Interesting Bits|

The practice of creating music specifically designed to “succeed” on streaming platforms and playlists swirled into a controversy for Spotify this past weekend, after an article written nearly one year ago was resurfaced in a story that mainly focused on how some people are financially “gaming” the Spotify system.

The allegation levied in that original story from Music Business Worldwide was that Spotify is filling out some of its more experiential, moody playlists (like “Piano & Chill”) with custom-made, or bespoke, music by artists that don’t appear to, in practical terms, exist outside of Spotify. Much was made of the possibility that Spotify could then license these songs-by-request at a lower cost than usual, reducing the enormous amount of money it pays out annually for music (the company paid some $2.48 billion last year to music rights holders, according to the most recently available financial filings). In a statement to Billboard, the company denied the practice, saying it “never created ‘fake’ artists.”

Spotify has put a lot of focus on creating playlists it hopes people find both useful and easy. The company’s most popular offerings range from genre-based lists like “RapCaviar” (which has 7.18 million subscribers), category-based lists like “Today’s Top Hits” (16.32 million subscribers) and playlists that hew more to a mood, like “Good Vibes” (1.68 million subscribers) and “Peaceful Piano” (2.92 million subscribers). The company’s acquisition of The Echo Nest, which at the time of writing had created 1.27 trillion data points — from tempo to demographic analyses — on 38 million songs, super-charged this strategy, giving it a broadsword of useful information with which to make these playlists “stickier” than ever before.
This relentless curation-through-playlisting is, in some ways, rewriting listeners’ relationships to music, and artists’ relationships to their fans. “Thanks to this new way of presenting music, genre may be completely changing its identity, or even losing its meaning,” pianist Neil Cowley wrote last year after one of his pieces benefited after being added to a particularly high-profile playlist on the platform. “I can see how tempting it might be,” he continued, “for an artist to make music that fits a certain bill.”

“I’m trying to find an incentive for Spotify to create fictitious artists,” Jeff Price, the founder of Audiam and someone who has had a spotty relationship with Spotify in the past (he was, in a way, the indirect catalyst for a costly class action lawsuit the company recently settled), said. Reports “suggest it saves or makes them money, but the only way that could happen would be if they own the recording and the composition — there’s no way they’re going to create an ancillary income by secretly hiring artists to create sound recordings they’ll own so they can backchannel their royalties to themselves. For a company trying to go public, it isn’t worth the risk.”

Nine artists with no profile whatsoever outside the confines of Spotify’s green-and-black garden — Gabriel Parker, Charlie Key, Anna Olgica, Lo Mimieux, Greg Barley, Otto Wahl, Piotr Miteska, Karin Borg and Charles Bolt — did, as was reported, secure placement on some of Spotify’s very popular playlists, like the aforementioned “Piano & Chill.” These works, essentially credited to phantoms, are even inspiring real people to respond organically to some of this music; a person named Elysia Way, who found a song by Charlie Key “through Spotify on a playlist,” as she wrote, uploaded a video of her covering that artist’s “Song For A” (which she renamed, for “personal reasons”). Not for nothing, the supposedly fake Charles Bolt appears in a playlist embedded in Neil Cowley’s article for The Guardian.

(It’s also not unprecedented for artists to eschew the spotlight — like Daft Punk.)

“The big question mark is: What is Spotify’s motivation?” Tim Ingham, editor of Music Business Worldwide, wondered in a phone call to NPR from his home in the U.K. “I do think, from the people who I’ve spoken to, that there’s a motivation there to save some money, and to increasingly save money as the scale of streaming grows over time.
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As Eno explained in an interview around the release of Reflection: “To make something is to express a belief in how things belong together.”

By Andrew Flanagan

Read the whole article here:
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/12/536670493/spotify-is-accused-of-creating-fake-artists-but-what-is-a-fake-artist

[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]

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Chart Watch: Why Is This Week’s Top-Selling Album Way Down at No. 8?

What’s this week’s top album? That’s a simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer. DJ Khaled’s Grateful is the No. 1 album on Billboard magazine’s flagship chart, the Billboard 200, for the second week in a row. But it wasn’t the week’s best-selling album. That distinction is held by Stone Sour’s Hydrograd, which enters the Billboard 200 way down at No. 8. This is the first time that the week’s best-selling album has ranked as low as No. 8 on that chart (at least since 1991, when Nielsen began tracking U.S. music sales). The old record was held by Mastodon’s Emperor of Sand, which ranked No. 7 in the tracking week ending April 6, even though it was that week’s best-selling album.

What’s going on here? Mastodon and Stone Sour are both metal bands. Does Billboard have something against metal? No. It’s not that simple.

Since late 2014, the Billboard 200 chart has ranked the week’s most popular albums in the U.S. based on what it calls “multi-metric consumption,” which includes traditional album sales, digital track sales, and streaming. Before the changeover, traditional album sales were the only criteria.

The “multi-metric” system favors hip-hop, which does phenomenally well in streaming. It doesn’t work to the advantage of rock bands, especially hard rock and metal bands, which don’t do as well in the streaming and digital track sales sectors.

The albums that have benefitted the most from the “multi-metric” system are Drake’s Views, which gained 11 additional weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 that it wouldn’t have had if the chart was still based strictly on sales; the Weeknd’s Starboy, which gained four additional weeks at No. 1; the Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness and Drake’s More Life, each of which gained two additional weeks at No. 1; and DJ Khaled’s album, which gained two weeks at No. 1 — a ranking it has yet to achieve in traditional album sales.

But just as there are winners under the new system, there are losers. Metallica’s Hardwired …to Self-Destruct would have had two additional weeks at No. 1 if The Billboard 200 was still a sales-only chart.

Billboard made this move as a reaction to dwindling album sales. Stone Sour’s album sold a mere 30K copies this week, a pitiful total for the week’s top-selling album. Billboard‘s judgment was that, taking everything into account, DJ Khaled’s album was more popular — more “consumed” to use its word — even though it didn’t sell as many copies (just 16K this week). The “consumption” tally on DJ Khaled’s album is 70K. The equivalent tally on Stone Sour’s album is just 33K.

This is only the second time since 1991 that the week’s best-selling album in the U.S. sold a mere 30K copies. The soundtrack to the Disney Channel’s 2015 original TV movie, Descendants, also sold just 30K copies. (Unlike the Stone Sour album, Descendants ranked No. 1 on the Billboard 200.)

By holding at No. 1 for a second week, Grateful surpasses DJ Khaled’s previous album, Major Key, which spent just a single frame on top.

Hydrograd is Stone Sour’s fifth consecutive top 10 album.

Top Songs

Justin Bieber is featured on the top two hits on the Hot 100 for the fourth week in a row. Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” logs its ninth week at No. 1. DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One” (which also features Quavo, Chance the Rapper and Lil Wayne) holds at No. 2. Bieber is the first artist to spend four straight weeks at Nos. 1 and 2 since Iggy Azalea did it for five weeks running in June and July 2014 with her own hit “Fancy” (featuring Charli XCX) and Ariana Grande’s “Problem” (on which she was featured). Bieber is the first male artist to achieve this feat since Pharrell Williams did it for five weeks running in June and July 2013 with Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” Williams had a featured credit on both hits.

“Despacito” jumps to No. 1 on the all-format Radio Songs chart. It’s the first song that isn’t sung primarily in English to top the chart, which was launched in 1990. Two other foreign-language songs cracked the top 10 on the Radio Songs chart. Los Del Rio’s “Macarena” reached No. 7 in 1996. Enrique Iglesias’ “Bailando” (featuring Descemer Bueno and Gente de Zona) hit No. 8 in 2014.

“Despacito” sold 129K digital copies this week, which puts it on top of Top Digital Songs for the 10th week. That ties Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” for the most weeks at No. 1 on the digital sales chart so far in 2017. But among artists, Bieber pulls ahead of Sheeran because is also featured on “I’m the One,” which interrupted “Despacito’s” run on top.
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Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” tops the 7 million mark in digital sales this week. The song was already nearly 22 years old by the time the iTunes store opened in April 2003. You may be surprised to learn that Journey’s recording wasn’t a No. 1 hit when it was first released in 1981. It peaked at No. 9.

Top Albums

Calvin Harris’s Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 enters the Billboard 200 at No. 2. This is Harris’s second top five album in a row. His previous album, Motion, reached No. 5 in 2014. Harris’s album also enters the Official U.K. Albums Chart at No. 2.

Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. holds at No. 3 in its 12th week. The album spent its first three weeks at No. 1.

Imagine Dragons’ Evolve drops from No. 2 to No. 4 in its second week.
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By Paul Grein

Read all the stats here:
https://www.yahoo.com/music/chart-watch-weeks-top-selling-album-way-no-8-194320336.html

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