rambling about computer music and sharing

[amw]

I was talking to one of my young colleagues the other day when the topic of Spotify came up. We had one of those generational gap moments where he was trying to explain me some feature of an app i have never used before and probably never will. He was surprised to hear i have 60GB of music on my OneDrive. (In fact, i have even more in lossless FLAC

Comments

[geminiwench]

Bandcamp (and SoundCloud) is fucking amazing.
It's the only way to actually even find the indie stuff being made all over anymore, unless you're a music pirate haunting torrents and P2P networks.

Being as how my genre is genreless and about regional/local creations and also the self-released
world, major sites that focus on genre and pushing people toward pop sensations and label-distribution just can't offer me what I need. Spotify is a great idea, that sucks in practice. The only good part of Spotify is using other people's playlists... because some people curate EXCELLENT playlists where so many playlists on youtube are aggregated without sense of playthrough or trying for an arc or semblance of theme.... but there are a lot of DJs on Spotify.
Their collection is just so... DRAB though.

Love this post.

[amw]

I think what i like about Bandcamp is that i know if you buy a song, some amount of that money goes directly to the artist whose song i paid for. From what i understand the way Spotify works is that the money is pooled and then distributed out to artists based on how many hours their stuff was streamed, so most of my subscription would end up going to popular artists, some of which i may never even listen to at all. I'd rather an artist i like gets a couple dollars from me every time i go to the record store than a couple of cents - or less - each month. It's not even like Netflix where people who watch popular stuff are subsidizing the creation of more niche stuff, because Spotify doesn't produce anythin.

I also wonder if this style of billing encourages artists to make a kind of "nothing" music that people (or businesses) are inclined to leave on loop in the background? On the other hand, perhaps musicians who did that style of music in the first place are finding new income?

[geminiwench]

I also like Bandcamp letting you buy direct from artists, whether or not they have other wider distribution. Spotify has a lot of hoops that make it hard to distribute and shunts people into hiring music distribution companies in this idea of keeping Spotify "elite" and "not everyone" can have their music there because you need to be with a registered label or through a back channel to post content there which can cost people hundreds or even thousands of dollars to do.

In the U.S. all public places of business who play music to their customers are supposed to pay royalties for public performance.... so I do appreciate that Spotify/Pandora has really easy plug-ins for businesses where you register the fact you're playing it to the public so the artists get extra royalties... that's nice.

I've dreamed of starting a little business doing side deals with small artists and making personalized mixes for businesses to feature local musicians and independent musicians heavily in their music mixes/rotations... maybe some day!

Music

[newwaytowrite]

I totally miss going to record stores.

Re: Music

[amw]

I kinda miss going to record stores too, but i don't miss actual records (or CDs, to be more precise). Bandcamp comes pretty close to approximating the experience of digging through all kinds of stuff while retaining all the benefits of digital music stores, like never running out of stock, selling a product you can take all over the world and listen anywhere etc.

[pinstripe_bindi]

ONTD is hilarious. Why are they so obsessed with Taylor Swift?

[amw]

The funniest thing about the whole Taylor Swift phenomenon is that i have almost exclusively experienced it through ONTD. The only song of hers i actually recognize is one that was used as a gag in an episode of Supernatural when one of the main characters was magically transformed into a teenager. But that was a long time ago now and ONTD is still talking about her. Apparently i am very out of touch because she ended up getting Time person of the year, this year!

[picosgemeos]

I'm loving all your posts! Just thought I'd say it. :)