• Home
  • About
    • diacritical
    • Douglas McLennan
    • Contact
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

diacritical

Douglas McLennan's blog

When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem

May 6, 2024 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

On a panel at SXSW recently, John Dworkin, a VP at Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, told the story of how at one point last summer, a Taylor Swift song placed at No. 7 on the Billboard charts. At No. 6 was “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies,” the sound of a vacuum cleaner that parents can play on a loop to soothe babies and help them sleep. He used the example to illustrate how just measuring raw consumption is a flawed way to determine popularity, let alone music.

So what? Popularity was never a particularly good way of sorting out quality. But at least in the old days, buying things — records, books, tickets — when it cost real money to make a choice, demonstrated consumer investment directly to an artist or creator. In the streaming era — movies, music, social media — “content” is bundled together to deliver access to everything (or at least a representation of everything), meaning you don’t have to “choose” artists to support, or for that matter make practically any effort to be entertained by any particular artist or genre; it’s all part of the stream, disposable and endless.

This collective consumption model has weakened attachments between artists and their fans and arguably dampened interest in music generally. But where it really sucks is that compensation in the streaming era is tied to this consumption paradigm. When you get paid by how many times your work is played and the marketplace is flooded with fake, synthetic or utilitarian vacuum tracks algorithmically optimized to gain plays, your ability to be found and heard – and thereby paid — is diminished.

Deezer, the French music streaming company, has an idea to increase payouts to musicians on its service. Recognizing that not all listens are equal, Deezer will now pay a higher per-stream rate for tracks that listeners choose themselves, with a lower rate for music played as part of an algorithmic stream. Additionally, artists won’t earn royalties until their music has generated more than 1000 plays.  That cuts out miniscule payments of a few cents or a few dollars to hundreds of thousands of creators that can be redistributed to artists who have cleared a minimally viable threshold. While this doesn’t necessarily address the vacuum track issue, it’s the latest attempt to break the notion that all consumption is equal.

That idea has been the internet’s default value proposition, in which anything being created or shared is generically “content,” devoid of value until someone pays attention to it. “Content” is a Silicon Valley weasel word that suggests that nothing has any intrinsic worth or quality — every digital byte is equal and interchangeable — until it draws attention as measured and defined by popularity algorithms. Those algorithms are based on attention scores which don’t measure the quality or impact of engagement, but merely the volume of responses.

Deezer says its new system is “artist-centric,” rewarding artists that are building relationships with their fans, as opposed to the old system which is “user-centric” and simply measuring consumption and the ability to be found.

That old admonition “you are what you measure” doesn’t just apply to budgets and school testing but also to social media posts, news consumption and anything where attracting attention is the goal instead of the byproduct of some intrinsic quality. Deezer’s shift is an attempt at redefining value, pushing back against traditional popularity metrics conflating consumption with appreciation. If consumption were just one choice over another on a level playing field, the model would still be problematic. But in the age of algorithmic curation, attention metrics increasingly promote and reward the wrong value.

Share:

  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Related

Filed Under: arts & tech

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

Subscribe to Diacritical by Email

Receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,851 other subscribers
Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

Archives

Recent Comments

  • David E. Myers on How Should we Measure Art?: “A sophisticated approach to “measuring” incorporates all of the above, with clear delineation of how each plays a part if…” Nov 3, 16:20
  • Tom Corddry on How Should we Measure Art?: “Reading this brought to mind John Cage’s delineation of different ways to experience a Beethoven symphony–live in concert, on a…” Nov 3, 01:58
  • Abdul Rehman on A Framework for Thinking about Disruption of the Arts by AI: “This article brilliantly explores how AI is set to revolutionize everything, much like the digital revolution did. AI tools can…” Jun 8, 03:49
  • Richard Voorhaar on Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part): “I think we’ve lost several generations. My parents generation was the last that really supported, and knre something about classical…” May 15, 12:08
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Language, yes; really characterization. Investments and margins don’t become subsidies and taxes whether or not markets “are working” – I’m…” Mar 8, 07:13
  • Douglas McLennan on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “So what you’re arguing is language? – that investments aren’t subsidies and margins aren’t taxes? Sure, when markets are working.…” Mar 7, 21:42
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Doug: You can, if you like, buy a jailbroken Android, install GrapheneOS, and sideload apps from the open-source ecosystem at…” Mar 7, 16:17
  • Douglas McLennan on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Franklin: Thanks for the response, But a few points: My Chinese solar panel example was to make the point that…” Mar 7, 12:46
  • Steven Lavine on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Terrific essay, with no prospect to a different future” Mar 7, 09:53
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “The economics of this essay are incoherent. The CCP was creating yuan ex nihilo and flooding it into domestically produced…” Mar 7, 08:49

Top Posts

  • Too Many Artists Or Not Enough Value?
  • A Framework for Thinking about Disruption of the Arts by AI
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part)

Recent Posts

  • Creativity Versus Skills January 12, 2025
  • How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art January 7, 2025
  • How Should we Measure Art? November 3, 2024
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part) May 13, 2024
  • When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem May 6, 2024
May 2024
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Apr   Nov »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Creativity Versus Skills
  • How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art
  • How Should we Measure Art?
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part)
  • When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in