Devils advocate moment… If people keep listening (or sort of listening) and they are OK with music that seems to lack any soul, is it not just giving the audience what they want and deserve?
Devils concierge moment… What a bunch of shitbags.
Just because people consume music slop, does not mean that that is a natural demand (given the supply is explicitly artificial, so certainly there’s an economic incentive to generate demand), or something they deserve to consume or have to be given to consume (you shit every day; does not imply you want shit).
An obscure Swedish jazz musician got more plays than most of the tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are—which had just won the Grammy for Album of the Year (not just the best jazz album, but the best album in any genre). How was that even possible?
LOL a couple obvious reasons are that Spotify listeners don’t get to vote for grammy awards - only a few thousand people do - and to be eligible for a grammy an album has to be released in the United States. The awards are more heavily influenced by album sales than subjective judgements of musical quality. Jimi Hendrix never won a grammy. Neither did Bob Marley or Diana Ross. There’s a lot already wrong with the grammys.
The fake musicians and possibly AI-generated songs are more interesting. If the music industry is trying to eliminate musicians it wouldn’t be to avoid paying them - they’ve already figured out lots of ways to do that - it would be to have complete control over the music.
The awards are more heavily influenced by album sales than subjective judgements of musical quality.
Do you know who Jon Batiste is?
The album won on quality. The sales spiked after the win.
That’s a good counterexample. Do you know what “more heavily influenced” means? It means “not always universally every time, but more often”.
And Lenin said, “the best way to undermine society is through its music” — Bob Duvall
It’s a fake quote from Lenin, but suitably apt.
The last and only truth I needed to know about Spotify was it’s 250 million dollar deal with Joe Rogan, who is antivax incel cancer, and that was it for me. No need to learn or know any more about them.
I don’t know, do you people let Spotify decide that much about what you hear? I normally never let the music run through so that automatic recommendations play, but I choose explicitly what’s added next in the queue. So the problem mentioned in the article is not relevant to me at all.
No, I don’t think that and I did not write anything like that. I was just sharing my perspective. And was interested in learning how other people use the player.
So that comment was purely out of curiosity and in no way implied a certain degree of incredulousness?
I usually only listen to one album at a time, front to back. But I think most people don’t do that.
Yes, listening to whole albums is not only great with albums you already know, but it’s also my favourite way to get to know new artists. A single song is often not enough to understand the whole picture or range.
Well, seems to be an old-fashioned approach. But I’m also not the type of person who has music blare in the background all day. So I don’t like the radio-like approach by Spotify to just let anything play what the algorithm thinks is fitting.
That it all-around sucks? That I’ve been telling people this since it’s creation? That nobody fucking listens to me? Or that this preview picture looks like ET and Titanic had a mash-up. Or all of the above.
It’s all of the above, duh.
