Music Industry

montyburns56

montyburns56

There's an interesting article here by Shaad D'Souza in The Guardian about how Charli XCX was pipped to the post for the No. 1 on the album chart by Taylor Swift's people releasing several new versions of her album at the last minute. I don't understand why the BPI allows this to happen as I remember decades ago that they cracked down on the number of different single versions that an artist could release due to record labels releasing ridiculous numbers of different single formats to help their artists get into the top 40.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/a...-charts-but-charli-xcx-captured-the-zeitgeist
 
cleggar

cleggar

montyburns56 said:
There's an interesting article here by Shaad D'Souza in The Guardian about how Charli XCX was pipped to the post for the No. 1 on the album chart by Taylor Swift's people releasing several new versions of her album at the last minute. I don't understand why the BPI allows this to happen as I remember decades ago that they cracked down on the number of different single versions that an artist could release due to record labels releasing ridiculous numbers of different single formats to help their artists get into the top 40.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/a...-charts-but-charli-xcx-captured-the-zeitgeist
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I think the main reason is because labels are desperate for the money so multiple formats is how they turn a profit (obviously I’m talking about smaller acts). Plus streaming has made the album chart fairly meaningless and messy so I doubt there’s much desire to fix it.
 
Beb

Beb

And at the end of the day it's the consumers who are getting mugged off. Whilst they're gullible enough to buy them, it's ultimately their problem.
 
Hudvar

Hudvar

How low/dead are album sales now? I see from time to time something land at No 1 that's not even clung on to the top 100 the following week.
 
bryan89

bryan89

Kyle. said:
And at the end of the day it's the consumers who are getting mugged off. Whilst they're gullible enough to buy them, it's ultimately their problem.
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I think it's a circle. There's absolutely zero reason for any artist to put out 20 variants of an album and there's zero reason for anyone to own more than one copy with one bonus track, other than greed (from both sides).
 
bestinase

bestinase

Hudvar said:
How low/dead are album sales now? I see from time to time something land at No 1 that's not even clung on to the top 100 the following week.
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This was the top of this week's UK chart. This was a relatively strong sales week, on a quiet week 15-17k might get you a number one nowadays.

01 35,941 Taylor Swift - THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT [17,136 CDs, 1,481 vinyl, 5 cassettes, 1,134 downloads, 16,185 streaming]
02 27,234 Charli XCX - BRAT [6,077 CDs, 10,687 vinyl, 339 cassettes, 507 downloads, 9,624 streaming]
03 22,812 Bon Jovi - Forever [875 streaming]
04 17,980 Billie Eilish - HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
05 7,496 Eminem - Curtain Call: The Hits

The reason you'll see stuff drop out dramatically is that physicals front-load a huge amount of album campaigns nowadays. Unless you have a large streaming presence, multi-week buzz and/or smashes then it's just difficult to hang aroud the top end of the charts anymore and so labels have put a lot more focus on getting upfront sales.
 
soratami

soratami

Isn't it also because the UK charts streams to sales formula ignores the two or three most streamed songs on the album? So basically unless an album has spawned a large number of hits it doesn't really have much of a chance to hang around. Also why the top 100 is completely littered with Greatest Hits. It's all pretty stupid.
 
munro

munro

bestinase said:
This was the top of this week's UK chart. This was a relatively strong sales week, on a quiet week 15-17k might get you a number one nowadays.

01 35,941 Taylor Swift - THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT [17,136 CDs, 1,481 vinyl, 5 cassettes, 1,134 downloads, 16,185 streaming]
02 27,234 Charli XCX - BRAT [6,077 CDs, 10,687 vinyl, 339 cassettes, 507 downloads, 9,624 streaming]
03 22,812 Bon Jovi - Forever [875 streaming]
04 17,980 Billie Eilish - HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
05 7,496 Eminem - Curtain Call: The Hits

The reason you'll see stuff drop out dramatically is that physicals front-load a huge amount of album campaigns nowadays. Unless you have a large streaming presence, multi-week buzz and/or smashes then it's just difficult to hang aroud the top end of the charts anymore and so labels have put a lot more focus on getting upfront sales.
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It also doesn’t help that the UK has the worst album chart rules in the world. They actively calculate to reduce streams that count.
 
Laurence

Laurence

New music industry podcast:


Major Labels Sue AI Music Services Suno and Udio for Copyright Infringement
https://variety.com/2024/music/news...o-and-udio-copyright-infringement-1236045366/

Interview with Ex-Spotify Data Scientist Alchemist, from this book: You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changes Music

​
Can you tell me more about your role as 'Data Alchemist' at Spotify and how it came about?​
I was part of a startup called The Echo Nest that Spotify eventually acquired. Startups have weirder roles, sometimes, because you're usually trying to make stuff up on the fly without really having the right resources. I started saying I was a Data Alchemist because if a Data Scientist was looking for the truth, an Alchemist was just trying to turn stuff into other stuff. That was a much better description of what I was doing. And then after we got acquired, I just stubbornly kept doing it, and it took a really long time before anybody stopped me.​

How do you see the future of algorithmic recommendations in music? What improvements or changes do you anticipate?​
I don't predict, I hope. What I hope happens in music algorithms is less "recommendation", less passive listening, and more active curiosity and exploration facilitated by algorithmic tools under more of the listener's control.​

What do you consider the biggest advantages and disadvantages of the current streaming model for artists?​
The biggest advantage is that every artist is a few clicks away from every listener. It's now possible for any artist to reach any audience in a way it never was in the physical era. The disadvantage is that this tantalizing possibility has helped attract a lot of artists, and statistically very few of them are actually going to become giant. And the tools and labels and streaming services are still mostly focused on the stars who do become giant, rather than helping to build the communities that would make it possible for smaller artists to have viable careers without needing to become giant.​

How is AI affecting the way music is created and consumed? Are there specific AI applications that give you hope?​
Large Language Models are astonishing and fascinating and terrible at a lot of the things we're currently trying to do with them. The raw potential seems enormous, but we have a lot of work to do to figure out how to fulfill it productively and reliably. (Which is basically the same thing I say about streaming music in the book!)​

What advice would you give to artists trying to break through in the current digital age?​
Build communities. Find communities, join communities, help them thrive and grow so that they can help sustain you. Communities can be physical, virtual, geographic, philosophical -- people find lots of ways to organize themselves. But almost nobody makes it on their own, and it's lonely even if it somehow works. Connect with other artists, fans, curators, everybody. Music has always been a social art, and nothing "digital" can change that.​

Can you share an example of a musical community you discovered through Every Noise at Once that you found particularly fascinating?​
I've become an obsessive fan of wedding and party music from Limpopo, a province in the NE corner of South Africa. I've never been anywhere near there, but I wandered into this music because it kept coming up around the edges of Maskandi, a form of Zulu folk-pop that I already knew and liked. I could tell it wasn't Maskandi, but I didn't know what it was, and nobody could tell me. It took me a while to figure out the story, but once I understood, of course I added it to the everynoise.com map. It's called "sepedi pop", after the ethnic/language group whose weddings and parties they are.​

Spotify offers podcasts and audiobooks alongside music. Do you think this diversification is necessary for a profitable model?​
Spotify's profitability was not, thankfully, ever my responsibility. As a music person, myself, I would rather have just concentrated on making a truly great music service, and let podcasts and audiobooks thrive in their own services, run by people who love those things the way I love music.​
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cleggar

cleggar

I'm not sure if anybody is a fan of Elis James and John Robins, but they spent the first half of their podcast talking about dynamic pricing in the wake of the Oasis fiasco. It's weirdly interesting, especially from a performers point of view, and why it exists. Plus it's funny.

 
bryan89

bryan89

cleggar said:
I'm not sure if anybody is a fan of Elis James and John Robins, but they spent the first half of their podcast talking about dynamic pricing in the wake of the Oasis fiasco. It's weirdly interesting, especially from a performers point of view, and why it exists. Plus it's funny.

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What Oasis fiasco? The overpriced tickets and the long queues or did something else happened?
 
Ashling92

Ashling92

she/her
bryan89 said:
What Oasis fiasco? The overpriced tickets and the long queues or did something else happened?
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Dynamic pricing in the UK and Ireland based on 'demand'. Standing tickets went from €100 each to €400 each here. Turned a lot of people off.

I don't think it's been done before in Ireland, which is why everyone was so shocked as we have some decent ticket regulation (such as not being able to resell tickets above face value etc.). It certainly wasn't a thing when I bought Taylor and Coldplay tickets last year.
 
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