In the last three years, artificial intelligences -AI- have composed songs that simulate the voices of deceased musicians, such as Kurt Cobain, Freddie Mercury, Amy Winehouse and Jim Morrison; although also from living artists such as Drake and Frank Ocean, who denounced cases of plagiarism at the time, something as common today as an attempted scam on WhatsApp, since only a tool like Boomy, supported by AI, has created in two years 14 millions of songs Hypermusic in all its splendor!
Some journalists and researchers have called it “instantaneous music”, “music in the digital age” or “liquid music”, linking this last concept to the idea of liquid societies proposed by the Polish sociologist Zigmunt Bauman, although in short, hypermusic It is a concept that determines the new ways of consuming, producing and promoting music on the contemporary digital scene and that, in general, has dramatically transformed both the model of the big industry -mainstream- and of the alternative and independent sectors.
A clear example: the big record labels re-evaluated the figure of promoters after piracy and the drop in physical record sales, and then reformed the business model in tune with the mutation of the Internet ecosystem: digital catalog, music for video games , synchronization of songs for movies or series, reproductions on streaming platforms, artist contracts with economic participation for concert tickets, among other transformations. In the case of independent musicians, other circulation channels were opened, such as blogs, social networks, online stations, netlabels -independent and digital record labels-, video channels, home recording studios, access to information and festival contacts. in other countries.
“Internet concierges, internet taxi drivers”
As the Spanish group La Polla Records scathingly reflects in a song, “the internet porters, the internet taxi drivers”, I will try to explain with an example how the follower of a group has undergone this transformation driven by hypermusic:
30 years ago, in order to be able to listen to the new song by Depeche Mode, Miguel Ángel, a passionate fan of that British band, was subject to the promoter of a record label taking a compact disc to a station with that single from the new album, which would be released and then put it on the lineup (if you hoped to keep hearing it); immediately afterwards, that promoter delivered the video clip to a television channel for copying to be presented in specialized programs, such as La música de Veracruz on Teleantioquia or, on the global scene, what was broadcast by MTV (from the context close to rock and to Anglo pop) and, closing that cycle, that promoter processed the press material for the release looking for reviews in magazines and newspapers. So, as evidenced, there were always long intermediations for Miguel, a simple follower wanting to hear the new from Dave Gaham and his colleagues, to access that music.
To the joy of all music lovers, that was in the past! Because today, that equation has mutated:
Now Miguel does not have to wait for some station or television program to present the news of a premiere, since he can listen to it the same day it was released anywhere in the world on Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL or Deezer (or another service) and At the same time, you can watch the video clip or lyric video on YouTube, Vimeo or its Instagram or TikTok version. You should not even expect a review from a printed newspaper or in its digital version, because in the 21st century, he created a blog (becoming a “prosumer”, since he consumes but at the same time produces content), where he writes reviews of his favorite albums and of course, there is Depeche Mode with comments from his entire discography. And if he wants to have that new song in his collection, he has options like adding it to a playlist on a streaming or video platform; or simply, he can buy it on an online service like iTunes or, failing that, download it pirated. Three decades ago, the only option was to sit down with a recorder, a cassette and wait for the station to play it to press the REC button and record it. Or maybe later, he could buy the physical album at a record store.
“How much attention do you need…”
These new dynamics anchored to the times of liquid music, like all changes, have aroused applause and jeering, since it generated advantages such as those already mentioned for that fan or for that musician who can produce the songs in his home studio and then promote them on Facebook and on its WhatsApp broadcast lists; but also, like the internet and that primary illusion of the democratization of knowledge and free access to information, hypermusic has been disrupted by the promise of economic profit, since this objective was placed at the center of the equation, displacing the creation: the current model puts business first, then music.
And like never before, independent artists, expectant as a child who is going to know the sea, have fallen to their knees -in general- with the hope of generating economic returns that allow them to live from their music. Only on Spotify (the most influential and with the largest catalogue), the competition is savage to be heard among the 78 million songs hosted on the platform, according to 2023 data from the Music Industry portal.
And it is not accidental. As historian Yuval Noha Harari has analyzed in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century: “Facebook and the other online giants often consider humans to be audiovisual animals: a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen and a credit card.
So that digital opportunity to make money became a compulsion for musicians to extract money from their artistic career, which ended up intermingled with their personal lives, in an unbridled search to gain followers in networks, increase likes, increase reproductions and views of his video clips: a non-stop form of digital tyranny, driven by the promise of recognition, popularity and artistic growth. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han is correct in this interpretation of self-exploitation: “Today, indeed, we are free from the machines of the industrial age, which enslaved and exploited us, but digital devices bring a new coercion, a new slavery.” All for being a microcelebrity!
“Money, anguish, problems…”
A new manager from Medellín once commented in a conversation: “The goal is to reach 150 thousand reproductions with the next song.” After a short silence, the moderator responded: “Wonderful!” And he added expectantly: “Let’s listen to the song”, but the response he received was forceful in accordance with the trend of these times to prioritize promotion and the search for monetization: “We have not recorded it.”
The curious thing -and disturbing- is that without recording a song, a musician can guarantee those 150 thousand reproductions and even up to a million or more. According to a report by the Spanish newspaper El País, published in May 2023, in France, a study carried out by the National Center for Music “discovered that between 1% and 3% of all music played on streaming platforms most popular streaming in that country had been requested by bots. This figure, from 2021, represents an estimated number of between 1,000 and 3,000 million false reproductions ”. It happens in Europe and around the world, so it is a good reason to review these data with a magnifying glass.
O algorithm!
“Who wants me to want what I think I want? Tell me what to sing, oh algorithm, I know you know better, even than I do myself. The fragment corresponds to the Uruguayan Jorge Drexler, who reflects in this song on the manipulation of user tastes and how information bubbles are created. Today, the algorithm shows the news, songs and data most similar to the recent inquiries or actions of each individual on the network: the Internet user navigates in his own dimension of content, distributed to measure, coupled to his needs and interests, a world idealized.
But the algorithm also responds to general mass consumption and may or may not be related to the tastes of a listener; On this topic, a 2021 EPJ Data Science investigation showed popularity bias and explained that music streaming platforms suggest what people listen to the most, since “many music recommendation algorithms do not provide useful recommendations for music consumers.” less popular and specialized items”.
And then, how to adjust to the hypermusic model without losing focus on art and creativity, but without wasting digital opportunities? Today you can buy followers on Instagram, pay for fake reproductions and playlists, advertise on social networks and stick to the dynamics of the model or, on the other side, each project can adapt the model to its specific needs, without losing the mystique. and the ritual of the songs, when creating them, when living them.
Frankie has already said it is dead: “The new rules are built at the ends, not in the center.”
*Coordinator of the El Jordán Musical Documentation Center, leader of Radionica Antioquia and director of HagalaU.
2023-08-06 06:38:49
#Platforms #times #liquid #music
