Spotify? I don't even know what it is...

A friend, who despite being an accomplished and talented singer-songwriter commented that they did not know what Spotify was the other day. This is no detriment to their ability to get gigs or reach an audience as they built their reputation prior to the digital domination of music watershed which I would estimate took place just after the turn of the century. They simply did not know what it was. In explaining, I thought that saying that it had pretty much replaced radio for the 16-24 demographic was pretty fair. 

Try another flavour...

I had forgotten about juke boxes because they are a rarity nowadays and as are mix tapes because Spotify has replaced them as well. Youth culture expresses itself differently than when some of us were in the 16-24 age group but little seems to have changed in the intensity and passion this group directs towards the music it consumes and identifies with. The biggest difference is the sheer diversity of styles and sheer quantity of content available. It is less and less likely that people in general and the all important music consuming youth market identify with a particular brand or artist in as much as they are approving of a set of production values which present their ears with a relentless stream of similar sounding, usually highly processed audio product.

Fourteen hours per minute...

Over fourteen hours of content is uploaded to Soundcloud every minute, clearly it is impossible to listen to so much material in real time, unless of course, there is a team of eight hundred and fifty or so people listening to the stream. Well, that's if they are going to listen to all of it, and what would be the point?  Music is a time based medium, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. A musical composition almost always ends (resolves) to the note on which it started so the first seconds of a piece of music can tell you this. within two or three notes it is possible to discern if the key is a major or a minor, is it happy or sad? The tempo is either fast or slow and where are the pulses in the rhythm. If you are looking for a cheerful tune that you can go running to then you can know fairly reliably within seconds if the next track on the playlist is going to be suitable. If not, hit "skip". So within a few seconds (it is estimated that this is around seven seconds)  a decision whether to listen on is made. If the track continues to be tolerated for thirty seconds then that counts as a "play" for most streaming platforms.

Don't waste my time with long intros...

The genre, style, loudness,  production values, and emotional valency are all quickly discernable without listening to the whole track, so if hardcore techno is not your bag you can quickly jog on to the next. With more complex genres the finger hesitates to hit that "next" button for as long as the ear and brain take to be sure they know where things are going which is the true meaning of entertainment. Long intros, of course, are risky as repetition and variety must be finely balanced. Too much repetition will make any impending novelty stand out and if, like me you are offended by heavily pitch shifted male vocals, you will not only skip to the next track but develop an aversion to that artist for having wasted so much of your valuable time before revealing this to you.

Very very frightening me...

Consider if Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody never existed but was uploaded to Soundcloud tomorrow. Do you think it would be curated into a popular playlist and become a viral hit? If not, ask yourself why and consider if the very way we consume music is affecting the sort of music we produce. I think it is, and its not good.