It's commonly said that music is now more accessible to everyone as a result of the internet, and that getting your music heard is now easier than ever. I feel this is only part-true. Sure, in theory one can get music heard in theory by an incredible number of fans through the accessibility of social media and email lists etc
However, this is a bit similar to have the artist or band's name listed in a huge telephone directory (remember them....?) and worse still, due to the Google rating system and SEO algorithms, located right at the most inaccessible part of the directory. So of course, the artist or band themselves have to go about the task of promoting their site and announcing their status.
This is a task which most artists are unsuited for, or not confident at doing at any rate, and something which they would much rather delegate to someone else. But unless you're already famous or showing promise of becoming better-known, you're unlikely to get that help. And so it goes on...
So you spend frustrating hours doing this when you should be doing music. Hey ho
Such lush green farmland puts one in mind of a seminal insight from classical economics, Ricardo’s Law of Rent. Building on Adam Smith’s insight of the invisible hand that sets prices in a market, Ricardo saw the invisible process which sets the value of land. Comparing the production of two identical fields, upon which exactly the same labour and capital had been expended upon, the difference in the value of the production from these two fields is a surplus he termed economic rent. Ultimately, the value of a field represents its benefits compared to a field on the margins of production, which would barely provide a living.
The word rent, of course, means something different these days, as the meaning…
Of course Spotify is one of several elephants jostling for space in the room at the moment. But importantly they offer deals that are very attractive to the consumer and considerably less so to the artist his or herself. For a small monthly sum, with Spotify you can access all current music (to those artists that have allowed it of course) along with countless downloads of other stuff - so from the consumer's POV it seems a no-brainer. For the artist, it is more of a lose-lose situation from what I can ascertain : do not make your music available and you miss out on a large and widely-used platform ; and opt-in and you have your own sales (direct…
Yes, mebbe so. The Latino song mentioned in this article is good, actually, and very much something that would never have been heard except for whatever happened.
It so happens that the biggest song this year is one I've never heard of and - having now read all about it - I do not feel inclined to listen to. I do listen to a lot of stuff that is probably not on any playlist, which just means that it is not at all popular by play-list standards. Fortunately, I don't really care about playlists. Seems to me that if you ONLY know of things through playlists, you're living a pretty restricted and unimaginative life. There's an irony there, somewhere.
This was interesting, about how Spotify can propel someone out of nowhere, and is changing the way it all works, etc. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/17/they-could-destroy-the-album-how-spotify-playlists-have-changed-music-for-ever