A new book on Spotify by Liz Pelly makes clear how data is the new driver of wealth, but who benefits?
The writer Ted Gioia made his name through books about jazz, a genre of music that is niche but influential. Having written every possible word about every possible jazz musician, Gioia now writes on Substack as the Honest Broker, where his passion is the technology dystopia.
In a recent post, he referred to ‘the web plantation owners’, which is a magnificent summation of how the people with the money – Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos – keep the money for themselves rather than rewarding those who populate their platforms with stuff: cat videos, social commentary, hatred of women, that sort of thing.
How does the web proletariat, to continue the analogy and bring Marx back to a world of Musk, react? It becomes a village fete. Stick with me: a village fete has members of the public manning tables full of vegetables, jam and raffles. I remember, very vividly, collecting conkers for a few weeks, sticking them in a chest and bringing them along to a school fundraiser so that people could guess the number of conkers inside the chest. I think it was 501, and someone guessed 500; I was appalled, but I really should have chosen a better number.
The world’s creative people have their own chests of conkers: necklaces, music, movies and opinions are all available all the time to everyone, provided that you can find a company to act as a middleman. Etsy have done well, as have Amazon; the latter might have given people their first exposure to how big businesses can get away with having lax attitudes on tax, disobeying the laws of the land and paying relative pittance in compensation when they are rumbled.
I would love to make music for money but Spotify, which is the dominant streaming platform, is skewing the market against creative folk. Liz Pelly’s new book Mood Machine is out in the USA and is coming for UK audiences; Harper’s Bazaar magazine – note, a general publication not a music-specific one like Rolling Stone – ran a chunky extract from the book in which Liz unmasked the ‘Perfect Fit’ methodology that Spotify employ.
Because it is a data company, it has realised that it can invent music using artificial intelligence in genres like lo-fi electronica, ambient classical and Ted Gioia’s beloved jazz. If a human doesn’t make the music, and nobody cares if they did or didn’t, Spotify can collect the micropayment for every one of those streams rather than dispense them to people who populate their global jukebox with songs. Alas, it is still the best place to go for new music by major acts, and as soon as I finish this piece I will be checking out albums by Ringo Starr, Franz Ferdinand and Sondre Lerche.
Sondre who? He’s a guy from Norway who came up in 2000 as a teenager with a penchant for Burt Bacharach. I discovered his second album Two Way Monologue in 2004, which I remember streaming on MSN Music and buying on a trip to the USA that year. It was 2004 because that was the last family holiday we had as a four; it’s funny how music reminds you of key moments of your life.
I would love to decrease how often I use Spotify, which also pays Joe Rogan for the rights to his ‘just asking questions, man’ podcast, and I actually prefer Youtube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp for new music. None of those platforms existed in 2004, a time when physical CD sales were being decimated by music piracy and the digital download was in its infancy. I remember the surprise in the voice of the chap who counted down the UK Top 40 when he announced that Crazy by Gnarls Barkley was the first chart-topper not to have a physical release.
Think about that: no CD single, no cassette, no tangible product to cherish and look at. This was 2006, a time before Spotify, but you could finally purchase music without leaving your own home. In ye olden days, a music fan had to go to a shop, hope the record was in stock and then bring it back home. I still remember the thrill of Christmas hauls with six discs stacked up in the same bit of wrapping paper, bringing S Club 7, Westlife, Backstreet Boys and Nine Inch Nails (I made the last one up). Then came the gift card and the click-to-purchase, and most significantly of all the unbundling of albums. The 99-cent, or 79-pence, download changed how music was consumed.
And yet, if you are at the top of the musical tree, you can still earn lots of money. Take Ed Sheeran from Framlingham, who has used some of his many millions to help children learn the magic of music. I had a feeling he would move into philanthropy, and since he famously didn’t go to BRIT School (not that he ever mentions it, except all the time), it seemed unlikely that he was motivated to set up the kind of school that Paul McCartney is involved with at LIPA in Liverpool.
Sheeran, who remembers how music was often looked at as a ‘doss subject’, appeared at a school in Wales alongside the great Amy Wadge, who co-wrote Thinking Out Loud. I remember messaging her with a suggestion to prepare a Grammy speech months before it did indeed win Song of the Year.
Sheeran’s new Foundation aims to help children ‘feel empowered with meaningful music education’ and counter the collapse of musical education at primary and secondary level, as well as the closure of traditional music venues. ‘It gives me a sense of purpose,’ says the former cellist and current multimillionaire songwriter, who namechecks his old music teacher Mr Hanley for giving him the impetus to make music and be his own CEO, with 150 people in his employ. You know exactly why the government, which is busy physically repairing school buildings, needs to outsource this to a charity run by the man who wrote Shape of You.
At the same time, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) are involved with a new school, Shireland CBSO Academy in West Bromwich, which opened in 2023; by the time it reaches capacity in a few years’ time, there will be 900 kids benefitting from the school’s mission to put instruments in the hands of children who would not ordinarily be able to afford music lessons. I was utterly spellbound by the Guardian article which highlighted their mission, and not just because I plan to write a series of books under the Pop Syllabus banner.
Music is ‘incorporated into lessons of all subjects, not just in dedicated music classes’, and instruction comes from CBSO members. I know people who work for music services around Watford, who have enthused dozens, hundreds, thousands of kids; just imagine going to see your teacher play double bass in a Beethoven gig at Birmingham Symphony Hall. Why would you not want to do that??
I play in an amateur orchestra in Watford. In fact right now I’ve got to go and practice Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture because it’s very hard! It’s also very fun, which is rather the point of learning, appreciating and playing music. Not to enable the web plantation owner to pay his yacht mooring fee.