Spotify

A bit of weekend reading

man sitting on bench reading newspaper
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

…oftentimes you can see change on the horizon, assuming you’re looking for it, and there comes a day when the landscape flips. But the old entities attached to the old ways refuse to adjust, they believe in holding back the future, staying rooted in the past, to their detriment, because the public is not controlled by them. 

Bob Lefsetz

This simple insight is Silicon Valley (a proverbial proxy for post-industrial technology). Why it exists, why it eats itself, and why it finds the future. A more business version of this insight is Clay Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma. 

Top Read:

The Junkification of Amazon: Amazon might be the biggest store on the web, but it is also the shittiest place to shop on the web, says John Herrman. I couldn’t agree more — my overall experience with Amazon has deprecated, and I am always worried about

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How Spotify is changing dance music

Spotify is changing electronic music and dance music in particular. Spotify doesn’t just eliminate the DJ as the conduit between artist and audience. Streaming music has cultivated a new breed of creators who seem to be totally in the dark about what a DJ does in the first place. As a result we have what’s almost a new format of music that broadly fits into the parameters of club music, but will almost certainly never be played in a club — or by any DJ at all.

I am not surprised that Spotify or TikTok are changing how music is made, why it is made, and how it is consumed. Streaming has shaped how we experience music, and as a result, it has lost some of that loving feeling. Medium is the message!

Good Read: How Spotify turned dance music into dance Muzak.

My Reading Picks, Technology
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A December Note

 

How did it get so late so soon? 
It’s night before it’s afternoon. 
December is here before it’s June. 
My goodness how the time has flown. 
How did it get so late so soon?
– Dr. Seuss

It has been a few weeks since I sent one of these updates. I thought I would write one last month. Like all writers, I, too, have developed a penchant for procrastination. It is a deadly affliction, especially if your think in words and write to bring order to your inner self. So this morning, when a 4.0 Earthquake woke me up, I knew I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I took it as a cue to sit down and write this quick note. 

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy playing with new technologies and jotting down ideas for future (longer) pieces. It is a much better use of time and a good

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A Letter From Om
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Goodbye Spotify

Way back In 1935, genius musician Duke Ellington in an effort to placate two ladies, placed each of them on two sides of his piano, he composed and played a song — In a Sentimental Mood. Such is the magic of the song that nine decades later I can’t stop listening to it — in fact, it was the second most listened to song on my list of the 2,492 songs I listened to on Spotify in 2022, according to their annual musical data story — Wrapped 2022.

There are quite a few nuggets from the story — that are kind cool and amazing to be made aware of — for instance, the artist I listened to the most in 2022 is Eric Hilton, the one half of Thievery Corporation, which has been my most listened to bands for a few years. I guess, I know what I like. In

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TikTok & The Tiny Tune Trend

black smartphone showing time at 12 00

Even though we like to blame the shortening length of music tracks on TikTok, the fact is that songs have been getting shorter ever since we started to live on the Internet. Just as written content went from being longer to more ephemeral tweets, the same has happened with music, and TikTok has made things worse — much like how Twitter impacted the written word. 

“Just as more blog posts or tweets get more traffic and attention, shorter songs get more attention on streaming services. Did you know the average “top 100 pop song has shed 40 seconds, dropping from 4:10 in 2000 to around 3:30 in 2018?”

“The portion of sub-three-minute top 10 hits ballooned from just 4% in 2016 to 38% so far in 2022,” reports Billboard. In the sixties, you had sub-two minutes songs that hit the top 40. TikTok, like Twitter, has made things even shorter.

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Who’s Streaming’s Top of The Pops?

man listening to Soundcloud music on smartphone
Photo by Rachit Tank on Unsplash

When Apple announced that it now has 100 million songs on its music streaming platform, it started a conversation. Bruce Houghton, founder of Hypebot puts the conversation to the rest with his estimates: 

  • Soundcloud: 300 million
  • Apple Music: 100 million
  • YouTube: 100 million
  • Amazon Music: 90 million
  • Tidal: 90 million
  • Deezer: 90 million
  • Spotify: 82 million

With just over 100,000 songs being uploaded every day, the totdaily, this number will soon balloonal number of songs on streaming services will continue to increase. The rise of generative AI will redefine music and creative an exponential boom in available musical content.

“The internet has the power to reach everybody, nearly instantly. But we’ve found out that there’s so much stuff that it’s hard to reach anybody.”

Bob Lefesetz

The elephant in the room is that with this many songs on tap, how much can we listen,

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Internet Waypoints

It has been a few years since I was able to attend the Founder Camp, an annual celebration and gathering of founders backed by True Ventures. The global pandemic and travel restrictions made it impossible for us to host the event, but we found a way to gather outdoors and enjoy each other this year. While we call all work from remote corners of the world, there is no joy more than being in each other’s presence. IRL, rocks! 

I didn’t do any work yesterday other than attending various conversations. The energy from the event kept me up late, and I spent a lot of time on my iPad, reading and catching up on my massive “read it later” list. In doing so, I found some interesting nuggets that caught my eye. 

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Why Spotify bought Chartable & Podsights

Spotify is buying Chartable and Podsights, two podcasting-focused analytics companies, for an undisclosed amount of money. Spotify said it would use the Podinsights technology in its broader advertising-oriented network in a news release. 

For those not familiar, these companies work with podcasters and networks to include unique tags that give them insights into podcast listening behavior. Podsights help advertisers understand the effectiveness of their advertising, while Chartable provides valuable insights into the listeners and their behavior. 

Both these acquisitions add up to a smart move by Spotify. The company is trying hard to become the most significant player in the “hearing” attention economy and build a sizeable advertising business. Podcasts are a vital part of this business as they cost less and allow the company to keep a significant chunk of its revenues. In comparison, it has to share the money with record labels, who continue to have a draconian hold over

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Looking back at my week

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Another week is in wind-down mode. I hope your week was more productive and bountiful than my continued struggle with finding a writing rhythm. Despite my best efforts, I didn’t write much this week. I have been caught between the urgent requirements of work and a nagging (and now prolonged) writer’s block. I have a growing pile of proverbial unfinished posts — thanks mainly to shifting attention from one topic to another. It is an affliction that most of us suffer in today’s hyper-information environment.

I read that a crypto-billionaire is buying a big piece of Forbes’ for about $200 million, just ahead of its public offering. Forbes, where I worked, is not really Forbes, and it is hardly a magazine worth its name. It is nothing more than a marketing site for arrivistes and self-promoters to give themselves some imprimatur. I mean, it published articles from Heather

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A Letter From Om, Technology
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