The Platform Problem - a potentially unpopular opinion

Subvert.

Vocana.

Coda.

Even.

Sawtooth.

Crates.

Resonate.

Ampwall.

TheFlow.

Campfire.

These are all alternative music streaming / discovery / sale platforms. I have tabs open for all of them in my browser but I just can't get the energy to sign up and add my catalogue.

All of them promise better artist returns than the big streamers* and / or more ethical operating principles. They often have additional hooks, such as being artist-owned or non-profit.

And the chances are you've probably not heard of most of them and, unless you're a real muso, never looked at any of them.

Tidal.

Qobuz.

Soundcloud.

Deezer.

Apple Music.

These are all established competitors in the streaming space. All giving a better payout to artists than the market leader (by number of listeners) and having the same extensive catalogue. They often provide a better value service for lossless audio as well. 

But none of them have managed to really trouble the big, green giant either.

So what gives? Do people not know that Spotify pays out a lower rate to the artists that they follow? Do they not know that they've made some sketchy investments and accepted advertising from ICE in the US? Do they not know that Spotify have been very, very late to the game in flagging and de-monetising AI generated music (and even now are really doing the bare minimum that they can get away with).

Do users know this and not care?

Or is it that they know all this, they do care, but not enough to go through the hassle of switching to a new service? One where their friends aren't users? One where the artist disambiguation isn't good enough to give you a reliable feed of people you want to listen to, not just those with the same name? One with a decent app and player? One that integrates to other platforms for live music?

For me, the problem with all of the alternative platforms I've listed above is that they are solving for the wrong problem. Trying to get artists a better payout rate is lovely. But nobody cares. Trying to run a company more ethically is laudable and we should all be supporting that kind of thing. But we don't.

The end user's life is already stressed and complicated enough. They just want to see the link from their friend with a great new song on it and click play. Anything that gets in the way of that is not going to result in them signing up to yet-another-service, it's going to result in them just clicking close and looking at something else instead.

Because most people don't actually care about music that much. For a lot of people it's just a pleasant background noise that helps provide a vibe. Swap out one track or artist for another and they won't notice. For another big group it's not actually the music that's important, it's the cultural moment that comes with it. A song's meaning isn't intrinsic, it's because it links these people to a certain time and place, with all the emotions that come with it. You can't swap that song out for another, but there's no wider connection to the artist or the rest of their catalogue. 

For the people who do care about the music itself, who are fans of the album not just the song, the scene not just the single, then the chances are they're already on an alternative streamer or using Bandcamp already.

For everyone else Spotify (or Youtube with its even lower payout rate) is the best option.

If the general listening public really cared about artist payouts or ethical company management, they'd have already switched. 

So we need to stop trying to solve for these problems. If you want people to switch away from Spotify then you have to provide a better user experience. And, unfortunately, 'slightly better' doesn't cut the mustard. In order to break the habit, you'll probably need a triple play of incentives. If you can come up with three ways in which the service is better then you have a chance of shifting users. And it has to be three ways that make a difference to the user. Better artist payouts and ethical management aren't on that list.

Until a company tries to actually address the end user experience, and design a better platform for the casual music fan, then all of these companies will be scraping around for a share of the same niche audience of real music fans. And that's not big enough for any of them to scale into an actual challenger.

*I'm not counting Bandcamp as a streaming platform, because a) it's mostly a sales platform, and b) it's streaming player is crap.

Mother - new single with Novelley

 Continuing my track-record of being terrible at promotion, I write today that last Thursday (see!) my friend Novelley released a new single called 'Mother'.

It's available on all platforms and you can find some useful links here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/novelley/mother-2

Novelley is a German singer-songwriter whom I met on Threads, and the reason I'm writing about it here is that she asked me if I'd like to get involved with this song. We'd talked previously about her joining me on a track for the next album but stuff got in the way. So when she suggested this track I leapt at the opportunity.

As soon as the first draft came over I felt a low vocal part would sit nicely, and as she worked up the structure of the song we agreed that I could find space for a cello part in there as well. I was allowed to take over the rest of the mix duties, which was fun, and Novelley was back in the driving seat for the mastering.

Needless to say, I'm very happy with how it turned out; I hope you will be too.

P.S. Work is cracking on with the next album, just waiting to hear back from a couple of contributors for a couple of tracks, the rest are in the finishing straight.

New single - The Cables

 Hi folks,

I've got a new single coming out on the 23rd of April. 

Here's the smart link for pre-saving and all that bollox: https://ditto.fm/the-cables

It'll be on all the usual streaming and download platforms as you'd expect. Plus a few that none knew existed.

But if you're one of those wonderful people who populates the Bandcamp world, then you get a sneak preview because it's out today on that platform.

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/the-cables

It's a song about deep sea data cables, possibly quite topical given certain Russian sub activity at the moment. This track started as a sketch for Jamuary but I felt it had legs so it's been worked up into something worthwhile. Hopefully.

It's a stand-alone track and won't be on the coming album.

The Last Damn Time - new single out today

New single out today. If you like early Billy Bragg or Max Garcia Conover's solo stuff, this might be up your street.

Jailbreak! Revenge! Angry guitar!

Bandcamp: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/the-last-damn-time

Streaming: https://ditto.fm/the-last-damn-time

Also rude word warning.

This is a standalone release and won't be part of the next album.

Celebrating indie* music

 Regular visitors to this site, both of you, might have noticed a couple of tweaks to site layout.

Firstly, at the top of the right-hand column you'll see a little widget called We Bring The Music.

This is an old-fashioned Web Ring. Click on the forward or back arrow and you'll be taken to another musician's website. Somewhere on that page you'll find another instance of this widget when you can step on to the next site in the ring. Or hit random and jump to some cool new music at the touch of a button.

Which brings me onto the next feature, directly below the Web Ring: The Indienet.

This is simply a list of websites or linktrees for a whole bunch of great musicians, mostly folks I've met on threads but there's some IRL friends in there too.

So next time someone bemoans the lack of new music, or that they just can't find it, point them to this page and let that do the heavy listening.

And in the meantime, just click a link and see where you end up.

If you're reading this page on a mobile, it helpfully doesn't show the right-hand panel at all. Scroll down to the bottom and select View Web Version. Then jump into some new music.

* And by 'Indie' I mean really independent, not some post-brit-pop guitar-based sad boy pop.

Not that there's anything wrong with that of course.

Return of the Superhero

 Well, I appear to be out of Spotify-bot-jail and my stuff is being shared again so it's time for Superhero to be re-released on all the streamers.

Smart link thingy: https://ditto.fm/superhero_b25dc403

Get yourself some politically-relevant orchestral funk in your life.

You know you want to.

Further thoughts on AI and being a DIY songwriter

This started as a post on Threads but as usual I rambled on a bit so I've consolidated it all here:



A couple of things happened over the last couple of days that got me thinking about AI and music in a slightly different way. 

Firstly, I dropped into my free Spotify account to check a couple of things and left it running for a bit. Track after track of AI music. Utterly predictable, utterly forgettable, mindless background noise. All relevant to my genre and preferences but as interesting as a plate of boiled white rice.

Then yesterday I opened Tidal while I was at work and put on a new release playlist. Again, mostly in my genre or area of interest, no AI content that I could immediately recognise but, with a couple of honourable exceptions, equally uninspiring.

The voices all sound similar. The guitar sounds are all generic. The rhythm never varies from its grid-aligned 4/4 tempo. The subject matter is always the same.

Polished to a perfectly smooth grain of boiled white rice.

And sure, on some of these tracks the chord progressions might have a bit more variety, and on an individual level the there might be a bit more variety in the song structure. But as a collective it was as bland as the AI stuff. 

Music by numbers.

Written by a committee.

Aimed at a playlist.

Finished in a factory.

Sold as a commodity.

Before I go any further, I'm not one of these folks who thinks that good music stopped in the 70s or that there are no great artists and performers out there nowadays.

There absolutely are across the whole range and scale of music spectrum. But we know them because of their humanity, their personality, their genuine attitude...

And this is, for all of us, good news I think.

It's good news because all of us have these things. We are all unique individuals with personality, attitude and humanity. We have our own experiences, tragedies and triumphs. We have our own stories to tell.

Which means the solution to a diet of anodyne, factory fresh, noise-masquerading-as-music is simple, and available to everyone. 

You don't have to change platform or pay extra.

Just find an indie / DIY act and put their music on. It might not be as polished, maybe not be as perfectly performed, it might not make you part of a social movement, but it will provide that honest human connection.

Music, as Tom McRae has said, is an emotion transfer machine. But that can only work if it starts with emotion in the first place. Otherwise we're filling our bellies with the all nutritional content of a bowl of boiled white rice.

Stuffed full and starving to death.

The good music is out there. Honest, human, flawed, and overflowing with real emotion and experience. It's on your favourite platforms, just waiting to be found, just waiting for the story to be told. (You could start by looking at any of the musicians in the Indienet list on the right of this page).

This turned into an essay, sorry about that but the TL:DR is that AI isn't a threat, not really. No more than the major labels have been for the last 20 years. 

The only threat is getting sucked in. 

Don't. 

Go be you.

P.S.1 Someone commented on Threads that a lot of people think that a 'professional' production is one that is polished or perfect. But if you try this approach you'll often end up with something sterile and plasticised. A real pro takes all those rough edges and highlights just enough of them to let the magic come through.

P.S.2 The corollary to this is about who your real audience is. It can be easy to think that if, like me, you make very middle-of-the-road music then AI might be stealing away your listeners / royalties.

I posit that it isn't.

Because much as we songwriters, musicians and composers would love that it wasn't so, most people just don't care that much about music. They really don't.

Which means the folks who are happy with AI music chugging along in the background were never going to be your fans.

They were never going to sign up to the mailing list of an unknown artist. They were never going to head out to a toilet-circuit venue on a rainy night to see you play. They were never the people you should be focusing on. Sure if you have some success they'll come along for the ride. Until the ride stops, and then they'll find the next thing. 

So don't worry about them. 

Not one bit.

A milestone and a few thoughts on streaming

Music streaming gets a lot of shit. And a big helping of that is very fairly earned.

But it's important not to forget that there is a positive side to the new paradigm as well.

As someone who teetered on the brink of getting into the old world, and failed (twice), I have a bit of perspective.

A few years ago, couple of decades maybe, we talked hopefully about 'the democratisation of music'. And a lot of what we hoped for has come true.

Capable hardware and software is cheaper than ever, and a website and Bandcamp page are all you need to share your message and sell your music.

But the biggest challenge remains the same now as it was then: how to get your music in front of potential fans?

And obviously this is the bit where we've effectively built up the same systems of gatekeeping, twisted incentives and dubious companies with unethical practices.

Who'd have thought?

But this is about the positive side of things.

This week one of my songs tipped over the 10,000 plays threshold on Spotify.

Small numbers for some, but for a DIY artist on the wrong side of 50, with zero marketing budget, this is actually quite a big deal.

That's thousands of plays, to over a thousand listeners, that simply never would have happened in the old model.

That song might, maybe, with a lot of luck, made it into and out of a studio as a demo track.

But then it would have withered away on a batch of unsold CDs in a gig bag somewhere.

Instead it's been out in the world, living its best life, slowly racking up plays over the last 10 months. And hopefully giving a few of those people one of those special moments only music can provide.

Yes, the streaming model has serious flaws, but sometimes something is better than nothing.

And here's a link if you want to make it 10,001

https://open.spotify.com/track/5Jc22YCGEGxMx9H3lNcEVP

New Single - The Vessel

 Well, after the distributor shenanigans mentioned in the last update I can now confirm that The Vessel is on track to be released to all streaming services on 27 November.

Superhero will probably follow in the new year, but for now, here's a little bit about how The Vessel came to be...

I was at a songwriting retreat a few years ago and one of the exercises we were given was to write a song about our identity.
As a middle-class, educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, white male who grew up all over the place I realised that I didn't identify as anything.
Basically I'm so vanilla I'm beige. Average height, average weight, average male-pattern hair loss...
I am the default and the western world is designed for and around me.
This is the song I wrote about that...
My good friends Martin Walker and Eddy Deegan join me on this one to add some actual talent, and Martin took on the mixing duties.

EDIT: And here's the smart-link thingy for the streaming platform of your choice: https://ditto.fm/the-vessel

Of bots and takedowns and unbalanced connections...

 If any of  you have jumped onto your favourite streaming service over the last week or so, hell bent on streaming Superhero, then you'll probably have wondered where the track has disappeared to.

Well on 30 October I received a message from my distributor* saying that some suspicious streaming activity had been detected and giving me three days to provide an explanation whilst they investigated.

I replied saying that I had no extra insight and that appeared to be sufficient for their investigation as the next day the track was taken down.

Now I'm going to go ahead and guess that the platform that was affected by the dodgy streams** (almost certainly bot-related) was Spotify as that's where almost all of my listeners are. However my distributor has removed the track from all platforms.

The whole process is draconian and punishes third parties (the creators) but removing the track from other services seems particularly unnecessary.

This is, by the way, not in the least bit unusual. Music communities on social media are full of stories just like this and by now I would suggest that this has probably happened to more artists than not.

But right now, not only has Superhero been taken down, but my account has also been suspended. So The Vessel is unlikely to be released on 13 November. And that brings me to the crux of my bitching today.

And that's the fact that my distributor took less than 24 hours to take my music down but has so far taken 5 days to completely fail to respond to my questions or my support ticket. 

Fairly basic questions like:

How long with the track be blocked?

Will my next (in progress release) be blocked? And if so for how long?

When will my account be un-suspended?

And so far... 

::: crickets :::

This is vexing. The distributors (for there are a few that engage in this behaviour) are so keen on maintaining the relationship with their partners (Spotify et al.) that they've forgotten who their actual paying customers are.

And this is the unbalanced connection (pun very much intended). They can forget this relationship because, as in so many cases in the creative industries, the power equation is fundamentally imbalanced.

Just as literary agents can ignore their inboxes and never reply to the bulk of their applicants (who would become their source of income) because they control access to the publishers, so too can the distributors ignore their paying customers because they control access to the platforms.

Which leaves us, the creators, with only one option. Remove our content from those distributors and try and find an alternative that better understands the importance of serving their customers.

So expect to find certain tracks unavailable at various points over the next couple of months as I go about trying to find a distributor with a more balanced operation.

I'll provide an updated release date for The Vessel when I have one.

* You can't go direct to companies like Spotify and Tidal to add your music to their platforms, you have go through this wonderful gatekeeping mechanism called a distributor. 

** A dodgy actor loads up some of their own tracks (probably AI generated these days) sticks them in a playlist and then randomly adds some other tunes as 'filler' to make it look a bit less suss, then they point a load of bot accounts at the playlist to goose their royalties. I find it hard to believe that this actually makes any money but there seems to be enough people doing it that it must pay back in some form.

G. Stoner Hilcot is not AI

 It's an interesting measure of how fast these things change that when Manifesto was released in 2021, people recognised that G. Stoner Hilcot is a pseudonym and an anagram of, and homage to, the late Gil Scott Heron. But no-one suggested that it was an AI model.

Four years on, with the recent release of Superhero, the default assumption seems to be that it's an AI creation.

So, to set that record straight, I can confirm now that G. Stoner Hilcot is a real person. That's not his real name obviously, but he's a real person. Who just happens to be able to do a pretty mean impression of the original GSH.

Some people have asked for a bit more detail about him, but he's chosen to remain anonymous so obviously I'm not going to betray that. But he is real. He feels, he breathes. And he gets pissed off by what he sees around us. 

He just does it in a very particular style.

Superhero - now on streaming and download sites

It's another State of the Nation piece from me and G. Stoner Hilcot.

Superhero is now on all your favourite streaming services. 

And the ones you hate. 

Smart link updated to be much more useful with more services: artists.landr.com/057829500310

Superhero - new single with G. Stoner Hilcot

This one won't be on the next album, it's a standalone track that feels pretty appropriate right now.

This might be the quickest I've gone from idea to release (about two weeks from idea to release) so I expect there's some rawness in there that's accidental - but it'll fit with the deliberate stuff as well.

G. Stoner Hilcot returns...

And he's still pissed off.

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/superhero-feat-g-stoner-hilcot

Currently on Bandcamp advance release but will be hitting all the streaming sites in due course.

Colm Cannon's Call - new single out now!

 The second single from the next album has just dropped on all the usual streaming and download platforms on Wednesday.

It's a bit of weird mix of Americana and spoken word that tells the tale of a couple of lads playing truant from school.

It may, or may not, have some autobiographical properties...

https://ditto.fm/colm-cannons-call

BBC Radio York and BBC Radio Humberside

It's all go around here isn't it? Not only do we have an actual, real-life gig coming up in June but we're also on the radio on Thursday.
Yep, thanks to BBC Music Introducing and BBC York Maggie Carter and the Angels will be beaming through the airwaves to your very room. (Certain territories excepted).
Between 8 and 10.


Obviously you could just go and stream it now but you'd miss out on all the other good stuff they'll be playing.


I'll add listen-again links when they're available.

Gig news!

A gig you say? An actual live performance of music in front of an audience?
Is such a thing possible?
Yes indeed it is!
On the 5th June, we'll be supporting FIR at the Samuel Worth Chapel in Sheffield.
It's a lovely venue and should be a cracking night, but it's also pretty small so you'll need to be spritely with the tickets.
I say 'we' above because fortunately I'll be joined by Alex the Crazy Dane on guitar and Dr Jones on cello. Which means we'll sound good.


The venue: https://gencem.org/venue-hire/the-samuel-worth-chapel/
FiR: https://www.fir.band/

EDIT

And here's the link for tickets: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/sheffield-general-cemetery/the-samuel-worth-chapel/fir-wolfman-and-the-laterals-and-drew-stephenson/e-ddpdej

Maggie Carter and the Angels - New Single Out Now

 It's new music day!

Maggie Carter and the Angels is now on all your favourite streaming platforms. And the other ones, we don't discriminate round here.

You used to be able to add links to pictures in blogger but I'm bolloxed if I know how to do it now, here's the smart link thing that you need: https://ditto.fm/maggie-carter-and-the-angels

Maggie Carter and the Angels now on Bandcamp

 Whilst I work on the next EP, here's a little single to keep things ticking over. Inspired by a joke originally from Hancock's Half Hour.

On all the big platforms next week, but all you lucky bandcampers get it early!

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/maggie-carter-and-the-angels

For your streaming pleasure...

Apparently you can do stuff with these links, like pre-save a track... that's going to be released globally... for no charge... Why would you do that anyway? But you can!

https://ditto.fm/maggie-carter-and-the-angels

And it'll be on Bandcamp a bit earlier for all the wonderful people there too.

New Single coming 19 Feb

 Quick heads up that the new single will be out in just over a fortnight on all the usual platforms (and a bit ahead of that for all you wonderful bandcamp people)