Gaga talking about streaming

[Harry 26,836]

I think the people saying "that's just what people want to listen to" don't really understand how influential radio and streaming playlists are towards tastes and the overall pop music landscape.

[Demoncore 475]

I was hoping this was going to be her saying she wants to be a Twitch streamer lol!! Would love to see her play Bayonetta on livestream tbh 

[Cloudbusting 1,548]

Edit: nevermind I just realised I agree with her ksksks

[Mr Judas 4,106]

She's coming for the first #1 experimental Bollywood placement on the TTH Playlist 

[CannaeDrive 3,392]

I think that article can be informative as a complement to what Gaga said:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/05/10-years-of-spotify-should-we-celebrate-or-despair

"The algorithm pushes musicians to create monotonous music in vast quantities for peak chart success: hence this year’s tedious 106-minute Migos album, Culture II, and Drake’s dominance. Add in Spotify’s hugely popular artists with no profile outside the platform, widely assumed to be fake artists commissioned by Spotify to bulk out playlists and save on royalties, and music appears in danger of becoming a kind of grey goo."

This is also interesting:

https://blog.usejournal.com/music-streaming-services-are-gaslighting-us-d782fe44072f

"At every step of the way, streaming services are essentially gaslighting us that this ecosystem is an amazing new development. Just like Silicon Valley in general, there is this mindset that having everything available all the time is a good thing. It isn’t — and it is arguably damaging art and culture as a result."

[LateToCult 36,427]

She sounds like the little anti streamers on here. All genres are very accessible to people through streaming.

[Miel 15,009]

On one hand, I disagree because streaming now makes access to all sorts of music much easier.

On the other hand, she is right in that algorithms and promoted material play a heavy hand, especially with those who don't put in as much effort into looking for music- thus, recreating the wheel of radio.

[LaLa 18,569]

She probably coming at it from her own perspective as the artist though. Of course it's true that all genres are readily accessible on Spotify/AM, but she's talking about what's popular and does well on the big playlists.

She probably hears from her label "this is what sells" about specific sounds, songs lengths, features etc. Like if she was making BTW today for example, with it's 4 and 5 minute songs, someone would try and talk her out of it for sure. 

Maybe she's just hearing a lot of "this is what you should do to be successful on streaming" talk from her team, and she's saying, no it shouldn't matter, streaming should have variety. 

[Economy 44,046]

6 hours ago, dynamite said:

She wants more variety, the other genres exist but all you hear on the radio is pretty much all the same ****. She wants rock and roll, country, punk etc to be able to be heard by everyone.

But streaming has all of that available just the same

 

unless she means whats promoted. Like Todays Top Hits lists and what not

[dit 43,478]

Honestly I do not really agree with her here. I feel like Spotify is what has rendered all genres of music the most accessible they have every been and they are fairly promoted ot their respected audience via playlists catering specific genres. Of course hip hop, dj songs and some pop will rise at the top because those have always been the most popular genres of music so they will be on the mainstream playlists like TTH but there are tons of big playlists for rock, country etc..

[Franch Toast 25,224]

Getting ready to release her new jazz album, I see.  Clever woman. 

[sampool 5,560]

17 hours ago, nenhures said:

How is wishing people had more options when it comes to music being naive and pretentious?

Not everyone wants to hear those? Yeah, and not everyone wants to hear the same Chainsmokers inspired pop song for the nth time. Variety isn't a bad thing, accessibility isn't a bad thing. Not a single soul loses if they get exposed to different genres and sounds.

You don't like it? Great, go explore something else. Exploration enriches your life and makes living more beautiful and complex. It's not about forcing anyone to listen to anything but having the freedom to be exposed to more.

Restricting ourselves doesn't take us anywhere new.

First of all the radio has shifted from EDM to rap/hip-hop since 2017, so keep up. 

Secondly, radio plays whatever gets them more listeners, so if "not everyone wants to hear the same Chainsmokers inspired pop song for the nth time" people wouldn't tune in and radio wouldn't play them, it depends on the listeners demands, easy to grasp. 

Thirdly, I like whatever radio is playing, that's why I'm not crying 'ughhh raDiO iS tRasH cuZ TheY'rE nOt PlAyiNg mY FaV (long faded) GenRe'. 

Lastly, radio was never restricted to a specific genre. Trends constantly evolve and so does music, who knows what'll be played a year from now on the radio.

There are charts, playlists and radios dedicated for almost every genre ever, if you wanted to "explore" do it yourself, its not Top40s radios job to introduce you to different genres, they're just playing whats hot atm.  

[LilyLark 9,694]

I mean, she's not wrong. Music journalists and others have talked about how streaming (and the "related playlists") push certain genres. In this case, a certain type of pop (low and slow) and a certain type of hip hop (trap and mumble rap). H*ll, even Snoop Dogg was going on about how mumble rap got pushed by streaming. There are also a million Chain Smoker type rip offs. People would flip between radio stations and stations, even if they were focused on a few particular genres, would sometimes play music that was unrelated.

That said, it's a quagmire. I hate using the word cancel/outrage culture, because it's been hijacked by bigots and idiots, but it does exist. Every single time I've seen this brought up (even by Black music journalists) a handful of people pop off and start going on about the criticism of streaming/genres being racist since one of the genres streaming helps is hip hop (nevermind that people are also talking about a certain type of Chainsmokers music). It doesn't help when people mention a diversity of genres, because people immediately jump to diversity in terms of ethnicity (and start claiming people want more "white" music) instead of the literal meaning of diversity...which is variety. Anyway, I'm not surprised that Gaga got mildly dragged on twitter for this  because people in general want to get mad on twitter. Luckily, social media moves on quickly to the next target.

[bxr 1,016]

Bit of context on echoed sentiments, fwiw …

The troubling age of algorithmic entertainment (The Week)

Consider Spotify. Writer and academic Liz Pelly wrote last year about the way in which Spotify shapes the music that appears on the platform. She points to the term Spotify-core, a tongue-in-cheek name "that's becoming an increasingly popular shorthand for music that sounds tailored to streaming. Or perhaps more specifically, to data-driven systems of mood-enhancing background music." Artists who fit the bill get discovered through Instagram or Reddit, and then the Spotify algorithm recommends them, bumping their songs into your feed right alongside the popular stuff.

Spoiler

Streambait Pop, Liz Pelly (The Baffler)

Musical trends produced in the streaming era are inherently connected to attention, whether it’s hard-and-fast attention-grabbing hooks, pop drops and chorus-loops engineered for the pleasure centers of our brains, or music that strategically requires no attention at all—the background music, the emotional wallpaper, the chill-pop-sad-vibe playlist fodder. These sounds and strategies all have streambait tricks embedded within them, whether they aim to wedge bits of a song into our skulls or just angle toward the inoffensive and mood-specific-enough to prevent users from clicking away. All of this caters to an economy of clicks and completions, where the most precious commodity is polarized human attention—either amped up or zoned out—and where success is determined, almost in advance, by data.

…

Of course, Spotify now expertly bolsters its affective listening with tactical branding: the Lawrence-Sloan-Nesbitt “Psychopath” Spotify Single was put together for Women’s History Month, a time of year when Spotify was also partnering with Smirnoff to achieve gender equality through a woke algorithmic discovery tool. There’s not much surprise here, given that Spotify just released its “Wrapped” 2018 data, which confirmed that for another year the most streamed artists on the platform are all men. In that context, supporting young women pop artists is not only a good PR move, it’s a necessary brand correction. Visibility is part of shifting culture, but Spotify’s flimsy attempts at it suggest the impossibility of playlist placements ever equating to activism—and that encouraging a playlist-centered approach diminishes music entirely.

Even someone like Matt, who wholeheartedly loves Spotify-pop, agrees that it’s an environment that devalues music: “It’s disposable AF. It’s too disposable. New Music Friday has seventy-plus songs every week. Who is actually supposed to hang on to any of those songs? There’s too much!” This is a symptom of the attention-driven platform economy as well: the churning stomach of the content machine constantly demands new stuff. In such an economy, music that doesn’t take off is dropped once it has outlived its usefulness—either as a brand prop or as playlist-filler.

What is considered useful to streaming services? Music that streams well. This is all part of what independent artists are up against today: a supposedly neutral platform that manipulates them into creating value on its own terms (more recently in the form of free #Wrapped advertising), one that cares more about playlist streams than creating a sustainable situation for artists. The problem is not the chill-pop musicians, but a self-replicating system that continuously rewards the same styles—the ones that users will stream endlessly, whether they’re paying attention or not. [ Full Story ]

The algorithmic delivery of music thus forms what, for Spotify, is a virtuous circle. But it also suggests that tech platforms don't just deliver content, but that they shape it too, prioritizing quick hits and short tracks because those are the things that generate the most engagement.

It isn't just Spotify, either. TikTok's runaway success is also changing music, and artists are both making their songs shorter and focusing more on memorable hooks so that they play to the short video format of apps like TikTok.

The point is that streaming is affecting content and we don't quite know how that will play out over time. Still, if there's one thing we know about algorithms, it's that they tend toward an odd mix of the flashy, the outrageous, and the comforting. And art that perhaps doesn't fit, or won't appeal to the way the algorithm works, may get pushed to the side. That isn't new exactly — that has almost always been the case with media that pushes against the status quo — but it's hardly the democratic utopia that digital's most prominent supporters promised us, either. Instead it represents a dumbing down, a dull sameness — and unlike a setting on a TV, the size and influence of the tech giants means it won't be something you can simply switch off. [ Full Story ]

[Jose P 23,341]

On 11/3/2019 at 5:18 AM, sampool said:

Except that not everyone wanna hear those. Those  genres already had their prime time and the industry shifted to something else, like it always did and always will do. She comes across very naive and pretentious. 

But not everyone wants to hear the same trap and generic pop either. A lot of people like rock and punk and country, etc. It’s not like 99% of the population likes pop and hip hop. There are thousands of people who are fans of other genres as well. And quite frankly, it gets old listening to the same old sh*t on the radio.

Back in the 80s for example, you had both pop and rock topping the charts. And rock fans haven’t ceased to exist there are still A LOT. But radio now just ignores it. If they paid more attention to rock artists you would be pleasing those who like this genre. And keep on playing pop and hip hop as well to please those who like it. And so on. 

It’s wishful thinking ofc, but I get and support what she’s saying. I love how she just loves music in general regardless of the genre. I can relate to that.