I’m not even mad about it. It’s background music and clearly people are enjoying it. Just because they smashed out 15 tracks in a single session doesn’t make it unfit for purpose. That’s just how Jazz music is.
I think some people may have a misunderstanding about what jazz is. I know one friend of mine did. Some jazz may be easy listening, but it's not made for easy listening, it's made to bend the boundaries of music theory. And also a lot of "easy listening" that sounds like jazz isn't really jazz.
Normal people care about music theory as much as they care whether you use jemalloc vs tcmalloc. "Easy listening" is a much more useful everyday definition for them than whatever musicians may want it to be.
Normal people who don't care about music at all, sure they can call it "easy listening" and I won't bother arguing. For anyone who cares about music or even history at least a little, it's worth knowing that jazz is very important to the history of music.
It is an approach to music (more than a genre) that relies on elaborate harmonic structures, freedom of interpretation of melody and personalising the harmony, interesting rhythms and time signatures and a general approach of trying to push the boundaries of music making. It is meant to be listened actively as opposed to having it as background music. The capitalisation of music has led us to the commoditisation of music and treating it as audio content as opposed to art.
> It is meant to be listened actively as opposed to having it as background music.
The masterpiece hanging in the museum was fully intended to be actively appreciated. The background on the box of cereal is ... just a background on a box of cereal. It's still art though.
That would be the distinction between "fine art" and "decorative art". Jazz as GP meant it is "fine art", the smooth jazz you hear in the elevator could be classified as decorative art.
I think that's a function of the effort, expertise, and intent. I don't think it changes the genre. Smooth, big band, blues, etc - it's all still jazz.
A low effort watercolor by an amateur is still (an attempt at) art and remains a watercolor even if no one appreciates it.
Most masterpieces where literally hanging in the background of some rich person's summer houses, and hunting lodges, and other properties. Thrown out and replaced on a whim.
Art was used by the rich and famous to show off their wealth.
In the 19th century countries got into the game (the idea that Dutch masters were ending up in American collections was a national embarrassment).
The term covers a variety of styles, with old ones hanging around as new ground is broken. Perhaps it is a "meta-genre". There are various articles around explaining its history which might be worth looking at, if you're interested.
I'd expect to hear some degree of improvisation in jazz, but not in easy listening.
The original quote is apocryphal, but he did respond to a question from a reporter asking about the quote saying, "Yeah, Daddy. Ya know how it is... jazz is something ya feel... ya live it, that's all." So he wasn't gatekeeping, he was saying the answer to "what is jazz?" was contained in the experience of jazz.
Interesting that your first counterexample is Charlie Parker. I've been listening to a lot of Phil Schaap's Bird Flight recently (https://www.philschaapjazz.com/sections/bird-flight). It's funny to see how many of the episodes are Phil describing a recording session more or less like this:
"The Bird showed up two hours late to a three and a half hour recording session. They recorded one take each of six tracks, but the recording engineer was surprised when they started so he missed the first half of the first track. And that's how we got the five tracks on <INSERT CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED ALBUM HERE>."
Yeah, this rules, why are we supposed to be angry? It is like WFH for music makers.
Although, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of really complex and difficult jazz out there (IIRC it is one of the most advanced genres, whatever they means; I don’t do music). But that isn’t what we’re looking for on the chill whatever ambient music channels.
The issue is that the artists who make it are getting paid very little, with no attribution, on songs that get massive amounts of plays and exposure. The entire purpose of the program is for Spotify to pay artists less and cut out real independent musicians. The decline in quality is an (arguably) unfortunate side effect, but not really the main reason for people to be angry.
Did you guys not read the article ? The problem arises because of the way the music is distributed on Spotify and the way it is licensed. Spotify make deals with the companies producing this stock music so that it can fill its popular playlists with while paying close to zero royalties. The consequence is a decline both in music quality on the platform and in artists rights, revenue, and ability to be listened to overall.
Those playlists become popular because of the music on them. If they decline in quality won't people will just listen to better playlists?
My Discover Weekly from Spotify used to be awesome. I found a bunch of new artists that I really liked and tons of great new songs. Recently it's been a bunch of old stuff that I've definitely heard of before. So I've mostly stopped listening to it.
Discover Weekly went from something I was excited about every Monday morning on the train, to something I forget to check most weeks.
There's a handful of songs it puts on every few weeks, for literally years now, despite me skipping them every time and never once listening to the band or song by choice.
100% guarantee that, once the technology is solid enough and the library is big enough, Spotify is going to train an AI off the tracks they own the rights to so they can mass-produce this music without paying anyone (except nvidia) a dime.
Spotify isn't a monopoly, and if they want to fill their platform with stock music and presumably AI slop in the future, good luck to them. They're hollowing themselves out and making way for a new better service.
And in the end, the real money for musicians is syncs, shows and merch anyway. Spotify streaming revenue is tiny in comparison.
The discussion is not wether Spotify will benefit from this situation in the long run or not, it's wether the users of the platform (both the listeners and the artists) should be happy with it and the answer to that is, thanks this lengthy article, demonstrably no.
I mean yeah, the music isn't the problem; a lot of music especially "back when" (in my idealised head, this may not be true) was just some guy or a small band noodling in the corner, instead of a well known artist giving a performance of their greatest hits.
"jazz improv" is probably just that, start with a generic beat / atmosphere and improvise and noodle on top of that. Sounds great to me, I wish there was more low barrier to entry live music like that. But I suppose there's no market for e.g. an in-house band working shifts for background entertainment, and they can't compete with jukebox software.
The point is that artists who have <1000 streams get zero pay. This is designed to help prevent payouts and increase profits. 'Deny,' 'defend', and 'depose'.
They do not pay out per stream. They pay out a set % of their total revenue to rights holders. Spotify has to pay the exact same amount of money before and after that change.
The savings for Spotify is in not having the (not so insignificant) administrative overhead of trying to make hundreds of thousands of basically worthless payouts to different individuals that are worth <$5 or even <$1.
I think it's fairly reasonable to draw some sort of lower bound on the minimum you need to reach to get a payout, especially in a world where basically anyone can put music on their service.
It's designed to increase profits, for sure. I do not have a lot of love for Spotify, currently, but this particular practice does not bother me much.
Look: If you give a damn about what you're listening to, you can go over to Spotify and create your own playlists filled with music you care about (assuming they have the artists you like in their catalog). In that case, the artists will get paid accordingly.
But Spotify has realized that a lot of people use it for background noise and don't give two shits whether what they're listening to is a "real" band or music-like content squeezed out of sweatshop sessions in Sweden or whatever. I can't fault them overmuch for taking advantage of the actual listening preferences of its users. If you feel cheated by this, spend some time curating playlists on your own.
Tacking on the CEO-shooter's mantra to your message is shameful. This isn't healthcare. This isn't killing anyone. It's a fully optional service that happens to be popular. Trying to link it to anger over being denied healthcare is ridiculous.
I 50/50 agree with you. My issue is the bait and switch feel it has to it, for both artist and audience. Spotify holds all the power. They already pay less for Discover Weekly streams, instead using that old music industry classic "exposure". If they really care about artists (like their marketing claims), perhaps they can add a filter for playlists that contain PFC vs not?
I'm just rambling without much explanation sorry, but I'm gonna hit the reply button anyway!
