First of all, thanks for including my little rant about the fetishization of data.
And as usual, I absolutely agree with your point in the intro, Darren. I've been thinking and saying this for years: "What we actually need is more space to celebrate artists, to engage with them beyond just streaming music in the rather anodyne space of a DSP or equivalent."
I truly believe this is still the gap that the decline of music journalism left. The DSPs had a (missed) opportunity to fill that gap. Apple has been doing some editorial lately, and it hasn't even been bad. That being said, will (or should) music fans trust brands like Apple or Spotify when it comes to cultural criticism? I would argue there is still a need for independent spaces beyond those corporations.
I still feel in the context of journalism there is a (relatively!) easy win to have by allowing a central system (e.g. Musicbrainz) to index music articles, using AI to tag who the artist is, and then include some of those next to any artist profile on a DSP.
Spotify (or Apple) could pay a fixed amount to each publisher for listing these articles - or perhaps might even get to do it for free if they are only showing, say the first paragraph and then driving users back to the website in question to read more.
DSPs are awash with integrations around merch and live, so adding another for journalism and curation surely cannot be all that hard. God knows it would make a monumental difference to how one engages with music on DSPs though, and I firmly believe that *anything* done to connect someone with more music to enjoy on a deeper level (e..g because you've read about a spin-off act or later album from an artist you were originally reading about, having clicked on the article link in Spotify for example) can only result in more plays, and therefore more revenue for rights holders.
First of all, thanks for including my little rant about the fetishization of data.
And as usual, I absolutely agree with your point in the intro, Darren. I've been thinking and saying this for years: "What we actually need is more space to celebrate artists, to engage with them beyond just streaming music in the rather anodyne space of a DSP or equivalent."
I truly believe this is still the gap that the decline of music journalism left. The DSPs had a (missed) opportunity to fill that gap. Apple has been doing some editorial lately, and it hasn't even been bad. That being said, will (or should) music fans trust brands like Apple or Spotify when it comes to cultural criticism? I would argue there is still a need for independent spaces beyond those corporations.
I still feel in the context of journalism there is a (relatively!) easy win to have by allowing a central system (e.g. Musicbrainz) to index music articles, using AI to tag who the artist is, and then include some of those next to any artist profile on a DSP.
Spotify (or Apple) could pay a fixed amount to each publisher for listing these articles - or perhaps might even get to do it for free if they are only showing, say the first paragraph and then driving users back to the website in question to read more.
DSPs are awash with integrations around merch and live, so adding another for journalism and curation surely cannot be all that hard. God knows it would make a monumental difference to how one engages with music on DSPs though, and I firmly believe that *anything* done to connect someone with more music to enjoy on a deeper level (e..g because you've read about a spin-off act or later album from an artist you were originally reading about, having clicked on the article link in Spotify for example) can only result in more plays, and therefore more revenue for rights holders.