Another Seven Days on Spotify or How I Discovered a Musical Microverse

The charm is starting to wane from Spotify now. The joy of discovering a new album has been replaced with ho-hum. Every innovation it seems loses its wow factor after a while. While browsing a newspaper I discovered Spotify is an instrument of measurement of the UK chart system. Looking at this week charts the current number one had 3.8 million streams. Upon further investigating I found out a few more things about Spotify.

Looking into the chart system, it takes over a 150 streams to be counted as one sale. Now if you divide the 3.8 million by the 150 you get approximately 253.333 thousand sales accounted for. Compare this to Wonderwall by Oasis; I don’t even like the song or the band but I can’t argue with the sales. Wonderwall sold 1,995,940 as a single making it x3 times platinum. The funny thing is it only reached number two in the UK charts; held off by the Simon Cowell produced drivel I Believe by Robson & Jerome. Its living proof that a glorified tea boy knows nothing about music but how to sell shoddy singles that’s bought by masses only to end up in a charity shop or a landfill. This shows music has vastly shrunk in sales compared to over twenty years ago. There is so much music we cannot digest and we now have the choice to no longer have to follow the top 40 which is sadly nothing but disposable fast food music.

This can be a rigged game for record companies, the established artists storm up the charts with no real opposition, the real songs are trampled underfoot by the juggernaut of big business; except it’s not big business, not even a fraction of what it was two decades ago. However, this could turn into a Gordon Gekko level of corruption from inside the music industry. Let’s suppose you’re a CEO of a record company and you want to ensure you have a number one single for your latest workhorse. You’ve spend ridiculous amounts on promotion and music videos; but it’s not enough is it? You want it to be a blockbuster with no competition for that “fabled” top spot. There is a loop hole in Spotify streaming that could be taken advantage of if you were a bold criminal; let’s face it most record company executives are. Spotify have a 30 second rule for a stream to count. So what is to stop any record company offering money for an employee to spend all day listening to the same song for thirty seconds to boost sales numbers? Nothing, if they were even bolder, why not have room full of employee’s doing that to boost the sales of your gilded turd of a single. I now feel like Leo Bloom, Gene Wilder’s character from the timeless classic The Producers. I’ve maybe given them the idea just now.

This is bleak for any music fan who wants to hear real, authentic artists and songs. Record companies will always have the advantage, the publicity, and size to make music and artists the way they see fit to make; sadly, it’s the musical equivalent of a Morris Minor. They are exceptions to the rule though. Gerry Cinnamon is embarking a on a UK tour with no major record company support, selling out venues on the strength of nothing but pure talent, drive and determination.

The music industry has now become a niche business now; profitable to a lucky few. It went from 20.7 billion in 2005 to 15 billion in 2015. If you want further proof of the shrinkage, let us look at 1994 back to back with 2014. The biggest selling album of 1994 was Ace of Base the Sign. Sales in the North American market were $3,808,000. The biggest album of 2014 was the Frozen soundtrack with an impressive $3,050,000 still 758 short of Ace of Base’s album, which is largely forgotten now. The second biggest selling album of 1994 was Counting Crows August and Everything After with a sales of $2,917,000. Beyoncé self-titled record had the second biggest selling album of 2014 with a surprising $716,000. It’s still a lot but not even close to Counting Crows numbers.

The problem with digital music is there is just so much of it readily available to you; trying to listening to three or more albums in one day is a challenge. I learned through this experiment with Spotify, music is meant to be consumed one album at a time; or you risk frying your brain. Digital music is just so constant and changing it can overwhelm you. There is just so much out there and growing every day, even now albums, singles, EP’s are being uploaded. It’s a never-ending stream; it might be bigger but its potency is diminishing.