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.

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.

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.

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.

Rough to Release - complete series

 Well, I've now completed my 'finish your damn song' blog series, complete with a full worked example at the end, and you can find the full series here:

https://roughtorelease.blogspot.com/2024/12/rough-to-release-index.html

I hope some of it is of use to some of you.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays all!

The Story of Curtis Stirling or A Tale of Three Brothers

Back in 2008 I released (with the kind help of a local label) my first EP.

Last month I released my most recent album.

Across those releases, and every EP and album in the 16 years between, has been a sub story that is finally complete.
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3AlSu ... gM5IeeNKgX
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 3rgBG0ePGI
Tidal https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/f30ef ... 624c31b768
Bandcamp https://bndcmpr.co/c5a7b74b


Apologies in advance for the inevitable variation in recording and production quality. Hopefully by using one of the above streaming service links it will at least be loudness normalised across the tracks.

The Dead Detectives Club now on streaming sites

 Blimey, it's been months since I last released some music. The new album is ongoing but in the meantime this older EP is now available on all the main streaming and download services:

https://ditto.fm/the-dead-detectives-club

On experiments with social media...

 Anyone who normally follows me on twitter may have noticed that I'm no longer using the platform. 

Sometimes you just have to say enough is enough.

I have, in consequence, joined the exodus to Mastodon. So far I'm enjoying it and I'd recommend it, my handle is @DrewStephenson@Mastodon.social should you want to reconnect there.

And if you do, well you might enjoy something I'm going to experiment with, which will be microblogging about the production process of my new album.

There'll be stuff about the writing process, the collaboration process (which is new to me), the recording, mixing and production side and probably a few sneak peaks of the tracks along the way.

Join usssss...

Oh yes, and the new EP is out on all your favourite streaming and download platforms, and available to buy here: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/a-god-for-the-lost-and-losing

New EP is out on Friday

 Via all the major, and many minor, streaming and download services. Including, but not limited to: https://ditto.fm/a-god-for-the-lost-and-losing

New album out 2 July 2021

 Well, enough of that Hawaiian Shirt nonsense, well, enough until next year anyway...

But the news this week is, of course, that the new album is out on Friday.

Yes indeedy, A Most Imperfect Machine will be available on all the usual streaming and download sites from Friday.

We're having a listening party on Facebook at 8pm UK time, here's the event link:

https://fb.me/e/15b2D6AKL

And if you want a sneak preview, it's already available on bandcamp: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/a-most-imperfect-machine

Curtis Stirling

 I've just fished this old recording out and given it a quick tidy: 

It's a thing of its time and the limitations (mostly in knowledge) that I was working under then, but it provides another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that will be the new album when it comes.

The Lockdown Sessions Vol.2

 Not a lot to say on this really, here's the other half of the lockdown sessions from last year.

The Lockdown Sessions Volume 1

I've been distracted by a couple of other projects recently, and wrestling with some of the longer term affects of C-19 I think as well, but I've finally got round to pulling together the audio from the live sessions earlier this year.

So here is week one of the lockdown sessions:

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/album/the-lockdown-sessions-vol-1

Volume 2 will follow in due course.

The Lockdown Sessions

I'm recording a song a day, as requested by friends, as-close-to-live-as-my-kit-will-allow every day this week and pushing them straight up to social media.

Here's yesterday's and today's. I'll build this blog post with each one as they arrive...

Session 1 - The White Tower

Session 2 - Road Song

Session 3 - Welcoming Arms (sorry about that chord!)

Session 4 - The Winter King

Session 5 - Eden's Grace

Session 6 - Only a Small Step

Session 7 - Cirencester and Words

But what's it all about?

Some people, via the miracle of social media, have listened to the EP and said, "well, it's dark enough alright, but is it art? I mean, really, when you get right down to it, what, in a manner of speaking, is it all about?"
Ok, they may not have said that precisely, but that's the general gist of it.
So here you are, song by song, the stories behind the stories...

A Prologue

https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/a-prologue
Way back in the days of The Driven Man album, I wrote a song called For The Record, about someone who's killed and is seeking permission (not sure from whom) to kill again, to somehow balance the books.
This song then became my idea of what had let to that confessional. Hence the title, and the repeating theme of the song!

Track 2 on the EP, Stone on Stone, was born of two widely separate streams of thought. 
Many years ago I lived in Amsterdam for a bit and used to drink occasionally in a bar near the docks. There had been a bar on that site since the 16th century and some of the flagstones were from the original building. I often thought about what stories they could tell and what, given the somewhat rough nature of the docks area, had been spilled on them over the years.
A couple of years ago at a song writing retreat in Devon I was sitting on an old slate floor, looking at the way the stone had chipped away in layers at the corners. Almost like a reverse accretion process, with each chipped layer revealing a layer of history underneath.
Sometimes you can't help but be overwhelmed by the inexorable drive of things beyond your control when you start having these thoughts.
https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/stone-on-stone

We actually have Asus computers to thank for track three on the EP, 300lb Brick.
I used to have a very nice little Asus netbook, but the motherboard died turning it into little more than an expensive doorstop, or a £300 brick as I described it.
At which point it dovetailed rather neatly into some thoughts I was having about how simple things become difficult when there is a weight of risk or responsibility. 
For example, walking along a 6" wide beam 2" off the floor is trivially easy. Doing the same thing 20' in the air suddenly becomes difficult.
The 300lb Brick became my metaphor for the effect of carrying that extra weight.
https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/300lb-brick

The last track on the EP comes with an apology to Tom McRae. I'd bought an album of his and put it straight in the car stereo. But at the time I had a 6 disc changer in the boot and I wasn't driving very much. I listened to it once and then it took a while until it came round again.
In the meantime I wrote this song, and I was pretty happy with it until that CD came round in the car again and I realised that I'd lifted a whole chunk of the melody. :(
But a couple of years ago I got the chance to speak to him and apologise in person, and he was very cool about it. :)
So here it is, Goodnight: https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/track/goodnight-2

All quiet on the southern front...

It's been quiet on here, sorry about that. But stuff is happening. Slowly.
Things have been a bit difficult on the non-music front recently but hopefully they'll be settling down over the next couple of months.
But we've still been practising, sporadically, as a band, and we've got a cracking gig on Friday night (tickets here: https://www.seetickets.com/event/dan-webster-band/the-crescent/1291379?fbclid=IwAR0IoqXk3Q3ICWBY5fE2MAsm74ex1r9Sp_wohyUI2-DgRrKdWJefWEhHgys) and I'm about 90% there on the next solo EP.

Shall I give you a spoiler? Why not, it's going to be called, "The Dead Detectives Club."

Band on a budget - the recording process part 22

Well, here we are then, the EP:

About 13.5 months from start to finish.
It's been educational...
Not bad for a total budget of £50.

More seriously, I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out but I've had a lot of help along the way, for which I am hugely grateful.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 21

Been quiet from me again recently, mostly because there's not been a great deal to say. Lots of listening and tweaking for the most part but we have added some additional percussion parts to the tracks and also had a listen through to see where there were things we could strip out.
I'm pretty certain a decent producer would do more of the latter but having been so close to this stuff for so long it's hard to have any kind of objectivity.
Anyway, last weekend I spent a few hours mastering the tracks. Mixing and mastering the material isn't a recommended approach but we're a bunch of cheapskates and couldn't afford a proper mastering engineer. So I fired up some reference tracks, massaged some levels, and lo I was happy with the sounds.
Then I listened to them over the week, compared them to some more modern stuff, and lo I was not happy.
Fundamentally the low end wasn't there compared to the reference material (it would have been fine in the 80s!), I'd overdone the brightness slightly, and I also identified some issues in the individual mixes that somehow I'd missed over the last year.
So today I am mastering again. Multi-band compressor acting below 100Hz to give a bit of that modern bass response, reduced the high-shelf EQ by half a dB, and then some mix fixes on specific issues within the tracks.
I'm not going to be sharing any links this time I'm afraid, because hopefully the next time you'll hear these will be as the finished article.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 20

Hello strangers...
A quick note to say that tonight, just 10 months after we started, we have recorded the final guitar parts for the EP.
fanfare.mp3
We laid down the electric guitar parts for Building for the Flood tonight so all that's left to do is edit and mix them in and then we're ready to have a bit of a listening party. We'll listen to all the tracks on a variety of different devices and decide if there's anything missing, anything that can be cut or anything that needs tweaking.
Then we'll agree on what we're going to do about mastering and distribution.
Then we'll get drunk.

Band on a budget - the recording process part 19

Ok, this is well overdue. Stuff has happened, like Christmas, and other things, that have delayed progress, but there has been some progress.
Here's an early listen to the third track I've been working on, Northshoremen:
https://soundcloud.com/the-southern-wild/northshoremen-20180121/s-kN8Re
It still needs the lead guitar parts adding and the backing vocals. There may yet be space for some banjo and or mandolin. If these do go in we'll make space for them by cutting bits from the accordion and existing guitar parts.

I've also made a bit of progress with a solo thing I've been working on for a while:
https://soundcloud.com/blinddrew/road-song-20180121/s-GVItz
This isn't the latest version, but it's the last one I've got downloaded.

Today though I went back to the band stuff and had a look at Denmark Street. The bass part is full of glitches and needs completely re-recording, but this should be straightforward. In the meantime I've been fixing all the glitches in the drum track and sorting out the odd timing issue with my guitar part. Sadly the other guitar part is also going to need rerecording. Add it to the list...
On the positive side, this should be a simpler mix as we're going for a much more stripped back vibe on this track - I think.