Tag Archive for musicbusiness

How Do We Find Music?

Ruben Whitaker's chart tracking exposure points to the music they listen to.
Ruben Whitaker's chart tracking exposure points to the music they listen to.
(Above chart by Ruben Whitaker)

How do we find music? Recommendations from friends? Movies? Video games? Algorithm? Music is everywhere. But when 120,000 tracks are being uploaded every day to digital streaming platforms1 and Spotify gives us access to over 100 million tracks,2 the chances of us encountering a piece of music become surprisingly low. 

Yet, we find them.

This semester at Bennington College, my class “Musical Taste and Monetization” took another deep dive into music discovery methods. The image above is a page from a project by Ruben Whitaker, recent graduate of Bennington College, who analyzed years of their playlists and made the following observation: “Friend recommendation + Algorithm seems to be a powerful phenomenon of exposure especially if the artist and sub-genre are completely new…I was surprised at the low number of artists and songs I encountered through algorithms, this highlights that peer-to-peer recommendation is strong…” 

Ruben continues: “I think a lot of people listen to…music they know personally or locally because it’s more of a personal relationship. I think this aligns with the hypothesis of music being developed for social bonding. This is something to think about in terms of how to build strong musical networks and offer something that AI music or mass-produced popular tracks cannot.”

When I first designed this course back in 2021, I anticipated students to rely heavily on the Spotify algorithm. How wrong I was! Although Spotify is the main platform many use to listen to music, the ways in which students discover music were remarkably diverse and creative, with person-to-person communication and live concerts playing huge roles, that I had to completely rethink and recalibrate all I had thought I knew. 

Daniel Ek recently made comments about the cost of creating content, and my class too had previously reached a similar conclusion specifically regarding digital content: anything that can be reproduced digitally ad infinitum with a click of a button skews the traditional supply and demand curve. We discussed what it means to live in a society surrounded by technologies of abundance: “New technologies continue to democratize, decentralize, and disrupt production, offering the possibility that scarcity will be a thing of the past for many industries. We call these technologies of abundance. But our economy and our legal institutions are based on scarcity.” 3  

Music is so much more than digital content. Reexamining the non-digital component of music feels especially important right now. Music has been integral in every culture since the dawn of humanity, with many researchers highlighting the relationship between music and social bonding.4 In that spirit, I continue to make music and explore the opportunities of social bonding through music. The next generation already understands this. These students are creating our future. We have so much to learn from them. 

[All images by Ruben Whitaker, used with permission. Ruben Whitaker is a Chicago-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, and a graduate of Bennington College. During college, Ruben ran a radio show called “Folkloric Geography” which showcased music from around the world. Ruben has several releases under the name “Ruben Jai” including the the album Present for You and the singles Washburn and Neighborhood Planets.]

  1. Stassen, M., & Stassen, M. (2023b, May 24). There are now 120,000 new tracks hitting music streaming services each day. Music Business Worldwide. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/there-are-now-120000-new-tracks-hitting-music-streaming-services-each-day/ 
  2. Konstan, E. & Spotify Technology S.A. (2023). FORM 20-F. In UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION [Report], P.35, https://s29.q4cdn.com/175625835/files/doc_financials/2023/ar/26aaaf29-7cd9-4a5d-ab1f-b06277f5f2a5.pdf 
  3. Desai DR and Lemley MA (2023) Editorial: Scarcity, regulation, and the abundance society.
    Front. Res. Metr. Anal. 7:1104460. doi: 10.3389/frma.2022.1104460 
  4. Mehr, S. A., Krasnow, M. M., Bryant, G. A., & Hagen, E. H. (2021b). Origins of music in credible signaling. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x20000345 

(This article originally was written for, and appeared on, New York Jazz Workshop blog)

Lost recordings and artists’ rights

Every so often, I hear about a label on our scene which would disappear, along with all the physical recordings. Horror stories abound, of label owners destroying CDs and LPs. Are the artists notified beforehand? Can the artists keep any of the copies about to be demolished? Unfortunately, the answer to both is often a “no”. Although the sound recording itself may belong to the artists, if the label produced the physical goods and helped distribute it, they often end up doing what they want with them. All we can do is sit on the sidelines. We often aren’t even given the chance to buy them back.

Thankfully, that is not what happened with ok|ok’s eating mantis which was recorded back in 2006, the year Spotify was born but hadn’t yet landed in the U.S., the “before times” when CDs still ruled. The album features Michael McGinnis, Khabu Doug Young, Tony Moreno and myself, and was released through a label back in 2008. We – the artists – produced the master recording ourselves and collectively own the sound recording. We also produced the artwork and did most of the publicity. The label produced the physical copies. Everything was very relaxed and we never had any formal agreement aside from the trust we had in each other. Friends making music, released by a label run by those we knew well. (I am still grateful to the label for giving us that opportunity.)

Somewhere along the way, things got reshuffled because of technological developments in the industry. CD sales plummeted, record stores went belly up and distributors disappeared. The label had personnel changes, then moved to a streaming/download only format, understandably presenting themselves outwardly as the rights holder of the music so they could deliver the audio files to various platforms.

Looking at the contracts I’ve worked on or signed since then, they almost always contain a blanket agreement which grants a label or artist to distribute the material on all future mediums that goes something like the this: “…grant all rights therein, including, without limitation, the following: any so-called “SACEM home video payment rights”, blank tape levies, cable transmission rights, and “Rental and Lending Rights” pursuant to laws, regulations or directives of any jurisdiction (collectively, “Collection Rights”), throughout the universe in perpetuity…”

That didn’t happen with eating mantis. All of us were unprepared for the speed of the transition. In hindsight, when the label went to digital distribution should have been the moment to hit the pause button, for the label and the artists to sit down. We never had a discussion with the label about digital streaming. (Four Tet’s royalty dispute lawsuit with Domino is a famous example of a “push for a fairer deal on historical contracts, written at a time when the music industry operated entirely differently.”)

Today, armed with the knowledge and experience of overseeing the label New Braxton House for over a decade, I am able to see what could have been done better from a business perspective to protect artists’ rights. Yet, surprising even myself, I’m not convinced those things are necessary. Our objective was to make great music together, label included. Having an airtight contract covering all possible future music technology was never the objective.

When did we turn into a society where negotiated agreement trumps all? Where we seem to spend so much time and money creating contracts? When did the objective switch from the common goal of creating something great together, based on trust and shared responsibility, to making sure all parties were covered legally should something go wrong? Of course, shared responsibility means that we all have to do the work, and that’s not always easy. But isn’t that better than tying each other up in the oft-incomprehensible fine print of legal jargon so that we end up being locked into a contract, rather than having the joy and flexibility of exploring solutions together? Isn’t it time we reexamined the status quo? (Full disclosure: I research the effect of trust vs. negotiated contracts; here is an excellent paper by Professor Marc A. Cohen The Crisis of Trust and Trustworthiness in Organization).

So here we are, 2023, the fifteenth anniversary of the album release. The artists collectively agreed that we should re-release the album on our respective outlets with the blessing of the label. Together, we are stronger. We – the artists – can no longer offer the physical CDs but we are very happy to be able to offer the digital album. Name your price. We just want people to listen to this album. I still love it. Bottom line, if we want to keep what we created, we need to own it. Negotiate carefully and always stand up for artists’ rights. Re-presenting eating mantis.