2) realize that community members can only expend so much energy on the community. The first point is a hard stop, the second point is an argument to allow things to move slow. And another way to look at this, is to think about what the current norms are for the music industry. We are, just like every other entertainment business, bound by the algorithm. Content needs to be fed into the machine all the time and it needs to breed engagement. Doing something different won’t work - unless you agree to slow down in the first place.
Originality isn’t flat
Dipping into what the algorithm feeds its users - and, yes, we’re all addicts - is a skill, for sure. Those creators who can stay ahead of the curve possess skills required to do so. And yet, almost all of them were lucky to start with - something they did got picked up and broadcast out to many, many people. Riding the wave of a trend on social media is rarely original. If anything, the things that work best hark back to the past. In a sense, we’re all Disney here and guilty of what Jay Springett and Andrew Dana Hudson call cultural fracking:
“the capitalist process of endlessly extracting new value out of the sedimentary layers of meaning that comprise mass culture from the past.”
We all try to find something that we know resonated with people in the past, because we’re looking for a shared vocabulary to connect through. Due to years of algorithmic push there’s less and less of this shared cultural grammar available to us. Beyoncé can shock with a country song, and while it’s a great song there’s nothing truly original happening there. Ed Sheeran keeps going around the world to play his gigs, visiting schools and making music with kids. It’s not that these artists intend to adhere to the algorithm, but their output is content more than it is music or art. If we know something works, we’ll repeat it to find similar effect. But as the vocabulary of shared mass culture gets depleted we will crave renewed originality.
Listen
I recently noticed that Spotify had changed a setting: podcasts play at 1.2x speed. At first, I didn’t even notice, but maybe it was because the people I was listening to were naturally quite slow speakers. There’s people who think this is the ideal speed to listen to podcasts, like Katie Notopolous, who wrote about it early January. Maybe Spotify has since then changed that setting, or maybe I was just part of a testing group. Katie describes 1.2x as “just a little quicker and livelier” as well as that “it’s nice to get through it slightly faster.” But to me it sounds like the perfect speed to get distracted and do something else while listening. We’re so used to having a second screen around and to listen and watch from multiple sources. This goes beyond specific sonic properties, though.
Sound puts us in the centre of our world. When we look, we place ourselves on the edge of that world. By listening we can absorb all that happens around us. It’s strange to think that our ears allow us to be capable of discerning all these sound waves that occur around us. Just like we can understand the spaces we move through and live better if we attentively listen to them, so we can understand our digital, connected selves better by listening. We have become addicted to the infinite scroll, but also to ubiquitous sound where pitch and amplitude are as flat as culture itself. By slowing down, by listening attentively we can find the music that moves us and the connections that affect us.
LINKS
💸 Make Streaming (Listeners) Pay (Glenn McDonald)
“Streaming music royalties are already split into three different components: to licensors, to publishers (for songwriters), and to performing-rights agencies (also for songwriters; it's a long story). This bill would add a fourth. That seems to me like the wrong direction, and grounds for skepticism even before we get into how the new fund would work. As an example it also implies that every country would need to create a similar fund of their own, although the bill as written seems to ignore the fact that it applies to the flow of money in only one country, while the music itself is global.”
✘ A new bill in the USA that’s also called Living Wage for Musicians Act. Sounds good, but as Glenn points out it’s not the direction that will help fix the actual issues.
📕 Generative AI & Terms of Use (Max Tiel & Joost de Boo)
“In our opinion, the terms of use of too many generative AI music tools are misleading. Although most product websites tell you that you maintain full ownership of your input and output, it often becomes clear that you also "sublicense" your work to the AI platform – once you dive into their legal documentation. Technically, you always remain the owner of your input and output. But you also give ownership to someone else.”
✘ Here’s why it’s always good to actually read those T&Cs. Also interesting is that the use case with the artist described in the piece shows a potential path towards a future with a multitude of text-to-audio or large-music models.
🚑 Music Healthtech: An overview (Rob Marshall)
“A new class of company is emerging which blends this scientific research base with musical knowledge and cutting edge technology. These companies are producing new products for personal and professional healthcare settings, and shaping the emerging ‘music healthtech’ sector.”
✘ I see this sector that Rob describes here as a potential growth vector for the music industry. This article is a great starting point if you’re keen to start following along with developments.
🎮 Music has a monetisation problem - Are video games the answer? (Mat Ombler)
“Mobile games are often ignored, despite generating 49% of global gaming revenue. Monetization and gameplay mechanics are misunderstood, and many of the most exciting game x music initiatives are dreamed up by video game studios rather than the music industry (shout-out Riot Games and Krafton for leading the way on this front).”
✘ Mat’s full of great points in this one, and along the way he also advices the music industry heavyweights to start taking the lead on music x gaming crossovers. Emerge, Evoke, Enact - thinking of different ways that music can shine through games.
🔓 EU Repository of public domain and open licensed works (EU Action Grant)
“This is a call for proposals for EU action grant in the field of copyright, with a budget of EUR 700k. The purpose of this Pilot project is to assess the feasibility and possible benefits of setting up an EU repository of public domain and open licensed works and develop a prototype.”
✘ Not a link to an article, but to a call for proposals to something I feel could be a very useful thing to build and operate. Perhaps someone reading this newsletter fits the bill for this grant.
MUSIC
An album made up entirely of the reverb of piano notes, and it’s absolutely stunning. Jasmine Wood recorded this in an empty church on an old piano and listening to the record it’s almost like you hear that space talking to you.