Warning: Spoilers forward for anybody who hasn’t heard ‘The Ongoing Historical past of New Music’ radio present/podcast collection on music within the twenty first century.
This weekend marks the finale of a 10-part Ongoing Historical past of New Music collection on the 100 most necessary issues, occasions, moments, individuals and tech seen in music because the starting of the millennium.
It’s been an attention-grabbing journey going again by means of the final 25 years. Making the checklist was troublesome sufficient. However tips on how to order issues from 100 to 1? What’s crucial of all of the gadgets on the checklist?
I assumed lengthy and laborious about this. Was it music piracy? The demise of David Bowie? The ultimate Tragically Hip tour? The introduction of the iPod and smartphone? I wished to finish the collection on a excessive be aware, however in the long run, I needed to go along with an actual downer. I apologize upfront, however I feel you’ll see what I imply.
When the 2000s began, we paid between $10 and $20 for a single CD. To amass this piece of plastic, we needed to work X hours at our jobs to earn sufficient cash to journey by means of time and house at a report retailer. As a result of music was so costly to amass, we had been very specific about how we spent this cash. Which artists deserved our monetary funding?
We then returned house from the shop and put the CD on the stereo. We listened to the album over and over till we knew all of the songs back and forth. Hopefully, we ended up liking extra of them than we hated. But when the steadiness went the mistaken means, our monetary funding in that artist was a failure.
Bodily music libraries had been additionally treasured possessions. Not solely did they replicate our personalities, histories and feelings, however they had been additionally costly to assemble. You would possibly know the ache of somebody breaking into your automobile and making off together with your treasured CD binder.
Not anymore. Immediately, music flows like water. Simply open up the streaming faucet and right here it is available in a endless gusher. The most recent figures say there are 202 million songs accessible on any of the streaming music platforms, with about 100,000 new songs being uploaded each single day. That’s three million new songs a month and 36,000,000 a yr.
That is an excessive amount of. Manner an excessive amount of. The result’s an oversupply of a product that prices nothing (or one thing very near it) to the buyer. When that occurs, the product is devalued in each conceivable means. And it has occurred to music.
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Folks could insist they’re passionate music followers and can’t do with out it, however as a result of we don’t need to pay for it, our primary relationship with music has modified.
Let’s take Spotify, for instance. A month-to-month particular person subscription is $12.69 on this nation, lower than the value of a single CD within the olden days. That month-to-month spend now provides us entry to primarily each tune ever recorded.
Don’t just like the tune served up by the algorithm? Hit the skip button with impunity. And lots of people skip songs. In line with some Spotify numbers I noticed some time again, 25 per cent of customers will skip an unfamiliar new tune within the first 5 seconds. One other 29 per cent will skip it inside 10 seconds. And an additional 35 per cent will likely be gone by the point the tune is 30 seconds previous. Would anybody have carried out that in the event that they’d paid full value for that piece of music?
Right here’s one other factor to contemplate: Are you listening to music or simply listening to it? Listening entails concentrating on what’s coming into your ears and considering what the artist is attempting to say and the way the songs make you are feeling. Listening to is placing one thing on in your earbuds to soundtrack your stroll to work. It’s additionally background music for work, focus, research and simply to fill the silence.
No funding + no threat + in the present day’s shortened consideration spans + listening to vs. listening and the equation for the devaluation of music as each an artwork kind and a commodity is full.
Oh, we should still worth music emotionally and it’s nonetheless essential in relation to tradition; it’s an important a part of our existence. However as a result of we’re not paying for it like we used to, I postulate that we don’t regard it with the identical reverence.
Little thought can also be given to compensating the artists for his or her expertise and labour. We regularly hear about music followers complaining that platforms like Spotify don’t pay out very a lot. However ask them in the event that they’d be prepared to pay extra if it meant that artists could be paid higher and their reply is “HELL, no!”
Now contemplate that a lot of those self same individuals aren’t paying for his or her music in any respect. As a result of they use Spotify’s free ad-supported tier, they pay nothing in any respect for his or her music. In different phrases, they could love their music however not sufficient to pay for it.
For customers, music has change into a low-cost, low-margin commodity that requires loads of cash to make however gives little compensation in return. There’s little indication that this example goes to alter any time quickly. And it’ll proceed to impression how music is made and by whom for an extended, very long time.
This — the devaluation of music — is my decide for crucial factor to occur to music thus far this century. Sorry to be such a bummer.
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