True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 279: Welcome to the Machine (Taylor's Version)
Aired: 2023-03-27
Duration: 01:32:14


=== Me And Karma Vibe (04:42) ===

[00:00:00]  Trying to remember the song.
[00:00:01]  Kama is my boyfriend.
[00:00:03]  Kama is my boyfriend.
[00:00:05]  Kama is the breeze of my hair on the weekend.
[00:00:08]  Karma's a relaxing thought.
[00:00:10]  Aren't you envious that you breathe?
[00:00:12]  It's not.
[00:00:13]  Sweet like honey.
[00:00:15]  Karma?
[00:00:16]  I can't remember that part.
[00:00:16]  Karma is a cat.
[00:00:18]  I don't care about my lab because it loves me.
[00:00:21]  Flexing like a goddamn micro girl.
[00:00:23]  No, I don't remember it.
[00:00:24]  This is really, this is the payoff.
[00:00:26]  This is the payoff.
[00:00:28]  Me and Karma vibe like that.
[00:00:32]  I 100% have heard like a hobo say that.
[00:00:36]  Me and Karma.
[00:00:37]  Me and Karma vibe like that.
[00:00:39]  Yeah, like outside the Java house.
[00:00:40]  I don't know what I would do if a human being looked me in the face and said me and Karma vibe like that.
[00:00:44]  I think, I think, I feel like every ounce of blackhead in my body would explode.
[00:00:50]  I'm going the other direction.
[00:00:51]  I'm leaving.
[00:00:52]  I don't want whatever it is you're selling.
[00:01:16]  But with that being said, like, I appreciate her honesty here.
[00:01:21]  The problem is, is we just put that up, but now we have to, I just want to clear the air.
[00:01:25]  I love Taylor Swift.
[00:01:26]  I also love Taylor Swift.
[00:01:28]  No, but I like, yeah, I like really love Taylor Swift.
[00:01:31]  Yeah, I really love Taylor Swift.
[00:01:33]  I'm going to be honest with you.
[00:01:34]  My, my sojourn into Taylor started two days ago.
[00:01:40]  Yeah.
[00:01:40]  And, but it's been a journey.
[00:01:42]  It has.
[00:01:42]  It's been a journey of mostly of vibes.
[00:01:45]  But also a lot of perfidious ex-boyfriends.
[00:01:48]  Are you going to get tickets to the show?
[00:01:50]  No.
[00:01:51]  Why not?
[00:01:53]  If you're such a fan.
[00:01:54]  Well, no, it's just like sometimes, like, you know, when you commit like a sex crime, right?
[00:01:59]  And you can't go near like a ton of different places.
[00:02:01]  No, I don't know anyone.
[00:02:02]  Well, sometimes you can commit something that's like called like a talking crime where you talk to somebody too much and then they go to the police and then they send you all these papers and you can't talk to them or be near them anymore.
[00:02:15]  And so that is kind of like what happened to me.
[00:02:18]  This is bad because I feel like the Swifties are going to come after us because they're not going to be able to like understand that we're joking.
[00:02:24]  I'm just kidding.
[00:02:25]  I'm so sorry.
[00:02:28]  Hello, everyone.
[00:02:29]  To Taylor.
[00:02:31]  I'm Liz.
[00:02:32]  I'm Brace.
[00:02:32]  You think she'd like me?
[00:02:33]  And we are joined by a producer, Young Chomsky.
[00:02:36]  And this is Druidon.
[00:02:38]  Hello.
[00:02:39]  You know, a lot of people have been saying, and this is what we're here to talk about today, that I stay out too late and that I've got nothing in my brain.
[00:02:47]  Wait, did you see the clips?
[00:02:49]  Almost certainly not.
[00:02:50]  You didn't?
[00:02:51]  Of like when they were the congressional hearing on Ticketmaster, and it would, it was like Amy Klobuchar being like, you know, I don't know what she said, but she was like, oh, because we know Karma is a god.
[00:03:06]  She said that?
[00:03:06]  Yeah, to like Ticketmaster or whatever.
[00:03:08]  And so they kept like, every single congressional person on the committee kept like making a like very over the top and obviously know what I'm saying, nod to Taylor Swift.
[00:03:18]  Wow.
[00:03:19]  Did they do that with Pearl Jam, you think?
[00:03:22]  That was Pearl James.
[00:03:24]  Yeah, they got really like, they got killed for that one.
[00:03:26]  Pearl Jam's whole thing is like, listen, you can like David Foster Wallace all you want.
[00:03:31]  None of my business.
[00:03:32]  I don't care.
[00:03:33]  In fact, I have had to switch tact on.
[00:03:36]  I read a book of his essays that I thought was a little too.
[00:03:41]  Supposedly one thing you won't be doing again.
[00:03:43]  Yeah.
[00:03:43]  Yeah.
[00:03:44]  Exactly.
[00:03:44]  I'm like, all right, buddy.
[00:03:46]  But I have now forced to defend him because so many people get mad at that big book he wrote.
[00:03:52]  He's a great author.
[00:03:53]  I don't know what the big deal is.
[00:03:54]  Everyone needs to just chill out.
[00:03:56]  Not everything is a symbol for like something being sexy one time exactly.
[00:04:01]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:02]  I mean, it's fine.
[00:04:03]  Chill out.
[00:04:03]  It's fine.
[00:04:04]  It's fine.
[00:04:04]  My thing is, is that Bill Simmons killed Pearl Jam.
[00:04:07]  Bill Simmons?
[00:04:08]  Yeah, he put that shit as the theme song to his podcast, and it was just.
[00:04:12]  Oh, I thought you meant he killed Pearl Jam.
[00:04:15]  God, that was.
[00:04:16]  But it was all over after that.
[00:04:17]  It's like, I can't, you know, just, if I was ever going to have a Pearl Jam phase, which to be fair, probably not going to happen.
[00:04:25]  Yeah, a little, yeah.
[00:04:27]  Yeah.
[00:04:27]  I don't know.
[00:04:27]  Yeah, the old man from Boston really killed that one.
[00:04:29]  I would love to get a look in your phone and to see what you are just what you enjoy.
[00:04:34]  My content?
[00:04:35]  Yeah, I would be, I would, I don't, I mean, you know, a little behind the scenes here.
[00:04:39]  You know what?
[00:04:41]  You couldn't handle it.

=== Talking Recorded Music Vibes (05:00) ===

[00:04:42]  I don't think I could handle it.
[00:04:47]  Hello.
[00:04:48]  Hello.
[00:04:48]  What are we talking about today?
[00:04:50]  We're talking about music.
[00:04:50]  We're talking about vibes, Liz.
[00:04:52]  I want to be clear.
[00:04:53]  We're talking about vibes today.
[00:04:54]  Yeah.
[00:04:55]  We're catching a vibe.
[00:04:56]  I don't want to talk about vibes.
[00:04:58]  A little too late for that.
[00:04:59]  We're talking about music.
[00:05:00]  Your favorite thing.
[00:05:02]  I fucking love.
[00:05:03]  I love live music.
[00:05:05]  That's something that is always.
[00:05:08]  There's going to be a lot of digressions at certain points of today.
[00:05:12]  That's how we do it.
[00:05:12]  We're going to start off with me saying here, I don't love live music.
[00:05:17]  What?
[00:05:17]  No.
[00:05:18]  I don't love live music.
[00:05:20]  Why do you want, but you're always hanging out down at the House of Blues.
[00:05:23]  I am.
[00:05:24]  I did see.
[00:05:25]  You know who I did see?
[00:05:26]  I saw I Hate God at the House of Blues in Las Vegas.
[00:05:29]  Oh.
[00:05:29]  No, but which also, hopefully that I would always want to get that guy as a guest on the show and talk about what happened in New Orleans, Katrina Aftermath.
[00:05:38]  Oh, interesting.
[00:05:39]  But I got to tell you, it's just one of those things I've gone to probably my entire life, I think since I was 12 years old, until, I mean, still kind of in many ways.
[00:05:51]  Basically, the only thing I did for fun was go to shows.
[00:05:55]  And in that whole time, I've never been like, I love live music.
[00:05:58]  I don't really love live music.
[00:05:59]  Too loud.
[00:06:00]  That's not even too loud because my hearing shot from live music.
[00:06:04]  I'm just like, you know, most of the guys, they just stand there.
[00:06:08]  But that's why you have to go see the Boston, so you could get entertained by the dancing.
[00:06:12]  That's true.
[00:06:13]  Yeah.
[00:06:13]  Well, that's why they had to invent the mixture of Irish music, but also kind of Scottish and punk rock.
[00:06:18]  So you can have 15 people on stage who all have the body type of fat Mike, the kilt of a Scottish man, and the annoying spirit of an Irish American playing some of the worst music we've ever heard.
[00:06:32]  They got to bring back like 35 people bands.
[00:06:36]  Yeah, I mean.
[00:06:37]  But they did that, but it was like too Hare Krishna style for me.
[00:06:40]  And I was like, I'm like, I don't want to see that.
[00:06:43]  I don't like it.
[00:06:43]  You guys are up to no good.
[00:06:44]  Get away from me.
[00:06:45]  I see these Hare Krishna guys in the fucking Atlantic Terminal.
[00:06:48]  I always go in there with like a full, the bottle Urba Mates, and I just go 10 feet away and I overhand as hard as I can at them.
[00:06:56]  That's mean.
[00:06:57]  Yeah, I've severely injured like three or four Hare Krishna's in the past few weeks.
[00:07:02]  Hey, check this out.
[00:07:03]  You want me to do that?
[00:07:04]  Say something else.
[00:07:06]  Say something else.
[00:07:07]  Give me another chant.
[00:07:09]  Just playing for any of our formerly straight-edge now Hare Krishna or Muslim listeners that was not directed at you.
[00:07:16]  We are talking about music.
[00:07:17]  We are.
[00:07:18]  You know, a couple weeks ago, was it a couple weeks ago or a week ago?
[00:07:23]  A couple weeks ago.
[00:07:24]  You and I were talking.
[00:07:25]  And you said, you know, I think we should do an episode or two, because this might be kind of a long episode, about the music industry, because so much has changed in, I mean, five years, let alone like a decade.
[00:07:40]  I mean, since we were kids, and now seeing how kids listen to music, and I know, I know, it's all generational, whatever.
[00:07:46]  But a lot of like, like real like fundamentals on how music is produced, how music is consumed, how we enjoy, how we talk about music, how we discover music is just completely changed.
[00:07:59]  And I know people always talk about, oh, you guys hate technology, blah, blah, every time you turn.
[00:08:04]  Do you have any technology?
[00:08:05]  I do.
[00:08:06]  I'm on a computer right now.
[00:08:07]  That's true.
[00:08:08]  I can't figure out how to turn it on.
[00:08:10]  So it's just open with, this is most of the time, it's just open with a black screen.
[00:08:13]  You know what else I love?
[00:08:14]  The light bulb.
[00:08:14]  So fuck you.
[00:08:15]  I love technology.
[00:08:16]  I love the light bulb.
[00:08:17]  But especially overhead lights.
[00:08:19]  I love that.
[00:08:19]  I love it when you bring a girl over, you just flop all those bad boys on.
[00:08:22]  She goes, ah!
[00:08:24]  And is shocked into making love to you.
[00:08:26]  So I think it's actually really worth talking about essentially how the music industry has changed really in the past 10 years, a little longer than that, but especially in the last few years.
[00:08:36]  So for me, I mean, from my personal experience, speaking from the soul spirit, a lot of people I know play music for money with no job.
[00:08:45]  And that is their job, right?
[00:08:47]  Working musicians.
[00:08:48]  Working musicians, you might call them.
[00:08:51]  People like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, the Jonas brothers.
[00:08:56]  This is a.
[00:08:57]  Honest, unfortunately, Ian Stewart from Screwdriver.
[00:08:59]  You know, these people are sort of all in my circle.
[00:09:03]  But, you know, a lot of people I know play music for a living.
[00:09:06]  And something that I hear from these people kind of over and over and that we've seen ourselves on tour.
[00:09:10]  I mean, obviously we tour as a podcast, so it's slightly different and very different in some ways.
[00:09:16]  But we play a lot of rock clubs because we don't put the seats in, so we fit more people in.
[00:09:22]  It's true.
[00:09:23]  And, you know, the industry is totally fucked, basically.
[00:09:29]  And I think there's a few different reasons for that.
[00:09:32]  And we're going to talk about them today.
[00:09:34]  Yeah.
[00:09:34]  So I think to get into that, we kind of have to, like always, we have to go all the way back to the dawn of time when man discovered music.

=== LPs vs CDs (13:49) ===

[00:09:42]  The first song.
[00:09:45]  Karma is my boyfriend.
[00:09:47]  Hare Krishna.
[00:09:50]  No, no, no, no.
[00:09:50]  But talking about recorded music specifically.
[00:09:54]  Yeah.
[00:09:54]  Now, the history of recorded music is actually pretty short.
[00:09:56]  Yes.
[00:09:58]  Which is kind of crazy to think about.
[00:09:59]  I mean, you know, you probably, I don't know.
[00:10:01]  I don't really think about that that often.
[00:10:02]  And when I did start thinking about it, I was like, damn, that's crazy.
[00:10:06]  I do think about it somewhat often just because I read a really detailed book talking about it one time.
[00:10:11]  But basically, recorded music really starts about 120-something years ago, late 1800s, right?
[00:10:20]  The 78 RPM record.
[00:10:22]  So RPM means revolutions per minute.
[00:10:24]  That's how many times it goes around the damn turntable.
[00:10:27]  But it's about a 10-inch record made out of shellac.
[00:10:30]  And the thing is— Great band.
[00:10:33]  You know what?
[00:10:34]  Not my kind of music.
[00:10:35]  I mean, you're shellac?
[00:10:36]  No, I'm not at all.
[00:10:37]  Okay.
[00:10:37]  I didn't go to art school.
[00:10:39]  It's shellac.
[00:10:40]  You know, don't.
[00:10:42]  If you're in shellac and listening to this, I'll love to.
[00:10:44]  We're a big fan of this.
[00:10:45]  If you're just a fan of shellac, I don't get it.
[00:10:48]  You know?
[00:10:48]  It's not for me.
[00:10:49]  Anyways, you know, because of the limitations of the format, right?
[00:10:54]  So a shellac 78 is basically looks like what you would think of when you think of a record, except it's made out of thicker material.
[00:11:00]  It's much easier to break through Stooges style over your friends' heads.
[00:11:05]  So because of the limitations of the format, songs were about three minutes that could fit on there.
[00:11:10]  Tops.
[00:11:10]  Great length for a song.
[00:11:12]  It is, in fact, they say, the perfect length for a song.
[00:11:16]  Interesting.
[00:11:16]  Right?
[00:11:17]  So they eventually start making 12-inch 78s, because at first they were 10 inches.
[00:11:21]  And those, you know, you get a little longer to about five minutes each.
[00:11:24]  After World War II, when it was really horrible, this thing that came after World War I, but before the other wars, they invent the 45 RPM single.
[00:11:34]  Now, to me, this is actually the perfect kind of record, right?
[00:11:39]  Two songs, big hole in the middle.
[00:11:42]  Put the little guy in there on your record player, the little converter.
[00:11:45]  And those things still lasted for about two and a half minutes.
[00:11:49]  You can get up a little longer on that.
[00:11:51]  You can also make them 33 RPMs.
[00:11:52]  They can last, you know, blah, blah, blah.
[00:11:54]  You lose sound quality the more grooves are on a record, basically.
[00:11:59]  And then, of course, the LP, the famous 12-inch, came out.
[00:12:03]  You know, you can also do that on 12, or excuse me, on 33 RPM or 45 RPM for a single for you dance music fans out there.
[00:12:12]  But that's essentially where the technology was at until like CDs.
[00:12:16]  Yeah.
[00:12:18]  I have a question for you.
[00:12:19]  Yes.
[00:12:20]  But when did the records like get popular?
[00:12:22]  Like really was like popular, like be people buying records.
[00:12:26]  When did that become really popular?
[00:12:28]  Well, I would say throughout the entirety until 40s, 50s.
[00:12:31]  So 50s classic time.
[00:12:33]  Yeah.
[00:12:33]  You've got them on the juke joint, right?
[00:12:35]  The at-home record player, I feel like that got really in the 60s.
[00:12:38]  That was really big.
[00:12:40]  You know what I mean?
[00:12:41]  60s, 70s, 80s, especially is when it sort of reached its like peak.
[00:12:46]  And then the decline with the cassette tape and then eventually the C D really replaced it.
[00:12:53]  But I, you know, I, to get this out of the way here, I recognize in advance going into this episode that a lot of my opinions may resemble those of like a Gen X guy.
[00:13:08]  Yeah.
[00:13:08]  I'm gonna, I'm just gonna be real with you on that.
[00:13:11]  You live in Portland.
[00:13:12]  You're wearing flannel.
[00:13:13]  You love your barbecue.
[00:13:15]  See, the thing is, none of those are true, but I love records.
[00:13:20]  And I have, you know, throughout my whole life, since I was very young, collected records in sometimes an obsessive manner.
[00:13:27]  I've done crimes to get records before.
[00:13:30]  I have a lot of records.
[00:13:32]  It's been since the way I, I was a kid, the primary way I've listened to music or tapes.
[00:13:38]  And so, but I'm not letting that color my opinions on what we're talking about today.
[00:13:43]  Okay.
[00:13:43]  I just understand that that is, you know, a little neurodivergent of me.
[00:13:48]  So you mentioned the CD.
[00:13:49]  We should talk about the CD.
[00:13:51]  Basically until like 2000-ish, all music would circulate on physical media.
[00:13:57]  Yes.
[00:13:58]  Yeah.
[00:13:58]  Yeah.
[00:13:59]  That's really the way it is.
[00:14:00]  The CDs didn't last very long, actually, when you think about the kind of timeframe.
[00:14:04]  It's funny.
[00:14:05]  I was actually thinking about that last night.
[00:14:06]  Like they really, CDs, like had, I mean, they burn bright.
[00:14:10]  Yeah.
[00:14:10]  Right.
[00:14:11]  But to me, like a CD, Amy Mann.
[00:14:14]  Sure.
[00:14:15]  Like, to me, what a CD is, is an Amy Mann C D.
[00:14:19]  I love Amy Mann.
[00:14:21]  Was she, what's that?
[00:14:21]  Paul Thomas Anderson movie?
[00:14:29]  That's kind of my only exposure to her.
[00:14:30]  And I got to tell you, we're both singing it, actually, but I was just doing it accidentally.
[00:14:38]  Oh, good.
[00:14:40]  But yeah, CDs only lasted for like 15, 20 years, I feel like.
[00:14:43]  Although they are, you might be happy to know for all you people still living with your parents out there.
[00:14:49]  Some of them are worth some money now.
[00:14:51]  That's true.
[00:14:52]  Now, the production and distribution of physical media, like CDs and vinyl, that really was the album as form.
[00:14:59]  Yes.
[00:14:59]  You mentioned singles, obviously early vinyl, but really like the album as the form of music that people put out, like, when did that really like come into the fore?
[00:15:10]  In the like late 50s?
[00:15:12]  No, it's in, and I would say, I would say early 50s.
[00:15:16]  And then really, like, the, so the album, it's funny because basically records were only sold as singles, really, until the advent of the LP, right?
[00:15:26]  And so you had, like, this was this certain way of releasing format where you were just really trying to release hits.
[00:15:31]  And then on the B side, well, that's where the term B side comes from, right?
[00:15:34]  It's like the not as good song, maybe the instrumental version.
[00:15:37]  And then smug guys with big black frame glasses are like, actually, the B side is really the best one.
[00:15:42]  Well, I will say the B side is facing a resurgence right now because of streaming, but we'll get to that later.
[00:15:47]  But yes, the B side, and B sides actually can be pretty good.
[00:15:51]  The Ultravox version of Hiroshima Manomur with the crazier saxophone.
[00:15:57]  And that's a B-side.
[00:15:58]  So the LP kind of goes from essentially being like a collection of like a few hit singles and then some really shitty filler to like an art form in its own right.
[00:16:09]  And kind of like elevating the musician into like an auteur.
[00:16:12]  Exactly.
[00:16:13]  So like you go from like an Elvis record that has like, you know, some hits on it, right?
[00:16:17]  I mean, the guy had all hits.
[00:16:19]  Man, it's a home dog.
[00:16:20]  And then some really shitty songs on it, you know, and to something like the Who's Quadraphenia, right?
[00:16:26]  Like a double LP that is like recorded as such, really doesn't have any singles.
[00:16:31]  I'm starting to feel a little bit like I'm in a high fidelity right now.
[00:16:34]  Well, I don't remember how that movie goes, but hopefully he impresses the girl with his knowledge of double LPs.
[00:16:41]  But I'm a big double LP head.
[00:16:43]  One of the first records, I mean, my uncle gave me Pretty Things, SFSR, one of the greatest double LPs ever made.
[00:16:50]  But that is sort of like the excessive 70s when you really, like the 70s were the like the peak of the LP as art form, right?
[00:16:59]  We even got to Arnold Shawbrook from upstate New York, the triple LP at certain points, although we didn't go much further than that.
[00:17:06]  That's too many LPs.
[00:17:07]  Too many LPs.
[00:17:08]  But like you were saying, because of the format of the music, the way that music was packaged and presented, the actual like content of the music and the art form itself really changed.
[00:17:20]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:21]  And also in turn changed how people discovered and listened to music, right?
[00:17:26]  Because I remember the first CD I bought, Tower Records.
[00:17:30]  The one Market Street.
[00:17:32]  Okay, okay.
[00:17:33]  Marketing Castro-ish.
[00:17:35]  Okay, I never went to it.
[00:17:36]  I always went to the one near the Piers.
[00:17:38]  It was Unknown Pleasures.
[00:17:42]  And I think it was $14.99, which is a lot of money.
[00:17:46]  Yeah.
[00:17:47]  And there was a kind of, you know, physical and monetary limitation on how many CDs you could buy, right?
[00:17:53]  Because, you know, I only had like 20 bucks or whatever.
[00:17:56]  But for everyone, it was always like that.
[00:17:58]  And so when we were talking about this last night, like you would go home with your records or with your CD, with your physical media, and you'd listen to it, and maybe you didn't like it, or maybe you loved it, in my case.
[00:18:07]  Yeah.
[00:18:10]  And then you just listen to it over and over and over again.
[00:18:13]  And that gets you like, whoa, what else did they put out?
[00:18:15]  Or how do I find more like them?
[00:18:16]  Or who else do they play with?
[00:18:18]  Or whatever.
[00:18:18]  And so it's a different kind of map of discovery.
[00:18:21]  Exactly.
[00:18:21]  The way I discovered music back then was through two basically, well, except for like friends telling me about the stuff that they had or playing it for me, was through like mixtapes other people made for me.
[00:18:31]  Oh, sure.
[00:18:32]  Or mixed CDs.
[00:18:33]  My friend Colby used to have a night at Casanova called Mixing People Was Meeting People.
[00:18:39]  And everyone would come and exchange mixtapes.
[00:18:42]  I love the Casanova.
[00:18:42]  With Moses.
[00:18:44]  And then through compilations.
[00:18:47]  Sure.
[00:18:48]  That was a big thing.
[00:18:49]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:50]  Compilation records.
[00:18:52]  The soundtrack was also very big.
[00:18:54]  The soundtrack was also very big.
[00:18:55]  Yeah, I remember my parents had the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
[00:18:58]  And for some of you out there, this was not me, but you know what?
[00:19:02]  I respect that it was you through the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack or through skate videos.
[00:19:10]  That was a big thing for a certain subset of young men.
[00:19:13]  Not myself.
[00:19:16]  But basically, like all of these things are to say that physical media sort of enforced, like allowed scarcity to be enforced basically as a matter of course.
[00:19:24]  Exactly.
[00:19:25]  Right.
[00:19:25]  And so the ability to control the distribution of material objects, basically that allowed all of the intellectual property holders a significant advantage.
[00:19:35]  All of that totally disappears with the introduction of the MP3.
[00:19:42]  The MP3.
[00:19:43]  The MP3.
[00:19:44]  Digital Media.
[00:19:45]  Talk about, look, I got to say, Maya Culpa to Lars.
[00:19:50]  She's a culpable to Lars.
[00:19:52]  I will never.
[00:19:53]  I will never.
[00:19:54]  Never Maya Culpa to Lars.
[00:19:56]  But he was onto something.
[00:19:57]  From Metallica, you're talking about.
[00:19:58]  The famous, the famous.
[00:20:00]  When he pitched a fit about Napster.
[00:20:02]  Yes, yeah.
[00:20:03]  Because I got to say, Metallica, they really took it on the chin for that.
[00:20:08]  And I believe me, there is no band that I hate more from the Bay Area than Metallica.
[00:20:13]  Yeah, I think that's fair.
[00:20:13]  They have put out, except for the record with Luri Lulu, which is crazy that they did that.
[00:20:19]  It's one of the worst records I've ever heard, but people try to say it's good now.
[00:20:23]  Terrible fucking band, except for the first two albums.
[00:20:26]  But they really went after Napster.
[00:20:28]  I mean, they destroyed it.
[00:20:30]  But the MP3, I mean, this digital media changed everything.
[00:20:34]  We were talking, and Young Chomsky had a great point where he basically said that the MP3 also liberated the single, like the track, from the album.
[00:20:44]  And at this point, I mean, it was, you know, like we said, we can make mixtapes, we can make compilations, we can make whatever.
[00:20:50]  But being able to share and move just single digital files or singles around, I mean, it just, the speed at which it could circulate now was just totally, totally unprecedented.
[00:21:02]  Absolutely.
[00:21:02]  I remember vividly like making mixes, tapes from records that I have for mostly for girls, right?
[00:21:09]  And spending like hours on like this goes directly into this, goes directly into this, goes directly into this.
[00:21:15]  This will make her love me.
[00:21:16]  And then the MP3 Claire came about and just made that completely obsolete.
[00:21:21]  Yeah.
[00:21:22]  We should say, because did you have a Disc Man?
[00:21:24]  I did.
[00:21:25]  Yeah.
[00:21:25]  Now, I was talking about this last night, and the Disc Man had these like terrible over-the-head headphones.
[00:21:31]  Yeah, like the one.
[00:21:32]  The foam.
[00:21:32]  It's full leak.
[00:21:33]  Yeah, they were terrible.
[00:21:35]  And did you have a Walkman?
[00:21:36]  I did.
[00:21:37]  Yeah.
[00:21:37]  Now, did you know that the first iteration of The Walkman, the first design, it had two headphone ports.
[00:21:43]  Interesting.
[00:21:44]  Because the designers believed that people would be listening to music together.
[00:21:48]  Because that's how music had always been enjoyed.
[00:21:50]  Yes.
[00:21:51]  Up until The Walkman, right?
[00:21:52]  It had been enjoyed through a speaker in a room with people.
[00:21:57]  It's always been a social activity.
[00:21:58]  And the Walkman, and then later the Disc Man, and then even further down the line, the MP3 player, which is even crazier.
[00:22:05]  Really, like, basically, people didn't actually share, plug two headphones in and share a Walkman.
[00:22:12]  And so they got rid of it.
[00:22:12]  They ended up dropping it.
[00:22:14]  Interesting.
[00:22:14]  And so, you know, you see how listeners shape the technology as much as the technology shapes the way listeners are listening to music, if that makes sense.
[00:22:24]  I will say, I actually have never owned an MP3 player.
[00:22:28]  I had an iPod.
[00:22:30]  I didn't.
[00:22:30]  Max did.
[00:22:31]  And I would borrow it.
[00:22:32]  We worked at the same flower shop and I would borrow it at work sometimes.
[00:22:35]  I'd be like, can you please leave it for my shop?
[00:22:36]  No, my friends and I would split our headphones.
[00:22:38]  That was a great thing about the Apple earbuds: you could split them.
[00:22:42]  So we would listen to the same music together, which was very cool.
[00:22:46]  That doesn't happen anymore, which we'll talk about.
[00:23:02]  So, streaming, which comes a little bit later, and basically cloud-based library platforms, we call it that.
[00:23:09]  Yeah.
[00:23:10]  That arises as basically a response to the conundrum of Napster and file sharing MP3.
[00:23:16]  Yeah, and like, you know, when Napster and like these MP3 players and all that stuff came out, like they were still, people were still putting out physical copies of their like CDs and records and stuff.
[00:23:27]  But I was talking to actually Jeff Rickley, the Thursday guy, yesterday for this episode.

=== Streaming's Impact on Royalties (13:44) ===

[00:23:32]  And because that was a band that was really, really big in the early 2000s, sort of when this transition happened.
[00:23:38]  And he told me, like, yeah, one record they put out sold a ton of copies, right?
[00:23:44]  But their label was like, we're also going to release this, I think, for free, maybe.
[00:23:48]  I don't know if it was for free, but we're going to release this digitally too.
[00:23:51]  And that ended up selling or being downloaded like three or four times as much as the actual copy of the record sold.
[00:23:59]  And this is in 2003, right?
[00:24:01]  And so record labels actually didn't really know what to do with this for quite a while.
[00:24:04]  Totally.
[00:24:05]  So that actually, we should talk about record labels real quick.
[00:24:09]  Yeah, because they still have a pretty big stranglehold or the last grasp, maybe.
[00:24:16]  A last terrifying chokehold on artists still to this day.
[00:24:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:21]  And to be clear, like we are on Def Jam.
[00:24:23]  Oh, yeah.
[00:24:24]  Yeah, we're on Def Jam.
[00:24:25]  We're on the music division too.
[00:24:27]  It's not the comedy part.
[00:24:28]  But like, you know, for whatever labels are out there, if it's anything bigger than a small label, it is almost certainly part of like, it's like a subsidiary of one of the big Atlantic.
[00:24:39]  Inevitably, it's owned by Jimmy Ivey.
[00:24:41]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:41]  Basically.
[00:24:43]  The American music industry is basically just a very tangled web, we'll say, of like both competing and colluding institutions that are extremely opaque.
[00:24:58]  Like you say, there's always like labels on top of labels on top of labels owned by subsidiaries owned by other subsidiaries.
[00:25:04]  And it turns out they're all against each other, but then they're also owned all by the same people.
[00:25:09]  And they all operate according to extremely arcane and often highly contested rules that are all organized by our horrific and terrifying copyright and contract legal system.
[00:25:24]  This is why Taylor had to make, in fact, re-record versions of her own albums because she didn't own the masters.
[00:25:30]  You know.
[00:25:30]  So she had to make Red Taylor's version.
[00:25:34]  Taylor's version.
[00:25:35]  Okay.
[00:25:35]  By this podcast, this is true and on Taylor's - Taylor's version.
[00:25:39]  She is in the room with us right now.
[00:25:40]  We are re-recording it at her behest.
[00:25:43]  And it's like, you know, despite all of this mess, I gotta say, even like before streaming, comparatively, it was pretty straightforward.
[00:25:51]  Yeah.
[00:25:51]  I mean, here's the thing.
[00:25:52]  Like, everybody knows.
[00:25:54]  I mean, if you know a little bit about the music industry, you know that record contracts have been dog shit since the beginning of record contracts, right?
[00:26:02]  Like there are very few, if you know the history of recorded music in America or really any country, you know that it is essentially like artists getting ripped off at every single juncture by a series of increasingly weird and frankly, more importantly, middlemen as the money gets further and further and further away from them, right?
[00:26:24]  Yeah, you mentioned Taylor and Taylor's version.
[00:26:27]  So correct me if I'm wrong, but typically the performer assigns the copyright of the recording itself to the record label.
[00:26:34]  Yeah, I mean, I've never like a little different now, but that's like in history, I think that, is that how it used to be?
[00:26:42]  So I think sometimes, and again, don't quote me, I have never, I guess, I don't really know how it works because I've actually, I've put on, not to brag here, but I've been on seven records in my life.
[00:26:52]  I've put out seven records, or I've been, my bands have.
[00:26:56]  I don't really know who owns the rights to any of them, but I don't know if that's-cause you weren't paying attention.
[00:27:00]  I wasn't paying attention.
[00:27:01]  I don't think that matters at all.
[00:27:04]  It's not like the songs will ever be used for anything.
[00:27:06]  But I do know that there's publishing rights and that there's songwriting credits and that you can essentially earn royalties from both of them.
[00:27:13]  Right, royalties.
[00:27:15]  So like, you know, with these contracts, typically, you know, a performer, if they don't own the rights to the song, they're, you know, they do it.
[00:27:24]  They sign these contracts in exchange for a certain percentage of royalties, right?
[00:27:29]  And on paper, that'll mean like, you know, 12 to 18% or whatever.
[00:27:32]  But you mentioned middlemen.
[00:27:34]  A kind of legal middlemen would be like recruitment clauses where, you know, the record labels basically say, okay, well, we've already paid you in advance.
[00:27:43]  Pay us back.
[00:27:44]  You need to pay us back.
[00:27:45]  That'll come out of your royalties.
[00:27:46]  So basically at the end of the day, artists would be getting something closer to like 6.57% royalties.
[00:27:54]  Yeah, I mean, so the way it worked really is that like you could end up like essentially making almost nothing off of like a hit album if your contract was bad enough.
[00:28:04]  And this is a big thing in the record industry still today, especially with like young rappers and stuff.
[00:28:09]  This is like a notorious like industry practice.
[00:28:12]  And I'm sure this happens with everybody, but there's just some very famous cases of it happening with young rappers.
[00:28:17]  They'll offer you these crazy like 360 deals and then just totally fucking ream you on everything.
[00:28:22]  You essentially come out with nothing.
[00:28:24]  And you don't own any of your music.
[00:28:26]  And anytime it gets licensed, somebody else gets money.
[00:28:29]  But really like the way that you made money from like if an album's sold, right?
[00:28:34]  The way it works is the label has a distributor.
[00:28:37]  That distributor sends it out to record stores.
[00:28:40]  The record stores sell the albums or they pay the distributor.
[00:28:44]  The distributor gives some of that, but gives that money to the label after taking their portion.
[00:28:48]  Yeah, this is a classic wholesale retail operation.
[00:28:50]  And then the label keeps the majority of that.
[00:28:52]  And then you get your six, well, you get your 12%, and then you hand a bunch of that over to the various layers of middlemen that are between you and the label.
[00:29:00]  After you've received an advance for the album.
[00:29:02]  Exactly.
[00:29:03]  Which you do have to pay back.
[00:29:05]  So it's never been really great.
[00:29:07]  No.
[00:29:07]  But it's really gotten bad with streaming, I gotta say.
[00:29:13]  Yeah.
[00:29:14]  So this is sort of like the first really big break between like now and maybe 25 years ago, right?
[00:29:23]  20 years ago is because, okay, back then, yeah, you did not make a lot on albums, but you made something, right?
[00:29:33]  And then you also, you know, terrestrial radio, as they call it, like the actual radio stations, some radio stations will also pay royalties.
[00:29:40]  The royalties are, again, not incredible, but a lot better than streaming.
[00:29:45]  So to get this out of the way, one play on your shitty record that you put up on Spotify.
[00:29:52]  I mean, if you're on Spotify, you probably know this.
[00:29:54]  You get somewhere between 0.003 cents to 0.005 cents.
[00:30:02]  And some major label artists have like a higher rate.
[00:30:05]  It's possible to negotiate for a higher rate.
[00:30:07]  But I would say the average is probably towards the lower end of a, I don't actually know what percentage of a cent that is, but 0.003.
[00:30:18]  And so, you know, even if you see somebody who has like millions of plays on Spotify, you actually like have to divide that number by like 0.003 to see what they're actually making.
[00:30:30]  And that's not just per month.
[00:30:32]  That's like for that song's entire history.
[00:30:34]  So this has actually completely changed the way that a lot of artists are expected to make money and expected to at all make a living off of their music, because there goes that like, while it wasn't a major source of income for some bands, it really could be right, it was a source of income.
[00:30:53]  It might not, you know, you're probably not living at the RITS, but you know you're making something off of that.
[00:30:57]  For me, when I was in bands, the way that we ever made money was selling our records at merch tables.
[00:31:04]  That's it.
[00:31:04]  You know.
[00:31:05]  You sell your seven inch for like seven dollars or whatever.
[00:31:07]  You know you got it from the label.
[00:31:09]  You got your certain amount that to you know to sell that they just give you and then you can buy some more at cost from them.
[00:31:14]  Uh, and that's how you made money and that is really not the case anymore.
[00:31:21]  Like I mean record record, like you're not making money off of your new record coming out in terms of like, physical copies being sold.
[00:31:28]  Well before we get into talking specifically about the kind of fallout from the age of the streaming platform, aka Spotify and Apple Music and Amazon and apparently something called Deezer.
[00:31:43]  Listen, this has been a revelation for me.
[00:31:46]  Have you heard of Deezer before young Chompsy?
[00:31:47]  He's saying yes.
[00:31:48]  I have deezer got a real teezhead.
[00:31:51]  It sounds like something you would put on in England, which means that it has got to be a nightmare application.
[00:31:58]  Um, before we kind of get into that, I mean, you know, you mentioned how you used to be able to make a lot of money on merch tables and stuff.
[00:32:06]  I mean, even like most fans used to make a lot of money touring.
[00:32:10]  That was really where you made all of your money.
[00:32:12]  If you were, you know, even with the bad record deals, even with the shitty royalty checks, even with not making so much on those things, you at least like could go out and tour and make some good money.
[00:32:23]  Absolutely.
[00:32:24]  Rely on that.
[00:32:25]  That has been since I have been a kid.
[00:32:29]  That has been the way that I know.
[00:32:30]  Anybody I know who makes money off of music, that's how you made the money, right?
[00:32:34]  Anytime that I've ever made any money, like walked home with dollars in my pocket from music, it has been from a live show because that's just like how you were sort of expected to actually, you know, earn a living.
[00:32:47]  Or, I mean, I never earned a living playing music, but you know what I mean?
[00:32:50]  Like earn any kind of money whatsoever.
[00:32:52]  That has changed drastically, especially in the past few years.
[00:32:57]  And I think there's a few reasons for that.
[00:32:58]  Obviously, COVID, right?
[00:33:01]  Yeah, that was like that just shut everyone down and like that allowed everything to kind of like reconfigure while no one had like it was like, oh, everyone close your eyes.
[00:33:11]  We're going to rework the entire business.
[00:33:13]  Open your eyes.
[00:33:14]  It's different now.
[00:33:15]  It's totally different now.
[00:33:15]  Exactly.
[00:33:16]  So like live venues on the whole, obviously not everywhere, but mostly were shut down for like a year, year and a half, right?
[00:33:22]  And then when they restarted, everybody who's been writing all that music during COVID and stuff, it's all coming out.
[00:33:28]  You want to tour.
[00:33:29]  And so you try to go on tour, but you can't get any dates at the clubs.
[00:33:32]  You certainly can't get any dates in a row.
[00:33:34]  The clubs are all offering, not all, but a large worse rates now because of COVID recovery.
[00:33:41]  And then also a lot of COVID recovery.
[00:33:43]  What do you mean?
[00:33:44]  Well, so this is a little scam.
[00:33:45]  A lot of clubs do.
[00:33:46]  You did aircraft positions.
[00:33:47]  Yeah.
[00:33:48]  Well, a lot of the big thing is a lot of club owners would be like, hey, like, we really need you to work with us.
[00:33:53]  And actually, you need to take a worse cut on your take-home pay because the club needs to recover from, you know, being closed during COVID.
[00:34:02]  Oh, right.
[00:34:03]  So the thing is, the way that live shows work is that usually the band or bands make most of the money from the door.
[00:34:12]  And then the bar is expected to make the money from actually the bar.
[00:34:16]  Or excuse me, the club is supposed to make money from the bar.
[00:34:18]  And so you make money from your merch and the door sales and all that stuff.
[00:34:22]  That now, I mean, that's it's getting a little bit back to normal, but costs have skyrocketed on everything from renting vans to backlines to replacement equipment, all that stuff.
[00:34:31]  Labels don't help bands nearly as much as they did.
[00:34:34]  And most, like, most bands I know aren't on labels or like aren't on major labels.
[00:34:39]  And so that doesn't exist anyways.
[00:34:41]  But costs have skyrocketed and pay has gone way down.
[00:34:45]  And then there is the reselling.
[00:34:49]  So Ticketmaster, ticketing company, right?
[00:34:53]  Live Nation, it's a like booking company, essentially.
[00:34:58]  Or it's like they own venues and stuff like that.
[00:35:00]  Those two combined.
[00:35:02]  Which, not to sound like Matt Stola or whatever.
[00:35:05]  I knew that man's name would come up in the Ticketmaster Company.
[00:35:08]  How did that go through?
[00:35:09]  It is fucking psycho that that went through.
[00:35:12]  Again, like everyone hates Ticketmaster, right?
[00:35:16]  Most people who know what it is also hate Live Nation.
[00:35:19]  Yeah.
[00:35:19]  But you got to understand, they control like 80% of the live music market in America.
[00:35:25]  And AEG basically controls it, which is essentially the same thing.
[00:35:29]  They have AXS as their axis or whatever is their ticket thing.
[00:35:32]  Which I hate that name.
[00:35:33]  I hate it so much.
[00:35:33]  Yeah, it really reminds me of the bad guys in the Second World War.
[00:35:38]  And they control almost the entire live music market.
[00:35:45]  Recently, Taylor Swift's, like who we love, her ERAs tour, which is ongoing right now.
[00:35:52]  You can get tickets in the bio at a high markup.
[00:35:57]  You know, that had like a disastrous launch because of Ticketmaster.
[00:36:00]  And a really big reason for a lot of that stuff is that all these resellers have these fucking bots that go in and just buy up like 50 tickets to shows.
[00:36:10]  And this isn't just happening with Taylor Swift shows.
[00:36:12]  This is happening to like small venues.
[00:36:14]  Yeah.
[00:36:15]  And, you know, we were talking to Sean Agnew from Union Transfer in Philadelphia yesterday.
[00:36:22]  And he was saying that like, I mean, that's like basically an independent venue, right?
[00:36:27]  They're not owned by Live Nation or anything like that.
[00:36:28]  But they, and it's like a 1200 cap, I think.
[00:36:32]  So like, you know, a decent mid-sized venue.
[00:36:35]  They were getting like tons of bots on like small shows.
[00:36:40]  And it blew my mind, like the mechanics of all this, because like people will, for even like small, like 300-person rooms and stuff like that, if it's like an online ticketing thing, bots will come in or like resellers will come in and buy like 50 tickets.
[00:36:55]  And so the way this works is if you're in like a small band that, and you have a sellout show, there's a good chance that it's like comes out of nowhere.
[00:37:05]  There's a good chance that a lot of those tickets were just literally purchased by a machine for automatic resale on reselling platforms.
[00:37:13]  And, you know, if you're a small band, you know, probably no one's going to buy those resale tickets.

=== Bot-Purchased Tickets (16:07) ===

[00:37:17]  And then you end up getting like, I mean, I've heard from the past couple of days horror stories from people like.
[00:37:23]  Just showing up and there's like 30% of people there.
[00:37:25]  30 fucking 40% of the room is filled.
[00:37:27]  I mean, can you imagine that?
[00:37:29]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:37:29]  I mean, this just happened to a pretty big band that was just on tour.
[00:37:34]  And, you know, their entire tour basically sold out.
[00:37:37]  There was like 30, 40% of people in there.
[00:37:39]  And it's, I mean, that's heartbreaking.
[00:37:41]  Calling it the great flippening, because now there's more fake things and real things.
[00:37:45]  No, but it's.
[00:37:46]  Yeah, you said that yesterday we were on the phone with him, but it's, it's.
[00:37:48]  It's crazy because and and then he looked up at our show at Union Transfer.
[00:37:52]  Yeah 80 80, 80 tickets that were sold were by bots, but I invited those ones.
[00:37:58]  That is true, those were Liz's friends.
[00:37:59]  Yeah, her little cute little they're, they're my um, I bought them through ACT BLUE.
[00:38:03]  Interesting how they weren't on the guest list um, but essentially like, this is this is to say that, like you know, talking to people, I know several people who you know, two or for a living, I talking to them, it's like the margins on that have like, gone way down, and it wasn't even just covet, that kind of changed.
[00:38:24]  All this stuff I mean people attending live music has gone down.
[00:38:28]  Yeah, over the like last like five six, seven years.
[00:38:33]  Yeah, it's been a noticeable trend um, and I it's hard to not ask what, like whether or not that has something to do with the advent of like, streaming and cloud-based platforms.
[00:38:46]  Right, like I mean, I really do think that these have completely changed the way we consume, how music is produced like, how music is distributed and like not even talking about like, how it's paid for, you know, and really, like we're talking about streaming, we're talking about this like cloud-based I don't want to say just streaming, because it really is cloud-based.
[00:39:08]  We can talk about the difference there, I guess.
[00:39:09]  But five vibes yeah, i'm not saying that um, i'm anti-vibes now.
[00:39:14]  Oh we're, we're.
[00:39:15]  I'm now that you're against it, i'm for it.
[00:39:17]  But the complaints about streaming basically boil down to one, musicians argue that this undermines the sale of actual digital files and physical media, which cuts into their payment, which is 100% true.
[00:39:31]  Obviously, we'll talk about that.
[00:39:32]  But there's a broader moral argument that kind of comes out that really that these platforms and the adoption of this technology has kind of changed what people think music should be worth.
[00:39:47]  worth right, that like micro payments and the way that that's structured, in addition to on-demand streaming, and I think the like, you know, the everyone having kind of like in ear bluetooth surround sound headphones, like noise canceling, solitary thing, Yeah.
[00:40:05]  That it's all kind of changed what we think music should be and should be worth.
[00:40:11]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:13]  I want to put a point in that second point that you made real quick is that like I think the way that a lot of people views these issues or is like, is it convenient or not, right?
[00:40:25]  Like that's the binary.
[00:40:26]  And convenient is good.
[00:40:27]  And like, I don't even say inconvenient, but less convenient is bad, right?
[00:40:32]  And sometimes like convenience represents like progress in some forms.
[00:40:36]  And like there will be no argument from me that streaming services make it more convenient for you to hear any song, not any song actually, but any song that has been uploaded into like Spotify or whatever very easily, literally at the, you know, two taps from your motherfucking index.
[00:40:54]  Yeah, it's incredible.
[00:40:55]  Right.
[00:40:56]  I'm going to say that doesn't mean it's good.
[00:40:58]  Right.
[00:40:59]  And I'm not even saying like it's not just not good because, you know, they don't get paid that much or anything.
[00:41:05]  I think it's, I think it actually, like you said, really affects the way that we listen to music and that we consume what is, I think, pretty much commonly understood to be art.
[00:41:14]  Right.
[00:41:15]  And yeah.
[00:41:17]  So that is, that is, I think, a major issue that looms over all of this.
[00:41:20]  So let's talk about Spotify.
[00:41:22]  Okay, Spotify.
[00:41:23]  We're going to really just say Spotify.
[00:41:25]  There's obviously other streaming forms.
[00:41:27]  There's Deezer.
[00:41:28]  And you know what?
[00:41:29]  We're proud to be a member of the Deezer podcast platform.
[00:41:32]  No, but it's, you know, we're probably just going to keep saying Spotify because like their business model is worth really looking into because Apple Music and Amazon, they both have very popular streaming services.
[00:41:42]  I think Apple's is actually only really popular in the States.
[00:41:46]  But Amazon's is pretty popular, especially with Alexa.
[00:41:50]  Title, too.
[00:41:51]  I know that's popular.
[00:41:53]  Yeah, but I mean, just the big three, like Apple and Amazon are, they can have these streaming platforms as kind of loss leaders.
[00:42:00]  Like they don't have to worry about losing money.
[00:42:02]  Yeah.
[00:42:02]  Whereas like Spotify, which we'll talk about like at some point does.
[00:42:07]  Yeah.
[00:42:07]  Yeah.
[00:42:08]  So streaming, when we say streaming, what does that mean?
[00:42:11]  That means music in the cloud, which sounds nice.
[00:42:14]  That sounds nice.
[00:42:16]  And, you know, there are the couple kinds, right?
[00:42:18]  There's the streaming radio, which are just like different radio stations.
[00:42:21]  Everyone remembers Pandora.
[00:42:22]  Uh-huh.
[00:42:22]  Which I think still exists.
[00:42:24]  I never had a Pandora job.
[00:42:25]  I feel like you only hear Pandora at work.
[00:42:27]  And I never had a job that played Pandora.
[00:42:29]  We listened to Michael Savage when I worked at a radio job.
[00:42:33]  That's weird.
[00:42:34]  Yeah.
[00:42:34]  Well, it was entertaining.
[00:42:36]  Then there's locker services, which is the technical term, which is the worst name I've ever heard.
[00:42:41]  Which is like literally you buy music and it's stored in the cloud and you're able to access it.
[00:42:48]  So you can have access to your iTunes library wherever you are, but it's cloud-based.
[00:42:52]  So what we would think of as traditionally, quote, owning music.
[00:42:56]  Although I don't know if I know that at some point, I've never been a big MP3 guy.
[00:43:00]  Know that at some point Apple made it like maybe not transferable off of iMusic, or you couldn't import your own stuff.
[00:43:07]  But I might be tripping on that, so don't quote me.
[00:43:10]  I mean, it is literally, I'm saying anything microphone recorded, but I know there was something to do with that.
[00:43:14]  DRM.
[00:43:15]  What does that mean?
[00:43:17]  Oh, of course.
[00:43:17]  Yeah, yeah, I remember all that.
[00:43:19]  You buy a license to it at this point.
[00:43:20]  Right.
[00:43:21]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:22]  Yeah, you'll own nothing.
[00:43:23]  You'll own nothing and be happy.
[00:43:24]  They do really do me.
[00:43:25]  That's the thing, though.
[00:43:26]  That is true.
[00:43:27]  They do expect you to own nothing and be happy.
[00:43:30]  I am going to quote you on that.
[00:43:31]  Oh, I didn't.
[00:43:32]  That's not my quote.
[00:43:33]  I'm quoting somebody else.
[00:43:34]  And then on-demand streaming.
[00:43:35]  Okay, that's the big one.
[00:43:36]  That's the big kahuna.
[00:43:38]  That's Spotify.
[00:43:38]  That's Apple.
[00:43:39]  That's Amazon.
[00:43:40]  Deezer.
[00:43:41]  Deezer.
[00:43:41]  I'm not going to stop saying that.
[00:43:42]  It's only, it's only these are only plays the worst, like what they call in Australia, doof der music.
[00:43:50]  And you got to go like this.
[00:43:52]  And you're so sweaty, and there's one girl, and you're just like all kind of like around her in like a druidic circle.
[00:43:58]  Like, and then unfortunately, you do, it's, you do die of an ecstasy overdose.
[00:44:06]  Okay, Spotify.
[00:44:08]  Spotify is Swedish.
[00:44:10]  Which, to be clear, that's already a red flag.
[00:44:13]  Red flag.
[00:44:14]  Although I am going to see the Swedish man Brain Bombs in a couple of weeks, which I'm very excited about.
[00:44:20]  They launched in around 2008, 2007, 2008, but they launched in the U.S. in 2011.
[00:44:27]  Immediately, not like a bunch of people were really pissed off.
[00:44:30]  Yeah.
[00:44:31]  A bunch of record labels could sniff it out and they're like, uh-oh, we see where this is going.
[00:44:35]  This isn't good.
[00:44:36]  They immediately pulled their catalogs.
[00:44:40]  Yes.
[00:44:41]  And it was a bunch of metal labels, which I think is very cute.
[00:44:45]  A lot of them have since returned.
[00:44:46]  Unfortunately, that protested last.
[00:44:51]  The big thing is that Spotify, the company, does not make money.
[00:44:56]  Now, if we have people out there who make music that are listening to this, which would be cool, say hello.
[00:45:01]  Hello.
[00:45:01]  Hello.
[00:45:02]  That might, people might not know that.
[00:45:04]  Yeah.
[00:45:05]  It's sort of like when you talk to Uber drivers and you're like, you know, Uber doesn't make that much money.
[00:45:08]  And they're like, what?
[00:45:09]  Yeah.
[00:45:09]  Spotify does not make money.
[00:45:11]  It has never turned to profit ever in its entire life.
[00:45:14]  Crazy to me.
[00:45:14]  But yeah.
[00:45:15]  The last I checked, it had a 25.5% profit margin, which, to be clear, is bad.
[00:45:20]  It's bad?
[00:45:21]  That's very bad.
[00:45:22]  That's bad, not even just like startup, like, oh, I'm just trying to get my legs under me.
[00:45:26]  Like, oh, I just have a little profit.
[00:45:27]  I only have a quarter profit.
[00:45:28]  It's fine.
[00:45:29]  It's fine.
[00:45:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:30]  That's bad then.
[00:45:32]  It's really bad when you're like the industry leader, like dominant platform.
[00:45:36]  Yeah.
[00:45:36]  Yeah.
[00:45:37]  It's funny.
[00:45:38]  I will say this, Spotify.
[00:45:40]  My teenage hardcore band's First Seven Inch has been on your platform for a number of years, collecting 0.003 cents per play.
[00:45:47]  The guy who owned our label died.
[00:45:51]  Can you give me that money now?
[00:45:53]  I don't know who's getting that money.
[00:45:54]  So part of that profit is probably my money.
[00:45:58]  Might be your money or it might be the label.
[00:46:00]  Well, he's dead.
[00:46:01]  I mean, the labels signed a ton of deals with Spotify.
[00:46:04]  Yeah.
[00:46:05]  Which we don't know the ins and outs of.
[00:46:08]  But it's true.
[00:46:09]  I mean, a lot of people, Spotify has to pay out a lot of people.
[00:46:12]  Yes.
[00:46:12]  Yeah.
[00:46:13]  Right?
[00:46:13]  Like, it doesn't, so if it's already paying out seven, I mean, these are estimates, right?
[00:46:17]  Because we don't know.
[00:46:18]  Yeah, it's really opaque.
[00:46:20]  Yeah, no one knows the terms of these agreements.
[00:46:22]  But if it's paying out 70 to 80 percent of its revenue to the record labels, then it's still got to pay publishers, composers, executive.
[00:46:31]  It's got employees.
[00:46:32]  It's a huge company.
[00:46:33]  It's got to pay rent.
[00:46:34]  It's got servers, computers, it's got data engineers.
[00:46:37]  It's got, I mean, it's got to deal with all of that.
[00:46:41]  And then it's got musicians.
[00:46:43]  Exactly.
[00:46:43]  So there's a lot of people that prop up this entire business.
[00:46:48]  And a lot of them aren't getting paid at all, right?
[00:46:51]  Yeah.
[00:46:51]  Yeah.
[00:46:52]  That's all to say that this is not a sustainable business model.
[00:46:55]  And it's funny because when Spotify launched, it was, you know, it's like 2007, 2008.
[00:47:01]  Everyone's like, man, who cares?
[00:47:03]  Dot com, we're back.
[00:47:05]  There's not a financial crisis yet.
[00:47:06]  It's fine.
[00:47:07]  It's all good.
[00:47:08]  It's good.
[00:47:08]  We're back.
[00:47:09]  We're back.
[00:47:09]  We're building.
[00:47:10]  Everyone loves the internet.
[00:47:11]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:47:11]  You know, people love paying the internet.
[00:47:13]  $10 a month.
[00:47:14]  $10.
[00:47:15]  So a bunch of marketeers, I mean, it's true.
[00:47:17]  Marketeers came in and they just said that's what people are willing to pay, $10 a month.
[00:47:21]  And so Spotify said, one, should we make a $9.99?
[00:47:25]  Or two, that sounds great.
[00:47:28]  I agree.
[00:47:29]  Let's do it.
[00:47:30]  And so they chose this price literally based on nothing except for marketing data.
[00:47:35]  Interesting.
[00:47:36]  And then backfilled all of the, then we're like, oh shit, it actually costs a shit ton to like pay for all of these catalogs and all of these licenses.
[00:47:48]  How are we going to be able to sustain this business at only $10 a month?
[00:47:52]  Meanwhile, a decade later, you now have an entire basically global population that believes that all music should be worth $10 a month.
[00:48:01]  $10 a month, yeah.
[00:48:03]  Which is completely absurd when you think about it.
[00:48:05]  I think that really plays into like, I mean, this is something that we talk about a lot on the show whenever we're talking about money and the arts, I guess, on the internet.
[00:48:13]  Is like any price, like people still feel like nothing on the internet should cost money, essentially.
[00:48:19]  Like no like services like that, especially like the speed.
[00:48:24]  Exactly.
[00:48:24]  It's like, well, this is convenient.
[00:48:25]  And like this, I don't understand.
[00:48:27]  Like I look at this website the same way, or I use this app the same way I would use Tinder or whatever, right?
[00:48:34]  Although I think Tinder costs money now too.
[00:48:36]  I know.
[00:48:37]  But like they all have like premium services.
[00:48:40]  Spotify is like non-premium service.
[00:48:43]  It's just ads all the time.
[00:48:44]  So it sucks.
[00:48:45]  I mean, a lot of people still use it.
[00:48:46]  But it's like, if you do pay for it, you're like, $10.
[00:48:49]  Like, it's still, I mean, the thing is, you just have all of these different discrete websites or like stream platforms and charging you $10.
[00:48:55]  So you're paying a shit ton of money in the aggregate, but like, and so it feels like any part of that, like, you know what I'm saying here?
[00:49:02]  It's like, it's too much money.
[00:49:04]  Yeah.
[00:49:05]  So, I mean, it has the problems that all these other big platforms have, right?
[00:49:10]  Which is that it relies on users to pay a flat fee for basically unlimited access to an extremely expensive product.
[00:49:18]  Yeah.
[00:49:18]  Yeah.
[00:49:19]  Which is really a big oopsies from the business perspective.
[00:49:22]  The amount of revenue that Spotify generates, then, I mean, it has to rely on the amount of subscribers it has, right?
[00:49:29]  Yeah.
[00:49:29]  I mean, this is just the classic things.
[00:49:31]  It's like, you know, if the amount of times that music can be streamed is limitless and you're paying a fat fee for it, you need as many people as you can in order to keep this thing going.
[00:49:42]  Yeah.
[00:49:43]  So you need scale and then you need to figure out a way to commodify your like your users.
[00:49:50]  And that's the thing is like from what I understand, from my limited knowledge of this, is that like, well, I guess I probably have more knowledge than some people.
[00:49:58]  I should be, I should be immodest.
[00:50:01]  Spotify, like basically every other app, really functions as like a data broker.
[00:50:07]  Yeah.
[00:50:07]  I mean, there's, I mean, there's so many ways that data, I mean, data gets sold to third parties, which they sell it to everyone from insurance agencies to ad companies to, you know, like everyone in between.
[00:50:20]  There's, you know, data can be used to like help them define segments of who they're selling advertisements to, right?
[00:50:29]  And it becomes worth more in that sense.
[00:50:31]  It can be used as an asset where it can be used to basically increase the value of their own company, where they say, okay, we have all this data on all of these people that will help bring in capital investment, which will help, you know, help them grow.
[00:50:46]  So data can be used in like all sorts of ways.
[00:50:49]  And the scale, the scale issues and the, you know, really these kind of like, how do we monetize our, you know, this, this data that we have, it's all basically solved by, or at least like maybe like push down the line, I guess.
[00:51:04]  The blockchain.
[00:51:06]  Yes.
[00:51:07]  No, by the recommendation algorithm.
[00:51:09]  Yeah.
[00:51:10]  Now we've talked a lot about algorithms on the show.
[00:51:13]  We've talked about machine learning.
[00:51:14]  We've kind of talked about on TikTok.
[00:51:16]  You know what I mean?
[00:51:17]  And those are recommendation algorithms that are very different.
[00:51:20]  Spotify's is extremely unique, I have to say, after reading about this and looking into it.
[00:51:28]  I want to pause here and take a look at our personal listening habits.
[00:51:32]  Do you use the Spotify algorithms to listen to music?
[00:51:36]  Do you listen to your daily mix or whatever the things that they make for Discover Weekly?
[00:51:40]  I've never used Discover Weekly or Daily Mix, but I mean, I started using a bunch of them for this episode.
[00:51:48]  I was trying to figure it out.
[00:51:50]  But then I realized I have put on like focus music.
[00:51:55]  Like they'll have one that's like, oh, for focusing, and I use that when I'm working or whatever it is.
[00:52:00]  What kind of music is that?
[00:52:01]  It's really like, it's like ambient like study music.
[00:52:04]  So it's just like, you don't, it's like, sometimes it's just white noise.
[00:52:07]  Really?
[00:52:08]  But I haven't been like, oh man, I'm having a barbecue.
[00:52:13]  I need to put on this hot summer barbecue playlist.
[00:52:15]  Like I haven't done that before.
[00:52:17]  But I think they're, I mean, they're obviously, I know, doing research for this episode, like they're extremely popular.
[00:52:23]  Young Johnson, do you listen to Beast Mode at the gym?
[00:52:26]  I'm a Discover Weekly guy.
[00:52:27]  Do you?
[00:52:28]  Yeah.
[00:52:28]  Discover Weekly is actually really good.
[00:52:32]  I have not actually did not use it.
[00:52:33]  I should have used it for this episode.
[00:52:37]  I tried to look at the vibes-based playlist more.
[00:52:39]  But I do hear people be like, yeah, there's a lot of new stuff that I hear from there.
[00:52:43]  That's what I listened to at the gym, and then I find albums I like from it.
[00:52:46]  Yeah, that's what I peer beast mode.
[00:52:49]  And apparently it's for working out, but I just type in any website or app I use that has a type search bar, I type beast mode into all of them, right?
[00:52:59]  So Amazon, Beast Mode, Etsy, Beast Mode, fucking frankly, Grindr, Beast Mode, which I'm allowed to use of the search bar on that.
[00:53:07]  And of course, Spotify, Beast Mode.
[00:53:09]  And let me tell you, some of that shit, if, listen, Spotify, if you're a data engineer out there, please put the True and On podcast into that mix.

=== Spotify's Perfect Song Recommendations (03:04) ===

[00:53:24]  But algorithms.
[00:53:25]  So Eric Drot, who's a music history scholar and kind of like music history theorist, I guess I'd say, he traces this shift in how we consume music to when these platforms stopped advertising themselves as basically like limitless libraries, like floating in the cloud, right?
[00:53:44]  The locker.
[00:53:45]  Anything you want at your fingers.
[00:53:46]  Anything you want.
[00:53:46]  We got everything.
[00:53:48]  Any beast mode, any Beatles.
[00:53:49]  That was all you could do.
[00:53:51]  From beast mode to Beatles.
[00:53:53]  Yeah.
[00:53:54]  But basically, from this kind of like idea of being a library to then suddenly showing off their ability to recommend you the like perfect song that you could ever want.
[00:54:05]  Yeah.
[00:54:05]  And he calls this drive nextness, which I think is really interesting.
[00:54:09]  And I want to kind of come back to that maybe in a little bit.
[00:54:12]  But that the algorithm's like purpose then is to serve us this the next thing, you know, based on whatever information that it's previously collected on us, right?
[00:54:21]  I mean, that's just how that works.
[00:54:23]  And so it's really not about discovering what's new so much as it's about consuming what's next.
[00:54:30]  Yeah, yeah, okay.
[00:54:31]  And, you know, over the years, you know, this has really transformed, I think, you know, thanks, especially thanks to in the past couple years, you know, really big advances in data extraction, machine learning, all of the changes in the platform business models, all that stuff, right?
[00:54:48]  Like, you know, it's transformed from being able to predict that, like, oh, I just need to hear that fucking next.
[00:54:54]  Like, you know, oh, I just, I need, well, what's futures going to do next, you know, or whatever, to basically presenting music as a kind of mood-altering lifestyle drug.
[00:55:06]  Interesting.
[00:55:07]  I don't want to talk about that.
[00:55:08]  Yeah.
[00:55:08]  Would you say a vibe?
[00:55:11]  Yeah, like a vibe shifting.
[00:55:14]  From a genre to a vibe?
[00:55:15]  Like, you called it a nootropic.
[00:55:17]  Yeah.
[00:55:17]  And I actually do think that that's like a, I almost want to say a mootropic.
[00:55:22]  Uh-huh.
[00:55:22]  But I'm not going to, because also that kind of sounds like a cow.
[00:55:24]  I don't think it totally works.
[00:55:26]  Moodropic, yeah.
[00:55:27]  Yeah.
[00:55:27]  But you know where I'm going with it.
[00:55:28]  I got to tell you, the cows I saw in Cuba, speaking of that, some of the craziest looking beasts I've ever seen in my damn life.
[00:55:34]  Those things look like fucking donkeys.
[00:55:35]  But this is like a really radical departure from how we've ever listened or consumed music in the past.
[00:55:43]  I mean, in the past of like human history.
[00:55:45]  Human history.
[00:55:45]  Music has never been kind of really, I mean, individually we've listened to music like, oh, this makes me feel better.
[00:55:51]  This makes me sure.
[00:55:53]  But it hasn't been, I would say like presented to the public from such a functionalist perspective.
[00:56:03]  Yeah.
[00:56:03]  And I think one thing too is the, is, I mean, we'll probably get to this more a little later, is also like going from classifying music in terms of genres to classifying music in terms of vibes or moods is a very big shift.
[00:56:19]  So for me personally, I'm what they called, and this was a stupid motherfucking term, a rockist in the 1990s.

=== Shift to Moods (16:06) ===

[00:56:28]  You know what I'm talking about?
[00:56:29]  Oh, yeah.
[00:56:30]  Yeah, it was a big.
[00:56:31]  I'm a puppet.
[00:56:32]  I'm not making that up.
[00:56:34]  So like, you know, shout out Simon Reynolds.
[00:56:36]  Yeah.
[00:56:36]  And again, most of the rock music that those people liked, I probably do not like, right?
[00:56:41]  But I mostly listen to rock and roll music, right?
[00:56:43]  And I feel like that's how people, I mean, yeah, well, that might, but a little broader than that, but that's most, it's the core of the music I listen to, guitar-based music.
[00:56:54]  But I feel for most of, especially in post-war, well, not even especially, basically since the advent of modern music, right?
[00:57:02]  Is people generally like stayed to one or two genres of music, especially like young music fans.
[00:57:08]  It's like you had somebody who's really into rock or really into heavy metal or really into rap or really into one thing.
[00:57:13]  And now it's more just like, that might be true for how people's perception of themselves is in some way.
[00:57:19]  But really like the listening habits will be oftentimes, I mean, if the data is to be believed, a vibe-based listening pattern.
[00:57:27]  Well, I mean, Spotify really approaches it that way, right?
[00:57:30]  They say, like, this is from a Spotify exec.
[00:57:32]  We believe that it's important to recognize that a single listener is usually many listeners.
[00:57:36]  And a person's preference will vary by the type of music, by their current activity, by time of day, and so on.
[00:57:42]  And I want to highlight those two things.
[00:57:44]  So let's talk about how Spotify really like calculates all this stuff.
[00:57:48]  Because it's pretty interesting.
[00:57:49]  So the first thing it does is it tracks metadata.
[00:57:52]  Love that.
[00:57:53]  Yeah, that's usually, I mean, that's usually, that's pretty like standard, basic, who the artist is, what the artist's name is, what the label's name is, when it was produced.
[00:58:00]  Like, this is usually like label source or artist sourced.
[00:58:05]  It will probably have like genre tags maybe associated with it.
[00:58:10]  But it's just kind of like basic, nothing out of the ordinary.
[00:58:13]  Standard metadata.
[00:58:14]  Okay, fine.
[00:58:15]  Then it does a raw audio analysis.
[00:58:18]  Now, this is interesting.
[00:58:19]  It ingests into Spotify's database, which how Spotify does this exactly and how much they do it and what they're segmenting.
[00:58:28]  This is all proprietary.
[00:58:29]  It's a little hard.
[00:58:30]  It could be completely bullshit.
[00:58:32]  I don't think it's bullshit.
[00:58:32]  I don't think it's completely bullshit, but you know what I mean?
[00:58:35]  It's like, we don't know how it works, essentially.
[00:58:38]  Yeah, but there's some things that people have really good guesses based on using the Spotify API.
[00:58:44]  You can kind of see maybe stuff that it's pulling.
[00:58:46]  So some of the best guesses of what they track, something they call danceability, which they measure through, like on a scale that's algorithmically or ingested, right?
[00:58:57]  That's based on tempo, beat strength, regularity.
[00:59:00]  Then energy, which is like dynamic range, general entropy, valence, which they measure.
[00:59:08]  They have a kind of like the general positiveness of the track.
[00:59:12]  Then they say, you know, a song that has high valence would be like, really happy, really like positive.
[00:59:18]  Probably be on that playlist that's like, get happy.
[00:59:20]  Yeah.
[00:59:21]  And then smooth.
[00:59:22]  No, not that one.
[00:59:24]  And then like low valence would be like, oh, this is sad.
[00:59:27]  Beast mode.
[00:59:28]  This is bright eyes.
[00:59:29]  Yeah, you know, whatever.
[00:59:31]  Okay, that's just one component.
[00:59:32]  Then there's a second algorithm that goes through all of it.
[00:59:36]  It analyzes the temporal structure.
[00:59:38]  It splits the track into different sections that it then defines by different shifts, transitions.
[00:59:45]  It goes all the way down to like the smallest move off the main beat.
[00:59:49]  So if you're trying to a minor chord bridge up here, that's a different beat.
[00:59:53]  Yeah, then we're not done.
[00:59:57]  So Spotify claims that all of these audio features are passed into its model 42-dimensional vector.
[01:00:03]  So it's, yeah, so it's, you know, it's producing 42 different audio features for every track, which is quite a lot.
[01:00:12]  Apparently, they're experimenting with machine learning-based instrumental separation.
[01:00:17]  Yes, I love that sentence.
[01:00:19]  Yeah, so theoretically, they would be able to splice any single track down to isolated instrument parts, like defining single melodies, chord progressions, all of that.
[01:00:29]  It's actually pretty amazing if they're able to do that.
[01:00:33]  I don't know, but what that would enable is like pretty crazy to kind of think about for a second.
[01:00:40]  But like I said, not done.
[01:00:43]  Is then, and this is even, I didn't know they do this, but of course they do this.
[01:00:47]  They then deploy natural language processing models.
[01:00:50]  And so what they do is they scan the text of the lyrics to kind of like get the general meaning of the song or, you know, how the person, how the lyrics are written, you know, highlight any kind of potential buzzwords, like for perhaps the, you've got your Louis Vuitton on.
[01:01:08]  Wait, cheese?
[01:01:09]  No, no, no, Wait, how does it start again?
[01:01:14]  I could have my Gucci on my Gucci.
[01:01:18]  I have got my Louis Vuitton.
[01:01:23]  But she's got a new one.
[01:01:24]  Oh, is it going to be?
[01:01:25]  Mother!
[01:01:26]  Wait.
[01:01:28]  It's not that one.
[01:01:29]  It's not that one.
[01:01:31]  Mother, Mother.
[01:01:33]  I don't remember how it goes.
[01:01:34]  She goes, Mother, and she goes, Man, quit your man spain.
[01:01:37]  I am your mother.
[01:01:38]  I am your mother.
[01:01:39]  You listen to me.
[01:01:40]  You listen to me.
[01:01:41]  Stop all that man's playing.
[01:01:44]  What voice is that?
[01:01:47]  Is she doing?
[01:01:48]  Is she doing?
[01:01:48]  I should talk in a trainer-like fashion.
[01:01:50]  Yeah, please don't.
[01:01:51]  Anyway, so, okay, that makes all sense that it would do that with the lyrics.
[01:01:55]  It makes total sense.
[01:01:55]  But then it uses web crawlers to then go ingest information of like from what people are saying about it elsewhere.
[01:02:02]  Yeah.
[01:02:03]  So it'll identify not just like pitchfork reviews, but like social media posts.
[01:02:08]  So they'll see my fancy.
[01:02:09]  My users, which it also tags to users.
[01:02:11]  Like it's completely, it's all over the place.
[01:02:14]  It's taken in everything.
[01:02:15]  Okay.
[01:02:16]  So it's seeing that, okay, well, people on Facebook or people on Twitter are saying this about the new Olivia Rodrigo.
[01:02:25]  Olivia Rodrigo.
[01:02:26]  Olivia Rodrigo.
[01:02:27]  You know.
[01:02:28]  And then on top of that, it'll scan user-generated playlists, obviously, and make connections between songs that other people are making.
[01:02:36]  And so it takes all of this, ingests it, analyzes it, and it basically spits it back at you to deliver the next Harry Style song.
[01:02:45]  Interesting.
[01:02:47]  This is how Drop puts it.
[01:02:48]  The very qualities of music that people put to work in shaping their everyday lives and regulating their emotional lives are increasingly turned against them.
[01:02:58]  And it's sort of like you can see how all this stuff, you know, I mean, it really is getting, you know, what we like, as it gets collapsed into these algorithms and spit back at us, it's like getting collapsed into who we are and what we are.
[01:03:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:03:13]  So I guess like, fuck, I wish I did listen to some more of these like mood plays.
[01:03:19]  I listened to one called Wanderlust on the train here.
[01:03:22]  You sent me a screenshot of that.
[01:03:23]  Who's on Wanderlust?
[01:03:25]  Mayer?
[01:03:26]  No, I actually, Green Cheese?
[01:03:28]  Look, I'm going to be honest, I don't know any of these people.
[01:03:31]  Okay, read them out to me.
[01:03:33]  See what we got.
[01:03:34]  Let's see.
[01:03:34]  Where's Maselli?
[01:03:35]  Oh, it's charging over there.
[01:03:37]  It says, for when you decide societal constructs just aren't the vibe anymore.
[01:03:42]  Can you say that again louder?
[01:03:44]  I just like the way you say it.
[01:03:45]  Are you recording it on your phone?
[01:03:46]  No.
[01:03:47]  I'm looking at mine.
[01:03:48]  It's for when you decide societal constructs just aren't the vibe anymore.
[01:03:53]  All right.
[01:03:54]  Which is exactly what I was in the mood for on the train.
[01:03:57]  Oh, there's Phoebe Bridgers.
[01:03:59]  Okay.
[01:03:59]  Taylor Swift.
[01:04:01]  Something called Spacey Jane.
[01:04:03]  Baird.
[01:04:05]  Don't know what that is.
[01:04:06]  No.
[01:04:07]  Angel Olson.
[01:04:08]  Don't know what that is.
[01:04:09]  Oh, she's the third Olsen.
[01:04:11]  Lord.
[01:04:12]  Harry Styles.
[01:04:13]  There's always a Harry Styles.
[01:04:14]  Is that really when you decide societal constructs?
[01:04:17]  I guess he wears those little funky jumpers.
[01:04:19]  Which are usually by Gucci, funny enough.
[01:04:21]  So this is all to say that Spotify is suddenly serving up predictive playlists, less in genre form, as you pointed out, and now increasingly in mood.
[01:04:31]  Yeah, in schmood form.
[01:04:33]  Yeah.
[01:04:34]  I got more like Bo Diddley.
[01:04:36]  And the reason this is, is, you know, like Spotify users, look, you're paying a flat fee, right?
[01:04:41]  Yeah.
[01:04:41]  You want to have music all the time.
[01:04:43]  100% of the time, yeah.
[01:04:44]  And that means that a lot more specific data is generated about when and why people play certain types of music, right?
[01:04:53]  So Spotify generates different playlists based on different activities, different moods you might have.
[01:04:59]  You know, these got classic ones, breakup music, cleaning music.
[01:05:02]  Like I said, music for focusing, music for meditation, music for going to sleep.
[01:05:07]  That's a big one.
[01:05:08]  Music for, you know, you get pumped, you need to get pumped up.
[01:05:11]  I got a big presentation.
[01:05:12]  I just, oh, I got to get pumped up.
[01:05:14]  So I got to go in fucking beast mode.
[01:05:17]  Yeah, so on and so forth.
[01:05:18]  You get the idea.
[01:05:19]  But the, so really, what these predictive algorithms are then doing is, you know, they're attempting to produce a desire that you can basically effectively recognize as your own.
[01:05:28]  Yeah, yeah, okay.
[01:05:29]  Right?
[01:05:30]  And if your taste can be predicted, then of course, yes, it can be controlled.
[01:05:33]  But more importantly, it can continually be produced and reproduced, which, you know, in a, you know, consumptive capitalist economy is quite valuable.
[01:05:44]  Very valuable information.
[01:05:46]  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, and, and, you know, to, to sort of circle back also to the argument about, or not argument, but like to the point of genre versus vibe, right?
[01:05:54]  I think that's really important is that like a lot of the, a lot of the playlists that I saw in the past few days were like romantic, sad, things like this.
[01:06:04]  And they weren't, they weren't at all connected whatsoever by genre of music.
[01:06:08]  It was all sort of based on those like data sets that you're talking about there, which I think is just totally wild.
[01:06:13]  Cause I got to be real with you.
[01:06:15]  I don't really ever want to listen to like a whole set.
[01:06:17]  I mean, I guess you could listen to like, I mean, some of Leonard Cohen's albums are kind of sad, but like it's like, you don't really want to listen to just like 50 sad songs in a row, but it's, it's essentially like sort of putting you into that mode.
[01:06:31]  And, you know, a lot of these are essentially chosen by, you know, like what you're saying here, they're chosen by AI.
[01:06:36]  Like a lot of these playlists are not curated by human beings.
[01:06:39]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:06:39]  They're predictive.
[01:06:40]  They're based on your listening behavior, right?
[01:06:42]  Like, I mean, I think that for Spotify, the way that they imagine this is, you know, the ideal Spotify user is one who has headphones in all day.
[01:06:52]  You know, you wake up, you put headphones in, and then you go about your day.
[01:06:56]  And what you listen to, you know, like, it's for like a in a quasi-therapeutic way, right?
[01:07:03]  I'm feeling this, so I'm listening to this.
[01:07:05]  Now I'm going to go for a jog.
[01:07:06]  I'm going to listen to this.
[01:07:07]  Yeah.
[01:07:08]  So, you know, it's, it's to modulate your feelings and provide like energy boosts.
[01:07:12]  Yeah.
[01:07:12]  Like I said, it's a really like functionalist way of kind of looking at music and its purpose.
[01:07:17]  And so the idea is that, I mean, imagine if it's just, you know, it's a constant soundtrack for your life and your life is a movie and you're the star.
[01:07:29]  And just mid-period Bo Diddley is the only songs that are played over and over.
[01:07:34]  And I guess that kind of would be the soundtrack.
[01:07:36]  But you can see how in this world, right, like musicians themselves then are pretty insignificant.
[01:07:41]  You know, at the very least, like interchangeable.
[01:07:44]  Yeah, I think that the way that these, that Spotify really kind of wants itself to be used is they actually don't want you to like listen particularly too much to any given artist or whatever.
[01:07:54]  They really just want you to sort of get into like the playlist mode.
[01:07:57]  And eventually what they're going to do, which is like this discovery mode, which makes it more like TikTok, and just kind of like constantly have music on in the background as just like something that like is like this pleasant or maybe like mood altering thing that you listen to and essentially turning everybody's headphones or their living room into like really a coffee shop.
[01:08:18]  Right.
[01:08:19]  And like I think it's it's it's really that that's like their ideal listener in many ways as well.
[01:08:24]  Somebody who just like has music on in this sort of like endless, endless thing that Spotify does the work on, I guess, where like just serving you new artists.
[01:08:35]  But like they don't really want you to stop and like see what any of that is.
[01:08:38]  And the thing is, and that's on one hand, but also the way that Spotify is set up has actually changed the form of music in a lot of ways too.
[01:08:49]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:08:50]  So like we were saying before, like, you know, the 78 comes out.
[01:08:55]  Songs are usually about three minutes in that format, right?
[01:08:59]  Three minutes or less.
[01:09:00]  And that kind of defines how long like a good single is, like a perfect single is.
[01:09:05]  When the album comes into its own and into the early years, you know, CDs and MP3s, the single actually inched upwards in length, right?
[01:09:13]  Getting up to like, I think the average length was like over four minutes, maybe even five minutes at a certain point.
[01:09:17]  You know, there's radio edits and stuff too that make them shorter.
[01:09:20]  Now, in the past 10 years alone, the average like single length has shaved about 40 seconds off of its stuff.
[01:09:27]  And talking to people in the music biz, I was talking to a guy from a band who is who is one of these bands that maybe made it big on streaming services, Surf Curse.
[01:09:36]  He's telling me that a lot of bands actually change the way their songs are written in the first place, right?
[01:09:43]  So instead of going from like the verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, whatever structure, it'll be like chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus, the song's over.
[01:09:54]  Because the way that you get paid on Spotify, or what counts as a listen on Spotify, right, is 30 seconds of listening to a song.
[01:10:01]  So there is actually, if your goal is to really make it big on Spotify, which is really like the make it big in recorded music, there is actually no reason for you to write a longer song because you get paid the same amount for a 35 second song as you would for a 10 minute song.
[01:10:21]  It's just based on listens to begin with.
[01:10:23]  So really like Spotify and Spotify especially has actually completely changed the way that songs not only are listened to, but the way that songs are made.
[01:10:33]  And another thing too is, you know, speaking of Surf Curse, they got big.
[01:10:36]  King Kong and BBQ Show, that's another example.
[01:10:39]  These bands got big essentially from like, in large part, to becoming really big hits on TikTok, right?
[01:10:46]  And so what labels, and this is mostly a major label thing, but also like sort of aspiring young indie bands, is like they will kind of like write songs that they know are going to be like hits on TikTok.
[01:10:56]  And I think this is especially true for like big pop stars, because if you're a major label, that's what you want.
[01:11:01]  You want people like mouthing like, mother, or whatever on TikTok.
[01:11:07]  And that like has significantly changed the way like tempos are, which is funny because also a lot of songs that are big on TikTok are just like sped up versions of like pop songs.
[01:11:19]  It's really, it's really sort of astounding how it's like changed both the way that we ingest music and the way that a lot of bands actually make music themselves.
[01:11:27]  I mean, think about it like this, right?
[01:11:28]  Back in the day, you're going to put out an album.
[01:11:30]  You know, you might spend like two, three years working on that motherfucker.
[01:11:33]  You know, I mean, three years is a little on the long side.
[01:11:35]  But bands didn't put out that.
[01:11:37]  You know, it's like the Rolling Stones.
[01:11:38]  Well, not at first, but that's actually a really bad example.
[01:11:41]  But like most bands wouldn't put out like a new album necessarily every year, you know?
[01:11:46]  Or maybe they would put out a new one every year, but like every year and a half, every two years.
[01:11:50]  Now, if you really want to like stay relevant in sort of the age of streaming and actually have any chance of making money off of what you do, you actually have to transform yourself into a content creator.
[01:12:03]  Right.
[01:12:03]  And that is actually a huge, huge shift just in the way that like musicians would interact with their own art or would or would interact with their audience from the ground up.
[01:12:17]  I mean, it's a totally huge sea change, right?
[01:12:20]  Because if you actually, and this is the thing, is like, if you want to make it big on Spotify, you don't want to put out an album every two years and like have a couple of singles off it, like people have been doing for like 80 years or whatever.
[01:12:31]  What you want to be doing really is putting out like a song every month.

=== Familiar Ground, New Choices (14:43) ===

[01:12:35]  Yeah.
[01:12:35]  I mean, I think in general, obviously, like platforms mediating the way that we consume, if we want to use that word, art, if, you know, or music, like it changes the entire, not just like the relationship, but like the format, like you're saying.
[01:12:52]  And platforms have, in that mediation role, I mean, they have the tendency, they just flatten everything into content.
[01:12:58]  Yes.
[01:12:58]  Yeah.
[01:12:58]  And we're not listeners anymore.
[01:13:01]  We're users.
[01:13:02]  Yeah.
[01:13:02]  Right.
[01:13:02]  Because we're using the platform and the platform serves us content, which is music.
[01:13:06]  But that means that then it takes these different forms than what we're used to kind of experiencing in the past.
[01:13:14]  Like it's hard to think of how an artist who, like a musician who makes music that demands kind of active listening, right?
[01:13:24]  Like how would something like that survive on a streaming platform?
[01:13:28]  It couldn't because literally every incentive is working against it.
[01:13:34]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:13:35]  How you find it, how you listen to it, how you discover it.
[01:13:40]  I mean, it's all how they get paid for it.
[01:13:42]  Like all of those incentives are working against any other form of music other than exactly what you're describing.
[01:13:48]  Churning, churning, churning.
[01:13:49]  And like, and, you know, a little content creation tip out there for people, right?
[01:13:54]  Like, if you're getting, like, you're doing like a podcast or YouTube videos and now I guess songs too, really the thing that like is the key to being successful is consistency, right?
[01:14:04]  Like you see people like start podcasts and like, oh, how come no one listens to whatever?
[01:14:08]  It's because you put out an episode every three months, or maybe it's bad or whatever.
[01:14:11]  But like, you know, it's really like you want to just be as consistent as possible.
[01:14:15]  But with the nature of music and writing songs and stuff like that, I mean, depending, you know, some people do have like a workflow or like a style of like the way they put out music has been like that.
[01:14:27]  But for the majority of musicians, it's actually not like that.
[01:14:30]  You know what I mean?
[01:14:31]  Like you spent a long time on one thing, you know, creating, it's like, you know, you don't expect a painter to put out a fucking painting every month.
[01:14:39]  But that's what's required to sort of make this transition from becoming like an artist to becoming really a content creator.
[01:14:46]  And like that, in my conversations with people in the past couple of days, like that's really what they say.
[01:14:51]  I mean, most people I know are essentially in our age group, right?
[01:14:54]  And I think that like the three of us probably interact with music and sort of online platforms probably differently than like a 20 year old, you know?
[01:15:02]  And the same way with a lot of musicians I know, they're sort of like, they're like, oh, I don't know if I can do like a make, I'm not going to make a TikTok or anything like that.
[01:15:10]  But if you are like a aspiring young musician of really any genre, you essentially have to make yourself a brand.
[01:15:18]  And I mean like that in the traditional way of like an online brand, like have like this really big Instagram presence, a TikTok presence.
[01:15:25]  And yes, consistently put out new music or even just like new verses every couple weeks, every few months, every so often, just to like be putting out this product so that people don't forget about you.
[01:15:36]  Because the way that this works is people no longer have your album on their shelf.
[01:15:40]  You know what I mean?
[01:15:41]  We're usually like, if they're listening, I mean, the playlist has completely disassembled the album form.
[01:15:47]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[01:15:49]  Right?
[01:15:49]  Like, I mean, there's studies on this too.
[01:15:51]  Like, they'll say that, you know, the playlist listening is actually really bad for artists because the way that people listen to this stuff is just, they'll be like, oh, I don't know what that was, but next, next, next, next.
[01:16:02]  And then they'll forget who it was or they'll heart the song, but they won't actually then make the next leap to then listening to the artist and maybe building a connection with that specific band or that specific musician.
[01:16:15]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:16:15]  And it just becomes kind of service for, again, like I was saying, the difference between new and next.
[01:16:20]  Yeah.
[01:16:21]  And this is built into the logic of the predictive algorithm, right?
[01:16:25]  Like it can only serve you content based on what it's ingested from the past.
[01:16:33]  And so what's next can only be a refined version of what came previously.
[01:16:39]  Like everyone always complains, like everything sounds the same.
[01:16:41]  Everything like is the same.
[01:16:43]  There's no new, there's no new.
[01:16:44]  And it's like, well, yeah, because everything is operating according to this logic.
[01:16:49]  Of course, everything is a refined moment from the past.
[01:16:51]  Of course, everything feels recursive and nostalgic.
[01:16:54]  Yeah.
[01:16:54]  Because everything is being built only off of like down to the fucking, like, and it's like 42 different ways that these songs are getting broken out into machine learning, like down into each note of that.
[01:17:09]  Yeah.
[01:17:09]  It's getting like constantly refined, refined, and refined just to serve it all back to you.
[01:17:14]  Well, that's the other thing, too, is like this actually ends up making new musicians write songs that are similar to other songs that they think they might get placed in a playlist with in the hopes of essentially getting placed in more playlists.
[01:17:27]  Listen, the Spotify playlist thing is fucking wild to begin with because they have these official playlists, right?
[01:17:34]  That are like, that are set up by actual human beings, so they say, at Spotify.
[01:17:39]  Beast mode.
[01:17:40]  Actually, I don't know what beast mode is.
[01:17:41]  Beast mode might be AI.
[01:17:43]  They have like curated ones and whatever, but some of them, yeah.
[01:17:46]  But the thing is, like, that is how, I keep saying that the thing is, but this is true.
[01:17:50]  The thing is, like, if you want to make it as a musician now and sell a lot, that is what you need to get onto.
[01:17:56]  And it's crazy.
[01:17:57]  I've been reading yesterday.
[01:17:59]  I got to tell you, I worked in this motherfucker from like dawn till very late at night last night.
[01:18:04]  And I learned some horrible things about being an aspiring young musician.
[01:18:08]  Now, now, instead of like playing for some fucking A ⁇ R rep at the, you know, some horrible club in West Holly, whatever, now you just have to constantly hire these different services that try to put you on playlists at Spotify.
[01:18:20]  Yeah.
[01:18:20]  It's fucking insane because The difference between getting on a playlist at Spotify and then just having your album out there is night and day.
[01:18:30]  You're making nothing from just having your album out there unless you have a fan base.
[01:18:33]  But if you get on one of these playlists, even as a minor artist, even as just some solo pianist, which is a really crazy factor because especially with coffeehouse stuff, a lot of like jazz, like sort of smooth jazz and classical stuff has really gone through the roof because of this.
[01:18:47]  But if you get put on one of these playlists, that will make your career.
[01:18:51]  So it's crazy that there are these nerds in Sweden essentially deciding what musicians really get paid a lot because they just put them on these playlists that are then, and especially like these are like coffee, like meant to be listened to in coffee shops by like the baristas or whatever for playing in the shops.
[01:19:07]  And like that will completely change these artists' careers.
[01:19:10]  And so that is like what everybody is angling towards.
[01:19:13]  And there's all these different strategies on how to make your song good for these playlists on how best to approach playlists.
[01:19:21]  There's also influencers that Spotify has that has their own playlists and stuff like that and approaching them.
[01:19:27]  I mean, it really is boggling how different it is than like, you know, even 15, 20 years ago.
[01:19:34]  I mean, I want to like, let's talk about the flip side though, because it's not as if like people are getting force-fed this technology, right?
[01:19:42]  Like, it's sort of the same thing with The Walkman.
[01:19:46]  They designed it for two headphone jacks, but then people bought the Walkman and they weren't using the second headphone jack.
[01:19:51]  They just want to use it for themselves.
[01:19:52]  Like, so the other flip side of this is like people really like listening to music like this.
[01:19:57]  Yeah.
[01:19:57]  Right.
[01:19:58]  And so, I mean, Spotify is, you know, engineering their platform in response to user, I mean, they're figuring out how to augment and shape just as, you know, user behavior, just as much as users are interacting with the platform.
[01:20:13]  It's both sides, right?
[01:20:14]  And I think that's what's really interesting because it's not as if it's being force-fed or anything.
[01:20:21]  Yeah, I mean, I use Spotify.
[01:20:24]  Yeah, of course.
[01:20:25]  I mean, me too.
[01:20:25]  But I'm just saying, like, you know, there's, I think that kind of trying to think about why that is is maybe like interesting.
[01:20:35]  You know, like, I don't know.
[01:20:38]  Like, I think that there's, I was thinking about this and I was like, because I find, you know, these predictive algorithms are everywhere.
[01:20:45]  Yeah.
[01:20:45]  You know what I mean?
[01:20:46]  They shape the playlists or you're on Pinterest or you're looking at everything that you like, you know, you're looking to buy something on the internet.
[01:20:53]  It's all based, it's all predictively based, right?
[01:20:57]  And I was thinking about like why we might like enjoy that so much.
[01:21:03]  And I was thinking like, like, I don't know.
[01:21:07]  I think that maybe they present, you know, like, cause ultimately like what these things do, right, is they like present us with a version of ourselves to consume, right?
[01:21:15]  Like you see these playlists, it's for me, and you see, yeah, like, oh, that is for me.
[01:21:20]  Like, you know, there's a way in which you can kind of maybe like you get to become a deeper version of yourself by knowing exactly what the network expects you to be, which is like a really kind of like, you know, this morning, like, I'm feeling the good vibes this morning.
[01:21:37]  I need to go to the coffee shop this morning.
[01:21:39]  Like, maybe I do have wanderlust this morning or, you know, whatever it is.
[01:21:43]  And you get, and on the flip side of that, you get a little bit of pride in the ways that you like exceed the expectation because you're like, Steve, it's fine-five.
[01:21:51]  I don't like that song.
[01:21:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:21:53]  I don't like Harry Styles.
[01:21:54]  Why are you putting that there?
[01:21:55]  Like, I don't want to listen to that.
[01:21:56]  See, like, the machine doesn't get me.
[01:21:58]  Yeah.
[01:21:59]  But the thing is, the machine doesn't give a shit because positive feedback is the same thing as negative feedback, right?
[01:22:05]  It's just feedback to the algorithm.
[01:22:07]  Yeah.
[01:22:07]  It ingests it the same way.
[01:22:09]  And then it's just all information that it reproduces, you know, and continues to produce and spit back to figure out a more exacting version of you.
[01:22:18]  And I think that like you say all this shit and you're like, fuck, this is gross.
[01:22:22]  Yeah, it's nasty.
[01:22:23]  It's nasty, right?
[01:22:24]  And I'm like, saying it out loud, it's like, it feels like, what did you say the other day on the podcast, the insides of a grape?
[01:22:30]  Yeah.
[01:22:31]  Why do you guys think that's so weird?
[01:22:33]  You said the stomach of a grape.
[01:22:34]  The stomach is a grape.
[01:22:35]  Don't you guys think of a grape as like the skin and then it's the stomach of a guy?
[01:22:41]  You don't think that?
[01:22:42]  No.
[01:22:42]  Okay, that's how I think of grapes.
[01:22:44]  That's kind of how I think of all.
[01:22:45]  But I mean, it's, no, but like that sounds like horrifying to me.
[01:22:47]  Yeah, okay.
[01:22:48]  Well, it's not.
[01:22:49]  But like saying this stuff out loud about the algorithm, like saying all that, it does feel horrifying.
[01:22:52]  Yeah.
[01:22:53]  You know what I mean?
[01:22:54]  And like, I want to push back on that.
[01:22:56]  But, you know, at the same time, like, they're really, really popular.
[01:23:00]  And I think it's like kind of worth thinking through why, you know?
[01:23:05]  I mean, I think to me, this has become apparent, you know, really, really looking at this stuff, is that like Spotify is doing the same thing to people that the rest of the internet is, essentially, right?
[01:23:19]  Like it's a lot of it, it's providing like a mirror for you to look back and like gaze at your own reflection, either despise it or love it or whatever, but like to look at yourself in.
[01:23:28]  And we were, we were, young Thompson and I were talking like, I think like a month ago, walking after recording about how like the internet really like, in a lot of people, it induces this like, this like desire for just like, like there's something else out there, like there's something else out there, like this sort of like endless, I mean, people call this endless, it's like, it's not like the endless scroll or whatever.
[01:23:51]  It's just like this like, this desire for something that you can't quite get that's gonna be out there that you're gonna find, that you're gonna find, that you're gonna find.
[01:23:58]  And like to me, I think that's really like, I am just speaking personally, I get paralyzed by too many choices, right?
[01:24:06]  When I first downloaded Spotify, I was 2014.
[01:24:09]  I remember I was like, I had an iPhone and it was in, I lived in this like halfway house and I didn't have anything to do and I just listened to music.
[01:24:20]  And it was just like, I was like, oh my God, there's all these albums that I could like never afford because like old albums or whatever.
[01:24:26]  Like now they're all just here at my fingertips.
[01:24:28]  And I remember like really eventually just listening to the same three albums over and over and over and over and over again because I got so freaked out by the fucking choices.
[01:24:35]  It's the same as like how people like spend like an hour trying to find, and I'm guilty of this, trying to find what movie to watch on one of the streaming services.
[01:24:43]  I mean, in that case, it's usually because most of them are really fucking bad, like Netflix-made movies or whatever.
[01:24:48]  But like, it's this like, this terror from these choices that you're given, right?
[01:24:53]  And I, again, maybe this is me being like, well, I'm in my 30s or whatever, but like, I get like not frightened, but just like struck by all these choices right there.
[01:25:03]  And there's too many things to be into.
[01:25:05]  For me, like, my records that I have, I have a lot of records, right?
[01:25:07]  But like for most of my life, like, that's the music I could listen to.
[01:25:11]  And like, I knew all that really well.
[01:25:13]  And I'm somebody who really like functions.
[01:25:15]  I love being on familiar ground, right?
[01:25:18]  And I love like, I love annexing some territory into that familiar ground.
[01:25:22]  But like, I love having that familiar ground.
[01:25:24]  And for me, like, Spotify makes is this feeling of weightlessness that like I think is really in taken, especially with the weightlessness that like is everywhere on the internet and on the way that like we function, like, you know, interacting with apps and all that kind of shit.
[01:25:40]  It contributes to that sort of like schizophrenia that everybody feels.
[01:25:43]  Yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying about the kind of like oppressive nature of endless choice is like totally true.
[01:25:51]  I mean, I would take it even a step further and like, I mean, my suspicion is that predictive algorithms basically, they offer a kind of coping strategy for dealing with the like mandatory requirement of constructing and refining and perfecting an identity online, especially.
[01:26:13]  Like why it's so much easier, just outsource it to the machine and see what it spits back at you.
[01:26:18]  You know what I mean?
[01:26:19]  Like, I think that there's some, you know, that might feel nicer, you know, like or easier, you know, than dealing with the anxiety that comes with, like what you're saying, that like ambivalence of having to be both like general and particular, which is like our condition or whatever.
[01:26:38]  But like, you know, the algorithm like allows a way for us to kind of belong without being subsumed by so much, so much of that.
[01:26:48]  Like you can be specific and refined while you don't have to do the work.
[01:26:52]  Like it kind of does it for you.
[01:26:54]  And I think there's like maybe a little bit of a like cruel relief then with it for some people.
[01:27:01]  And like what I would say is that like it's just momentary, right?
[01:27:06]  Because at the end of the day, it just all goes straight back into the circuit and the constant, constant movement of all this shit making us feel dizzy, and it goes straight back down into the mouth of the machine.

=== Symphony Tickets Selling Younger (04:10) ===

[01:27:19]  So my conclusion after coming into contact with all this information, right, is that I don't want to sound like Jocko Willink.
[01:27:39]  I actually don't know what that guy says, but you know, that kind of guy, you guys know what I'm talking about?
[01:27:43]  Like a podcast guy, like who's like in his 50s?
[01:27:47]  I think like a lot of things should be significantly more difficult.
[01:27:52]  And I don't mean that like, I'm not even saying that to be like a little rascal or whatever, but like, I think that there is like, I think there is a certain, and this is by no means an original thought, but I think there's a certain like romance of discovery that's taken away by like, you know, having everything so immediately available to you.
[01:28:13]  And I say this again, it's like a like a guy who sounds like a Gen X guy, but like, I like being a snob.
[01:28:19]  You know what I mean?
[01:28:20]  Like, I like, I like finding like a real fucking rare record in a record store and then like, you know, lording it over my equally socially maladjusted friends by saying that I got it.
[01:28:33]  And now it's, you know, it's, it's, this is truly the death of the hipster, which, by the way, I never was.
[01:28:38]  It was always punk.
[01:28:40]  But there's just.
[01:28:41]  But now everyone's a hipster.
[01:28:42]  It's true.
[01:28:43]  It doesn't matter.
[01:28:44]  The internet has also made everyone.
[01:28:46]  Like that was the kind of first version, I'd say, like an early, you know, before the later updates or whatever of someone figuring out how they could kind of like profit a little bit or find profit streams off of being a kind of like unique whatever.
[01:29:08]  And that's now that's just everyone.
[01:29:10]  That's every, you know, that's everyone everywhere.
[01:29:12]  Yeah.
[01:29:12]  And there's, I mean, there's a lot that we haven't even been able to fucking cover in this episode just because the modern music is such a big motherfucking subject, like selling out and all that kind of stuff.
[01:29:22]  But we, we, there's just, yeah, it's, it's a grim time to be a rock and roller, I think.
[01:29:29]  But what I'm saying here is you just got to start listening to worse music.
[01:29:33]  This is like.
[01:29:34]  You know, classical is the fastest growing genre of music?
[01:29:38]  You think that's interesting that worst music triggered that?
[01:29:43]  No, you said rock and roll.
[01:29:44]  Are you not a good time for it?
[01:29:45]  I see what you're saying.
[01:29:45]  Yeah, No, no, no.
[01:29:47]  You were saying that.
[01:29:48]  Why do you think that is?
[01:29:49]  I have no idea, but I think it's interesting.
[01:29:51]  I think probably streaming has something to do with it.
[01:29:53]  And I think that maybe people are listening to a lot of music while they're doing other activities.
[01:29:59]  Yeah.
[01:30:00]  But even like, I saw something that said that like even symphony tickets are selling at like average ages that are like lower than in the past, which is really interesting.
[01:30:09]  I mean, I'm always going to the symphony with my 15, two-year-olds that I have.
[01:30:14]  Well, I have control over.
[01:30:15]  No, but then they said I was reading the article and it was like, yes, the average age for a single ticket holder is now 42.
[01:30:21]  Okay, so yeah, all right.
[01:30:22]  But that being said, a lot, yeah, maybe, yeah, There you go.
[01:30:28]  But yeah, I, I, I, I don't know.
[01:30:33]  I think that, yeah, talking about how these platforms and especially how these algorithms are increasingly changing the form of what we consume and how we consume it is a fucking endless topic that I could spend the rest of my life focusing on and thinking about.
[01:30:51]  Yeah.
[01:30:52]  Yeah.
[01:30:53]  Well, instead, we should just end the episode.
[01:30:55]  I'm Liz.
[01:30:55]  I'm Brace.
[01:30:56]  And I want to thank everybody that we talked to in preparation for this episode, too.
[01:31:00]  Absolutely.
[01:31:01]  Thank you.
[01:31:01]  Yeah.
[01:31:01]  Jeff Rickley from Thursday, Noah Cole from Surf Curse, a bunch of other bands, Color Green, one of my favorite bands.
[01:31:07]  Jess Williamson from her, I guess, titular name band, but also from Plains, Zola Jesus, John Dwyer from the OCs, and a few other people who shall remain anonymous, but all of them, you know, buy their records, go see them live, all that kind of stuff.
[01:31:25]  But with that being said, my name is Liz.

=== Grammy Award-Winning Artists (00:45) ===

[01:31:29]  My name is Brace.
[01:31:31]  And of course, we have Grammy Award-winning, well, Street Grammys.
[01:31:36]  Street Grammy Award-winning recording artist Young Chomsky, his album, or just 12-inch 45 on Born Losers Records is fully sold out, so you cannot buy it.
[01:31:47]  But we did put it out, and it did fucking sell out.
[01:31:49]  Young Chomsky in the podcast.
[01:31:52]  It's called Tronon.
[01:31:53]  We'll see you next time.
[01:31:55]  Bye-bye.
[01:32:14]  Come out.