{"id":2828,"date":"2024-05-06T13:13:41","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T20:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=2828"},"modified":"2024-05-06T13:13:45","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T20:13:45","slug":"when-vacuum-cleaner-for-babies-beat-taylor-swift-fixing-the-music-streaming-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2024\/05\/when-vacuum-cleaner-for-babies-beat-taylor-swift-fixing-the-music-streaming-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"When &#8220;Vacuum Cleaner for Babies&#8221; Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/download.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"416\" height=\"121\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/download.png?resize=416%2C121&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2829\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/download.png?w=416&amp;ssl=1 416w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/download.png?resize=300%2C87&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 416px) 100vw, 416px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>On a panel at SXSW recently, John Dworkin, a VP at Universal Music Group, the world&#8217;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 &#8220;Vacuum Cleaner for Babies,&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what? Popularity was never a particularly good way of sorting out quality. But at least in the old days, buying things &#8212; records, books, tickets &#8212; when it cost real money to make a choice, demonstrated consumer investment directly to an artist or creator. In the streaming era &#8212; movies, music, social media &#8212; &#8220;content&#8221; is bundled together to deliver access to everything (or at least a representation of everything), meaning you don&#8217;t have to &#8220;choose&#8221; artists to support, or for that matter make practically any effort to be entertained by any particular artist or genre; it&#8217;s all part of the stream, disposable and endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 \u2013 and thereby paid &#8212; is diminished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019t earn royalties until their music has generated more than 1000 plays. \u00a0That 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\u2019t necessarily address the vacuum track issue, it\u2019s the latest attempt to break the notion that all consumption is equal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That idea has been the internet\u2019s default value proposition, in which anything being created or shared is generically &#8220;content,&#8221; devoid of value until someone pays attention to it. &#8220;Content&#8221; is a Silicon Valley weasel word that suggests that nothing has any intrinsic worth or quality &#8212; every digital byte is equal and interchangeable &#8212; until it draws attention as measured and defined by popularity algorithms. Those algorithms are based on attention scores which don&#8217;t measure the quality or impact of engagement, but merely the volume of responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Deezer says its new system is \u201cartist-centric,\u201d rewarding artists that are building relationships with their fans, as opposed to the old system which is \u201cuser-centric\u201d and simply measuring consumption and the ability to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That old admonition \u201cyou are what you measure\u201d doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Content&#8221; is a Silicon Valley weasel word that suggests that nothing has any intrinsic worth or quality &#8212; every digital byte is equal and interchangeable &#8212; until it draws attention as measured and defined by popularity algorithms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-tech","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/og-deezer-logo.png?fit=240%2C240&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-JC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3241,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2026\/02\/the-middleware-manifesto-an-opportunity-for-rebuilding-american-culture.html","url_meta":{"origin":2828,"position":0},"title":"The Middleware Manifesto: A Proposal for Rebuilding American Culture","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"February 15, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"That shift from content value to traffic value is what has destroyed the business model for nearly everything we're talking about. I'm calling it a manifesto because that's what it needs to be. Not a lament. Not a white paper, but a declaration of what is needed.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;arts &amp; tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"arts &amp; tech","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/piro4d-puzzle-3486885_1280-2.jpg?fit=419%2C418&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2834,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2024\/05\/classical-music-has-lost-a-generation-blame-the-metadata-in-part.html","url_meta":{"origin":2828,"position":1},"title":"Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part)","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"May 13, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Classical music has lost a generation's worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadata are the tags that travel with every audio recorded track. For a piece of music or a recording to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;arts &amp; tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"arts &amp; tech","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/gasteig-empty-1.jpg?fit=817%2C468&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/gasteig-empty-1.jpg?fit=817%2C468&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/gasteig-empty-1.jpg?fit=817%2C468&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/gasteig-empty-1.jpg?fit=817%2C468&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/06\/douglas_mclennan.html","url_meta":{"origin":2828,"position":2},"title":"&#8230;Douglas McLennan","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"June 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"is an arts journalist and critic and the founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com, the leading aggregator of arts journalism on the internet. Each day ArtsJournal features an array of links to stories from more than 200 publications worldwide. Prior to starting ArtsJournal... I was arts columnist and music critic for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;about&quot;","block_context":{"text":"about","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/about"},"img":{"alt_text":"McLennandiacritical.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/McLennandiacritical.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1135,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/09\/so-what-exactly-is-a-quantitative-measure-of-the-arts.html","url_meta":{"origin":2828,"position":3},"title":"So What Exactly Is A &#8220;Quantitative&#8221; Measure Of The Arts?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"September 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Arts Council England says it will use a standardized assessment system called Quality Metrics\u00a0in evaluating the arts it it considers funding. The system has been developed over several years and is an attempt to create a matrix by which arts experiences can be measured and evaluated. Here are the criteria:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;cultural issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"cultural issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/cultural-issues"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/success-1513746_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C583&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1123,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/09\/why-music-and-the-concert-experience-are-on-the-front-lines-of-virtual-reality.html","url_meta":{"origin":2828,"position":4},"title":"Why Music And The Concert Experience Are On The Front Lines Of Virtual Reality","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"September 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Following on my post from yesterday about anticipating the kinds of experiences people will want from concerts comes\u00a0this article from Wired about virtual reality and music. Evidently creating content for virtual reality is proving to be a challenge and music is so far the best showcase for VR. Outside of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;arts &amp; tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"arts &amp; tech","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Coachella_2014_Week_2_Day_2_-_Sahara_Tent.jpg?fit=800%2C360&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Coachella_2014_Week_2_Day_2_-_Sahara_Tent.jpg?fit=800%2C360&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Coachella_2014_Week_2_Day_2_-_Sahara_Tent.jpg?fit=800%2C360&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Coachella_2014_Week_2_Day_2_-_Sahara_Tent.jpg?fit=800%2C360&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/09\/a_new_video_age.html","url_meta":{"origin":2828,"position":5},"title":"A New Video Age","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"September 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In just about a year-and-a-half, YouTube has become the biggest website on the internet. Each day 65,000 videos are uploaded to the site. One hundred million videos are streamed from the site everyday. It's an amazing service - easy to use both as a watcher and as an uploader. People\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;main&quot;","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2831,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions\/2831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}