The future is fake

[Gabor]

Great for you if fthat's still possible where you live! Here in Western Europe housing shortage has made prices soar so much that it's become impossible for "normal people". Esp. if you want to live in a famous/historic city "centre". AFAIK you can't even buy France's social housing ("HLM"), except when it's "desocialised".

AFAIK we never owned the music we bought, only the carrier and a license to play privately. This is how I'll continue to invest in new music; pay a 1-time price for this license, possibly more if I want to have the physical support - I'm not about to pay a monthly fee allowing me to listen to music I won't listen to anymore than I listen to the ads Spotify inserts in their free stream.

So ... what I suspected all along turns out to be true


I'd say "good for them" if a streaming platform gives "not-the-standard-you'd-expect" but still very real musicians a chance even if they won't get much name-recognition from it. Calling them fakes seems like an arrogant over-generalisation to me

Yes prices are in the sky. However the ratio in EU home owners still significantly higher than ratio of home owners in the US. The other thing what may compensate the high prices, is that because families in Europe traditionally own (and not rent) homes back generations, so in family inheritance the market value of the base also proportionally goes higher and higher, helping the new generations to start an owned home, I mean the ratio is also keeps inheriting.

[Gabor]

The car is a machine for living in (to paraphrase Corb). Owners carry around so much stuff in their cars; they are satellites of home. If they were merely tools, we would share them.

exactly, we will share them. I respect the cultural value of cars, also love iconic cars, like Mustang, Dodge etc, and also can imagine a collector who collect cars. However for the majority of the people they will be a object of use, reuse, and that has practical reason, both environmental, both practical. No service, no winter/summer tire change.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I don't use my car every day. If it were cheaper I'd have no problem with booking a car that drove itself to my house then drove away when I was done.

When I was young I dreamed about cool cars. I grew up.

[Litterick]

I'd say "good for them" if a streaming platform gives "not-the-standard-you'd-expect" but still very real musicians a chance even if they won't get much name-recognition from it. Calling them fakes seems like an arrogant over-generalisation to me

Read the effing article.

[mr. beaumont]

It's kinda like "pay to play" all updated for 2022.

People really are the worst.

[citizenk74]

It's kinda like "pay to play" all updated for 2022.

People really are the worst.

Quite true (present company excepted); but they are all we've got. I love my family, and a few friends - the rest just baffle me. We do what we can with what we have to work with.

[Stevebol]

Hi, L,
I was listening to some "Oldies from the 70's"--Aretha, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass, Stylistics, etc, the other day and after about 5 minutes, I realized that none of the artists were singing the songs. They were all "covers." Also, with the sound effects available today, musicianship is always questioned--did someone really play that on an instrument? We live in a world of quick fixes, shortcuts, and faux entertainment and the performers they call 'Stars" are nothing short of pathetic. This, for me, is why 90% of the music discussed on this Forum is by musicians who died, at least, 20 years ago. I hate to always beat a dead horse, but we are in a real cultural decline here in the U.S.
Marinero

P.S. Is "Rap Artist" an oxymoron?????

My nieces love rap. It's about all they listen to.

I think this is some of the music in question;

A lot is ambient music.

[Stevebol]

Spotify's share price is now less than the IPO, four years ago. Spotify needs to cut costs to increase profit. Jazz guitar is hardly likely to be much of a burden – the royalties paid will be small, because so few people listen to jazz these days. But still, Spotify might decide to have some recordings made – jazz musicians are not expensive and a writer could knock off a few songs in no time.

One day, you might find the jazz on your chosen stream to be disconcerting. The musicians are not quite the standard you would expect; nobody swings, the solos are perfunctory. The songs are unfamiliar – but not remote; they are pastiches of standards. The music offers you no comfort; it is uncanny. You are in a state of unheimlich. You will no longer be listening to jazz but to an approximation of it, made by a corporation to meet consumer demand at minimal cost.

I don't see why you have such a problem with Spotify's business model. I prefer Youtube and Soundcloud.

[Stevebol]

Hi, L,
I was listening to some "Oldies from the 70's"--Aretha, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass, Stylistics, etc, the other day and after about 5 minutes, I realized that none of the artists were singing the songs. They were all "covers." Also, with the sound effects available today, musicianship is always questioned--did someone really play that on an instrument? We live in a world of quick fixes, shortcuts, and faux entertainment and the performers they call 'Stars" are nothing short of pathetic. This, for me, is why 90% of the music discussed on this Forum is by musicians who died, at least, 20 years ago. I hate to always beat a dead horse, but we are in a real cultural decline here in the U.S.
Marinero

P.S. Is "Rap Artist" an oxymoron?????

We crossed over from an analog to a digital world. For me that would be March, 1986.

[Stevebol]

Yep, the economic shift in music changed what music is demanded and produced. That's why everything in the popular arena got way faker after the turn of the millenium with high speed internet, file sharing, then youtube. Yet, we still have the 'real' older music and some artists. Listening to some emo from 1999.

I saw the end in 1986. No more bands in California and the far east.
Get out while you have some brain cells left.

[Stevebol]

The crux of the situation in the age of "You no longer own anything, you are renting everything - your home, your car, your amusements. All of 'your' things are Ours and you are paying through the nose for it. All of your things are belong to Us." "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," the famous phrase from the American Declaration of Independence, was in its first draft "Life, Liberty, and Property." Was Jefferson hedging here? Had he glimpsed the future, and decided it wouldn't sell?

"Do not adjust your set. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. Do not adjust your set." - The Outer Limits, an ancient TV (remember airwaves, and the public "ownership" thereof?) program in the Before Time. The era of the backyard mechanic and trading stamps and polio vaccines. And Beatniks and berets and BeBop. People were rollin' their own, and liking it.

What happened?

It will be OK. The Great Pimp....I mean Reset will make everything right as rain.

[nopedals]

Nothing new under the sun. In the early 60s you could buy covers of current hits. I recall buying Hey Little Cobra, not by the rip chords, but by a group with a similar name, like the parachutes or something. To my 12 year old ears it sounded like the record I heard on the radio, and I saved a few cents. There would be a whole rack of these faux hits in the drug store. When the Beatles hit, there were fake Beatles records all over the place.

[Litterick]

We had them in Britain – a series of albums called Top of the Pops, each with a pretty girl on the cover and some of the hits of the last few months inside. Reg Dwight sung on several of them, before he became Elton John.

The situation described in the article that started this thread is quite different. The Nordics are not pushing copies but pastiches. They are not contracting musicians to copy songs, but commissioning new songs in the styles of those that are popular on the streams. The makers of the Top of the Pops albums were obliged to pay songwriting royalties, but avoided mechanical royalties. The Nordics are avoiding both. They play a fee to the composer and musicians for their work. They own songs and the recordings entirely. They pay no royalties. Or they pay reduced royalties, far less than the usual rates.

It is all explained in the article:

Dagens Nyheter also discovered – via the register of Swedish publishing body STIM – that music from over 500 of these “fake artists” have been created by just 20 songwriters. The publication says it even found one composer who is the creator of songs for no less than 62 fake artists on Spotify; his music is currently attracting 7.7 million listeners on the service each month.

[Stevebol]

We had them in Britain – a series of albums called Top of the Pops, each with a pretty girl on the cover and some of the hits of the last few months inside. Reg Dwight sung on several of them, before he became Elton John.

The situation described in the article that started this thread is quite different. The Nordics are not pushing copies but pastiches. They are not contracting musicians to copy songs, but commissioning new songs in the styles of those that are popular on the streams. The makers of the Top of the Pops albums were obliged to pay songwriting royalties, but avoided mechanical royalties. The Nordics are avoiding both. They play a fee to the composer and musicians for their work. They own songs and the recordings entirely. They pay no royalties. Or they pay reduced royalties, far less than the usual rates.

It is all explained in the article:

Dagens Nyheter also discovered – via the register of Swedish publishing body STIM – that music from over 500 of these “fake artists” have been created by just 20 songwriters. The publication says it even found one composer who is the creator of songs for no less than 62 fake artists on Spotify; his music is currently attracting 7.7 million listeners on the service each month.

If Swedes, Bloods and Crips want to control the music business that's fine. Like Rick James said, when you're standing on the top there's nowhere to go but down.

[Litterick]

And look what became of him.*

*What did become of him?

[Cunamara]

The crux of the situation in the age of "You no longer own anything, you are renting everything - your home, your car, your amusements. All of 'your' things are Ours and you are paying through the nose for it. All of your things are belong to Us." "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," the famous phrase from the American Declaration of Independence, was in its first draft "Life, Liberty, and Property." Was Jefferson hedging here? Had he glimpsed the future, and decided it wouldn't sell?

"Do not adjust your set. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. Do not adjust your set." - The Outer Limits, an ancient TV (remember airwaves, and the public "ownership" thereof?) program in the Before Time. The era of the backyard mechanic and trading stamps and polio vaccines. And Beatniks and berets and BeBop. People were rollin' their own, and liking it.

What happened?

Reaganomics, trickle down theory, supply side bushwa, the re-rise of American oligarchy masquerading as patriotism, anti-education politics and the rolling collapse of higher education meaning a population that's getting dumber by the year, entrenched political division which means both sides produce idiotic laws and cannot even think about working together to actually make a good one. But it's got electrolytes!

[Stevebol]

I blame everything on Billy Idol;

[Stevebol]

Reaganomics, trickle down theory, supply side bushwa, the re-rise of American oligarchy masquerading as patriotism, anti-education politics and the rolling collapse of higher education meaning a population that's getting dumber by the year, entrenched political division which means both sides produce idiotic laws and cannot even think about working together to actually make a good one. But it's got electrolytes!

American history is hardly my forte but Jefferson changing 'life, liberty and property' to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' is food for thought.
He avoided relating property to happiness. Maybe for personal reasons?

Don't worry. We're going to own nothing and be happy. The great pimp will make it so.

I trust my government and I trust the music business. Really, no shit.

[Stevebol]

And look what became of him.*

*What did become of him?

[citizenk74]

Reaganomics, trickle down theory, supply side bushwa, the re-rise of American oligarchy masquerading as patriotism, anti-education politics and the rolling collapse of higher education meaning a population that's getting dumber by the year, entrenched political division which means both sides produce idiotic laws and cannot even think about working together to actually make a good one. But it's got electrolytes!

An elegant synopsis! Thank you so much!

[Stevebol]

Reaganomics, trickle down theory, supply side bushwa, the re-rise of American oligarchy masquerading as patriotism, anti-education politics and the rolling collapse of higher education meaning a population that's getting dumber by the year, entrenched political division which means both sides produce idiotic laws and cannot even think about working together to actually make a good one. But it's got electrolytes!

Reagan destroyed our gigs in California and the far east. So did the US army.

They were careless. West coast rap was the beginning of cultural decline in the US.

[Stevebol]

And look what became of him.*

*What did become of him?

Crack. He got into it in the early 80's.

[Stevebol]

We had them in Britain – a series of albums called Top of the Pops, each with a pretty girl on the cover and some of the hits of the last few months inside. Reg Dwight sung on several of them, before he became Elton John.

The situation described in the article that started this thread is quite different. The Nordics are not pushing copies but pastiches. They are not contracting musicians to copy songs, but commissioning new songs in the styles of those that are popular on the streams. The makers of the Top of the Pops albums were obliged to pay songwriting royalties, but avoided mechanical royalties. The Nordics are avoiding both. They play a fee to the composer and musicians for their work. They own songs and the recordings entirely. They pay no royalties. Or they pay reduced royalties, far less than the usual rates.

It is all explained in the article:

Dagens Nyheter also discovered – via the register of Swedish publishing body STIM – that music from over 500 of these “fake artists” have been created by just 20 songwriters. The publication says it even found one composer who is the creator of songs for no less than 62 fake artists on Spotify; his music is currently attracting 7.7 million listeners on the service each month.

Spotify is like a crack dealer. Are they physically forcing you to use their product? Just say no thank you to crack and Spotify.
If you choose. Choices are good.

[Stevebol]

Reaganomics, trickle down theory, supply side bushwa, the re-rise of American oligarchy masquerading as patriotism, anti-education politics and the rolling collapse of higher education meaning a population that's getting dumber by the year, entrenched political division which means both sides produce idiotic laws and cannot even think about working together to actually make a good one. But it's got electrolytes!

I have a whole new outlook lately. I'm glad I was a grown up in those days.

[Litterick]