180 - Music and the Death of Storytelling pt2

Most genres are drifting away from their storytelling roots. So who do we blame for convincing our artists to make poppy, empty-calorie music?

The top-rated hits on Spotify aren’t new artists or breakout albums anymore. In fact, less than 5% of Spotofy’s Top 200 are new music. Instead, the Top 200 are mostly old bands, like The Police and Creedence Clearwater Revival. This isn’t a case of all new artists sucking, either. It’s a flaw in the pay structure for online musicians. The current pay scale goes something like this; established names get the biggest piece of the streaming pie, and new creators making radio-worthy music get to live off Top Ramen and Kool Aid packets.

Today’s episode is Part 2 in our series about the death of storytelling and writing in rap, as well as other musical genres. In the last episode we talked about “punching in” and the technology that led most rappers to stop writing altogether, choosing to freestyle their lyrics over tedious note-taking. Today we’ll talk about why Dua Lipa is using this same method, and how generic-sounding knockoff artists use punching in to produce twenty cash-grab songs in the time it takes Dua Lipa to produce one mega-hit.

Finally, we’ll talk about the CEO of Spotify, and why his pay structure in particular has encouraged this model of quantity over quality. We’ll also talk about his response to countries like France, who are changing laws to guarantee equitable artist pay. Spoiler: the CEO who’s worth $5 Billion because he under-paid new artists…isn’t a fan of equitable payment structures. His response to starving artists who are quitting the industry early? Work harder, dummies.

Links:

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-official-top-100-biggest-hip-hop-songs-of-all-time__18789/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSgl95BEmd0&ab_channel=TheNewYorkTimes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoBCZYQBWdQ&ab_channel=VanityFair

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/

https://www.statsignificant.com/p/when-do-we-stop-finding-new-music

https://songexploder.net/dua-lipa https://www.newsweek.com/hip-hop-decline-music-billboard-1896490

https://www.theregreview.org/2024/05/30/stern-the-inequalities-of-digital-music-streaming/

https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/02/08/should-streaming-services-change-how-artists-are-paid/