[FRIAM] Steaming services

Sun Aug 22 21:55:22 EDT 2021

My daughter, now 29, had an iPad when she was a young adolescent.  I asked
her once how many songs were on it.  She said there were 8000.  My
understanding was that they should cost 99 cents each.  I asked how she got
so many.  She says each kid copies all the songs on all their friends'
iPads.  There must have been a way to avoid duplication.  I told her I
hoped she didn't go to jail.  Someone told me that the music companies
liked this because it made their recordings popular.  Hard to believe.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 7:47 PM Curt McNamara <curtmcn at gmail.com> wrote:

> The streaming services are basically ripping the artists off.
> https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream
>
> As others have noted, live shows, merch and CDs are the only way artists
> make money anymore.
>
> So yeah the streaming is 'good' for consumers ...
>
>     Curt
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 2:42 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> He *hates* Alexa, Amazon, and especially Amazon Music.
>>
>>
>> What is there to hate?  They just play music you request.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 12:47 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 8/22/21 8:28 AM, ⛧ glen wrote:
>>>
>>> It does both, perhaps counterintuitively. I'd argue it facilitates traffic between demes/cliques, but inhibits the content of demes/cliques.
>>>
>>>
>>> I am a sucker for local AM radio when traveling... to put my finger on
>>> the pulse of the locals, as it were.  What music they listen to, what their
>>> news-of-choice leans toward, and what they are buying/selling/trading with
>>> one another.  "If you can hear this station, what you hear *might* be
>>> relevant to you *right now*"
>>>
>>> When internet radio stations started popping up (KTAO in Taos being an
>>> early adopter), I found myself sampling these local stations around the
>>> world... one in particular being in Australia (forget the call sign/town)
>>> and having a strong familiarity to the myriad country AND western stations
>>> up and down the rockies and out into the plains of the US West, but with an
>>> Aussie accented DJ of course.    Unfortunately it didn't replicate the
>>> experience because I was patently NOT there... I could NOT plan a detour to
>>> catch the local farmer's market or check out a local joint (where there
>>> burgers would have pineapple and plum sauce instead of pickles and
>>> ketchup)...   But what I was most struck by was that they were playing 95%
>>> American Mainstream (C&W) music and referencing OUR icons of music
>>> deeply/exclusively.   Only occasionally would I catch a "local" artist
>>> (Australeonesia?)  I felt simultaneously expanded and constrained.
>>>
>>> When I moved to a small city/big town on the border (DouglasAZ/Agua
>>> Prieta SA) our first neighbors were a Mexican American family who were one
>>> of the local bands that played every venue, mostly rock but with their own
>>> ranchera stylization often.   They would sit around evenings playing a wide
>>> range of music, including the father, a sister and a younger brother (maybe
>>> 5? too young to participate in the public events).   We moved away from
>>> that house within 6 months but I continued to hear them the whole 8 years I
>>> lived in that town, they probably played at both of my proms and any other
>>> public musical event I might have attended.   What never crossed my mind
>>> (until now) was that for the 4 years I was a Disc Jockey, I never heard
>>> them play on air, nor was I motivated/inclined to seek them out.  Why not?
>>> Linda Ronstadt (100 miles away) was hitting it big from similar roots, why
>>> not them?   I guess because they weren't on the Billboard Top 100 charts
>>> they sent us every month, telling us what was hot and what was not?  They
>>> had no route to get known beyond the local bars and public venues.
>>>
>>> Both of my daughters partnered with aspiring musicians as they came of
>>> age.  There have been several bands involved and those partners even
>>> occasionally found time to make music together (though never recorded
>>> together).   These bands never made it beyond local recognition...   "Billy
>>> and the Belmonts", "Oktober People", "Weapons of Mass Destruction" all come
>>> to mind.   And yet one of them was going on a self-promoted tour of the
>>> west when we were in Berkeley, CA for a year and in fact, totally by
>>> coincidence, had gotten booked at an Irish Pub ("Starry Plough") just a
>>> short walk from our apartment (actually probably the closest watering hole
>>> to our apartment).   It was just off Telegraph, right on the Oakland border
>>> (as was our back fence)...  in what other world (pre/sans Internet) could a
>>> band like that find a pub like that?   While Terry (daughter's now husband)
>>> had the resources (as a Technical College instructor) to own a van, mix
>>> their own music on Garage Band, cut their own CDs and print their own
>>> T-shirts (aka Merch)...  They would have been sleeping in his van the whole
>>> way (instead of being gifted couch-stays by their nascent mySpace fan base)
>>> and would have had to make a LOT of phone calls and snail-mail inquiries to
>>> secure the venues they were able to do online through the digital social
>>> networks circa 2005.   Their music was out there for sampling on MySpace
>>> and while all that (the bands as well as MySpace) are all defunct and
>>> rotting away in digital history, it made it a lot further than I think it
>>> could have in the days of vinyl or cassette tape.   I do still have CDs of
>>> their music and it is ripped to my hard drive as well... but can't find any
>>> of it to speak of online 8 years after dissolution.  My t-shirts are all
>>> rags now, they were made on budget blanks I'm sure.
>>>
>>> Terry (of WMD/Belmont fame) is now the bass player for Queen Chief in
>>> Portland OR.  Their preferred streaming platform seems to be
>>> bandcamp.com which seems to be *trying* to provide a direct route from
>>> artist to audience, but unspurprisingly Alexa doesn't support Bandcamp and
>>> while they also stream on Spotify, my understanding of that service is that
>>> they won't see any significant income from that stream.   I don't believe
>>> any of the band members depends on the band for a significant source of
>>> income, Terry certainly doesn't, though it may support his
>>> recording/instrument collecting habits somewhat.
>>>
>>> They just released a couple of singles this year.  A stoner rock
>>> rendition of Hank William's classic "Kaw-Liga
>>> <https://open.spotify.com/album/2U88jwoi9ZKRHjTgG1YIDu>" and their own In
>>> my Eyes <https://open.spotify.com/album/1oaVT5IS8jIm6xpJ2RlH2o>.
>>>
>>> Spotify refers me right away to bands (I presume equally
>>> struggling/indie) like King Black Acid, Royal Fuz, RZRS, and Hurriah.
>>> While I like QC's lyrics and musical "style" it is all too high energy for
>>> my old ears/soul, so I tend to listen to a new track or album a few times
>>> when it comes out, but don't have it ripped to my car sound system nor pull
>>> it up regularly (though In my Eyes is thumping/chanting away in the
>>> background as I type this)...
>>>
>>> Mary's son (who edits bills for the TX legislature by day) is also a
>>> drummer in an indie band in Austin and they eschew streaming in favor of
>>> the (semi) classic medium of CDs and live-shows.   They gently dissolved
>>> last year after a 10 year run...  the quarterly live-shows in various
>>> dive-bars were what was keeping them going (emotionally/creatively?)...
>>> and they also have all hit middle age.
>>>
>>> Digital/Online/Streaming has definitely changed the fitness landscape
>>> for aspiring independent artists and for music buffs.  Mary's son is a
>>> total movie/music buff and shares his listening time between classic vinyl
>>> and the flood of new music coming to him over his own social networks from
>>> friends of friends of friends who are independent singer-songwriters/bands.
>>>
>>> I like Glen's gesture toward analyzing this in terms of network/graph
>>> models...  I think the data is out there for anyone to gather/study up to a
>>> point.   Josh's (Mary's son) collection of vinyl and hand-cut CDs probably
>>> is hidden for the most part from any database, though he *might* not be
>>> astute enough to turn off Google/Android's "what music is playing right
>>> now" service... maybe what he listens to is being analyzed on some Google
>>> Brat's Friday Project right now?   He *hates* Alexa, Amazon, and especially
>>> Amazon Music.
>>>
>>> It's a wild new world, even though everything feels pretty much the same
>>> (only different).
>>>
>>> - Steve
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On August 22, 2021 6:51:02 AM PDT, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> In the last virtual FRIAM meeting Jonathan Zingale mentioned that streaming services confine our access to music, because they mainly offer mainstream music.IMHO they also broaden our access to music: as a European I can listen to music from all around the world. I have for example German, Italian, Australian, British, American and Spanish playlists on Spotify. This weak I have listened for instance to a Spanish songhttps://open.spotify.com/track/1MdsletWuIR9ItEnitWRwp?si=yZPJfu01R_6RAmw9ang8mQDo you feel streaming services restrict our access to music or do they extend it? :-/-J.
>>>
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