Category Archives: Spotify

Spotify Guilt (Part Deux)

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Morris Levy

The Spotify weirdness continues, as does movingtheriver’s ambivalence about the platform (its only real draw seems to be convenience, like everything else in the tech game. After all, music is only ‘content’, or at least that’s how it was recently described by MD Daniel Ek.)

As Ted Gioia has pointed out, Spotify’s current modus operandi seems to be: cut costs (staff redundancies), raise prices for customers, and play games (create AI music so the ‘human element’ can be ruled out and composers not paid.)

One’s reminded of that line in Robert Altman’s ‘The Player’, when Tim Robbins’ stressed movie exec, answering the charge that anyone could write a script simply based on the headlines in the morning papers, says something like: ‘Great – remove the screenwriter and we might really have something going here.’

If you ever get a job with one of the ‘big three’ music companies (Warner, Sony, Universal), you’ll probably have to undergo an ‘introduction to the music business’ course which emphasises the noble goal of collecting royalties for musicians and songwriters. But the more money is at stake, the less this seems to happen. One’s reminded of Morris Levy’s stock riposte to disgruntled musicians and songwriters: ‘If you want royalties, go to Buckingham Palace’.

But then it’s important to remember labels like Virgin and Island, and people like Simon Draper and Chris Blackwell, who were always music fans first and foremost. Ditto almost everyone I’ve come across working in niche genres (jazz, classical etc.).

As for Spotify’s marketing pitch about discovering new music? I can’t think of any new music I’ve discovered via Spotify. My discovery of new music comes from the old gatekeepers – magazines, radio programmes, music books, blogs. I probably use Spotify like a lot of other people – to ‘organise’ and compile music, mostly old music that I’ve previously owned or hired from the library etc. etc.

Then there’s the redundancy issue, as above. Anyone who follows Spotify on LinkedIn will see them posting all kinds of strange techie jobs. You can be sure that almost none are focused on music. Very occasionally you notice a half-decent functionality upgrade (most recently, finally you can move a track up or down a playlist without too much faff) but it’s probably safe to assume they are mainly seeking newer and better ways to snoop on its users.

So the Spotify conundrum continues. When will I finally give up my Premium subscription? When it goes up to £12.99 a month? When a whole load of catalogue starts to go ‘missing’?

Spotify Guilt/How The LP Saved Our Lives

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Reading David Hepworth’s ace book ‘A Fabulous Creation: How The LP Saved Our Lives’ brought back memories of a lifetime’s album-buying.

As he says, if you were a music fan and under 30 in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, you probably spent every penny of your disposable income on albums. And there were serious decisions to be made. If you were in the HMV Megastore and found a couple of US rarities but only had enough cash for one, it was a very big call. Mike Stern’s Time In Place or Lyle Mays’ Street Dreams? Better choose right, it might be a few months before you could afford another cassette.

If you were awaiting a new album, after spotting the release date in Q or the Melody Maker, it wasn’t abnormal to visit your nearest record shop twice in a few days to check if it had arrived. In my teens, I remember enduring a 30-minute bus ride (each way) to my local Our Price specifically to buy It Bites’ Eat Me In St Louis and Larry Carlton’s Last Nite.

There were definitely a lot of moody ‘High Fidelity’-style shop keepers (always men), but some were more friendly/forthcoming. In a classic discounted store in Soho, I think Sister Ray’s, I remember handing over my Prefab Sprout Protest Songs and Van Halen Women And Children First CDs and the assistant grinning and saying, ‘I thought I was the only person in the world who liked both of these albums!’

So I gave the record business a huge amount of my money in the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s. And, as we keep reading, ‘old’ music is hugely outselling ‘new’ music in 2022. Which brings us to my troubled relationship with Spotify. I’m hardly buying any new physical music at the moment. Convenient as it is, Spotify Premium is a lazy option.

I scour the music mags (these days mainly JazzTimes and Classic Pop) and always take the time to listen to every album that piques my interest. But unless it’s an absolute corker, I fillet the two or three good tracks onto a playlist, just as in the 1990s when I used to make cassette tapes of brilliant songs from less-than-brilliant albums. I’ve rounded a lot of them up on this playlist.

I’ve also recently bought a very long audio cable which connects my laptop to the big speakers in my living room, so I can listen properly to this stuff, albeit with all the attendant audio quality issues, but it still gives the illusion that I’m listening to an album ‘as the artist intended’. Balls. The artist is making close to no money from Spotify, unless the streaming numbers are in their multimillions.

So my troubled relationship with Spotify continues, especially as the cost of living rises and rises. Yes we take music where we find it and pay for ‘convenience’ but a far more conscious decision is needed to save ‘new’ stuff. And of course it would help if artists made sure every album track was a winner. Great artwork wouldn’t hurt too.