What Lies Ahead

What we do in the here and now matters.

For the first time in ten years, I bought a home stereo, complete with a CD player. Here’s why.

AI generated image based on the phrase “What lies ahead”.

Recently, I read this article in Harpers discussing Spotify, AI, and its use of ghost artists and music. This is something the company has been doing for a while. Unbeknownst to me, it’s got a fancy name (Perfect Fit Content, or PFC). It’s become ingrained in both the company's culture and bottom line and shows no sign of abating.

Within the ecosystem of music, streaming has a place.

Hate it or love it, let’s be honest: Spotify is convenient. If I want to hear an album that I don’t own or listen to an artist I am unfamiliar with, it’s easy with Spotify. I use Spotify as the example because that’s my streaming service of choice.

However, suppose Geoff Calhoun (co-host of Center Stage, the podcast) suggests that I might like something, I would be more apt to purchase it via Bandcamp or another outlet sans any investigation. He knows my tastes well enough that I trust his recommendation. The risk-to-reward ratio makes sense.

I recently went to a local record store and was nosing around for some old R.E.M. albums (I found none). That said, I did find some stuff to purchase, Little Feat, The Baby’s, The Pretenders, and some Lou Reed (although Rock and Roll Animal seems to remain my white whale). All had prices (modestly priced in the 6.99 to 11.99 range) but Lou Reed’s New Sensations did not.

The clerk had to check with the owner, so I feared I was about to be gouged. I’d interacted with the owner before and he’s a dick. Not like a High Fidelity kind of record store jerk, more like what your run of the mill jerk. The clerk came back saying New Sensations was 19.99 and did I still want it (I did). I thought the price was a bit hefty for a used, and little known, Lou Reed album, but it turns out 19.99 is a competitive price for that album (although the owner is still kind of a dick).

Conversely, I had recently heard a snippet of an artist on one of the socials and decided to purchase the album. All in (with shipping), that debut album by a band named Blueburst was around 32.00 (it included access to a digital copy). Now, that’s a lot to go into uncharted territory. Still, I didn’t mind paying it because I was almost certain I would like it based on what I had heard… and wasn’t disappointed.

The point in sharing those stories is that music, new or old, these days can be an expensive endeavor and Spotify can help stave off some of those costs. And today, costs matter.

That said, now, more than ever, it’s communities like Substack that are paramount in helping people find new music, and old music they may not know about.

This is a vibrant community and I have no doubt you’d find a newsletter to your particular taste.

If you rely solely on the streamers, programs like the PFC don’t work in your favor.

Now, if you thought auto-tune was a bad addition to the musical landscape, gird your loins as I suspect AI-generated content, both instrumental and singer-driven, will soon be the majority of the “artists” heard on those Spotify playlists, in particular those “discovery” ones.

The Harper’s article points out there is also a growing ancillary business of companies that create ghost music (artificial or even human-generated) specifically for inclusion on Spotify’s playlists. And it’s a booming business. In 2021, according to the article, one such company, called Epidemic (“ironic, don’t ya think”), raised $450 million from Blackstone Growth and EQT Growth, which jettisoned the company’s valuation to $1.4 billion.

I won’t pretend to understand what that means other than it’s a fuckton of money to the likes of me, but probably a lunch for the likes of Blackstone.

Spotify isn’t interested in breaking new acts, or even breaking new work by legacy acts. If you’re Taylor Swift or Beyonce’, fine, you’re platinum. But if you’re anyone besides a top-tier artist, you’re fucked. It is a fool's errand to hope that Spotify will change this increasingly constrictive business model and/or its payout system.

If you want to discover new music, you’re going to have to dig to find it. But hasn’t it always been that way? All that’s old becomes new again.

We’ve always had to dig to find new music, but given the capitalistic (dare I say monopolistic) transgression of all media (including old reliable platforms like magazines) that search has, on the one hand, become more laborious. On the other hand, more rewarding when you find something you like or find a fellow music traveler who you jive with.

Many here on Substack, and elsewhere on the internet, have been shouting that the best way to support independent music is through the purchase of their music and/or t-shirts, etc. - it’s a battle cry that shouldn’t be ignored.

Now, it’s not like I didn’t know this or was even the least bit skeptical. Of course that’s true. And it’s not like I am anti-streaming. Still, after reading that article, it pulled into focus the existential threat (we’re hearing that a lot lately, so my apologies… but it’s all kind of true) of the streaming services.

In what will shock no one reading this, the tools and systems in place at Spotify are not designed for the musician OR the music fan.

Spotify is a slave to Wall Street.
And Wall Street isn’t particularly known for its interest, or taste, in music.

I bought a stereo system to rely on my personal library to listen to music and have hardware to play the music. I must admit that digging the cd’s out of storage and re-alphabetizing everything again was not all that much fun, but worth it all the same.

Will I still use and pay for Spotify? Yes. Oddly, my car has no hardware device like a CD player… it’s either radio or connecting my phone (Sirius is a whole other can of worms… and that I will not pay for). Can I picture a day I may not pay for a streaming service? For the first time in about a decade, I can say yes.

For me, I can see a return to listening to music on my terms and digging in deeper to learn about it from my trusted resources. I’m no Luddite but I want to return to the day when the rhythm was going to get me and not the algorithm.

At the end of the day, what I hope I’m saying here is two things:

1. If you’re a music fan, the work that the music community is doing here on Substack matters. They’re your guides to both the new… and the old.

2. If you can, support your favorite independent artists and writers however you can.

   
   As the pace of the march towards oligarchy quickens, we need these independent voices to help us make sense of it all.