Two caveats to the post below:

1) these thoughts have been put together over the past couple of nights at 3 am while I feed our newborn baby and fumble in the dark, and

2) while I have been a dedicated Spotify Premium subscriber for a couple of years now, I make no pretense of being a power user. I'm simply a curious amateur who is fascinated by the way that streaming has eradicated the old guard and quickly bulldozed the landscape for what is to come.

Most of you know this: streaming last year shot past all other forms of revenue combined in the music industry. (For anyone wanting a decent summary: [www.nme.com].) In other words, the financial battle for the future of the industry is now over: streaming has won. Sales of digital and physical music will no doubt continue to trend downward as more and more people divest themselves of the concept of "owning" a piece of music (much to the puzzlement of fogeys like me who still enjoy spinning their stacks'o'wax) and rush to slap down their $10 per month (in the case of Spotify) to access a ridiculously complete library of popular music on whatever devices they choose.

While I mainly use Spotify to hunt down obscure recordings of Bach cantatas and rare sides by Don Cherry, most people use it in a quite different way: they use it to search out which new music to listen to. And the volume of music people listen to on Spotify is staggering.

Here are the top 10 streaming artists of all time on Spotify:

Drake
Justin Bieber
Ed Sheeran
The Weeknd
Rihanna
The Chainsmokers
Calvin Harris
Ariana Grande
Sia
Major Lazer

And Drake is the undisputed champion. Reporting is somewhat difficult to come by but by most estimates Drake songs have been streamed on Spotify over TEN BILLION TIMES.

Here are some randomly chosen recent releases and how they've performed on Spotify:

Drake: Views
average of 196.89MM streams per song

Rihanna: Anti
average of 140.95MM streams per song

Ed Sheeran: Divide
average of 138.04MM streams per song

Kanye West: Life of Pablo
average of 58.96MM streams per song

Frank Ocean: Blonde
average of 20.28MM streams per song

Bon Iver: 22, A Million
average of 12.49MM streams per song

Radiohead: Moon shaped pool
average of 9.88MM streams per song

David Bowie: Blackstar
average of 8.98MM streams per song

Metallica: Hardwired ...
average of 8.62MM streams per song

Leonard Cohen: You want it darker
average of 4.18MM streams per song

Stones: Blue & Lonesome
average of 2.54MM streams per song

David Gilmour: Rattle that Lock
average of 1.84MM streams per song

Paul Simon: Stranger to Stranger
average of 0.79MM streams per song

Eric Clapton: I Still Do
average of 0.73MM streams per song

Keith Richards: Crosseyed Heart
average of 0.46MM streams per song

In other words, the songs on Drake's record were streamed roughly TEN TIMES more than those on Frank Ocean's record, roughly TWENTY TIMES more than Radiohead's songs, about EIGHTY TIMES more than those tunes on Blue & Lonesome, and about FOUR HUNDRED TIMES more than Keith's songs on Crosseyed Heart.

But Spotify is not really built around the concept of "albums;" that's an outdated format only recognized by those of us born back when refrigerators were new. I began thinking about how often Stones songs were streamed on Spotify. Turns out, the band have in their catalog 16 songs that have been streamed more than 10MM times on Spotify:

gimme shelter 102.0MM
sympathy for the devil 95.4MM
satisfaction 93.8MM
paint it, black 89.4MM
start me up 78.2MM
beast of burden 52.8MM
angie 48.1MM
brown sugar 43.1MM
wild horses 30.2MM
you can’t always get what you want 29.7MM
honky tonk women 25.2MM
under my thumb 24.3MM
jumpin’ jack flash 20.0MM
tumbling dice 13.3MM
ruby tuesday 13.3MM
miss you 12.8MM

(Think back to that Drake album above: the Stones single most-streamed song ever clocks in at a little over 100,000,000 streams; the average of the songs on Drake's album is nearly 200,000,000 streams.)

The Stones list bears more than a passing resemblance of course to the "warhorses" which are so frequently the topic of discussion hereabouts. I was shocked by the low numbers for "Miss You," and surprised by the relatively high numbers for "Beast of Burden" and "Under My Thumb."

If you do want to look at the band's oeuvre by album, here's some info:

england’s newest hitmakers
4 songs over 1MM: not fade away, route 66, I just want to make love to you, little by little

12X5
4 songs over 1MM: under the boardwalk, time is on my side, around and around, it’s all over now

rolling stones, now!
2 songs over 1MM: little red rooster, heart of stone

out of our heads
3 songs over 1MM: the last time, satisfaction, play with fire

december’s children:
4 songs over 1MM: get off my cloud, i’m free, as tears go by, you better move on

aftermath:
5 songs over 1MM: paint it, black, stupid girl, lady jane, under my thumb, i am waiting

between the buttons:
3 songs over 1MM: she smiled sweetly, ruby tuesday, let’s spend the night together

their satanic majesties request:
4 songs over 1MM: citadel, 2000 man, she’s a rainbow, 2000 light years from home

beggars banquet:
all 10 songs over 1MM

let it bleed:
all 9 songs over 1MM

sticky fingers:
all 10 songs over 1MM

exile on main street:
all 18 songs over 1MM

goats head soup:
2 songs over 1MM: heartbreaker, angie

it’s only rock’n’roll:
3 songs over 1MM: ain’t too proud to beg, it’s only rock’n’roll, dance little sister

black and blue:
2 songs over 1MM: memory motel, fool to cry

some girls:
9 of 10 songs over 1MM: only lies under 1MM

emotional rescue:
2 songs over 1MM: emotional rescue, she’s so cold

tattoo you:
7 songs over 1MM: start me up, hang fire, slave, little t&a, tops, heaven, waiting on a friend

undercover:
2 songs over 1MM: undercover, she was hot

dirty work:
1 song over 1MM: harlem shuffle

steel wheels:
no songs over 1MM

voodoo lounge:
2 songs over 1MM: love is strong, you got me rocking

bridges to babylon:
3 songs over 1MM: anybody seen my baby, out of control, saint of me

a bigger bang:
4 songs over 1MM: rough justice, rain fall down, streets of love, laugh I nearly died

blue and lonesome:
all 12 songs over 1MM

(Spotify is skewed to new releases, of course, which is why, relatively speaking, Blue & Lonesome does as well as it does.)

Clearly, Spotify users rank the albums we think of as The Big Four, followed closely by Some Girls and Tattoo You as the band's best. Nothing terribly shocking there, I suppose.

Lastly, (and I'm sure you thought this folderol would never end), there are some formidable data on worldwide streaming at [kworb.net]. You'll see on this page that The Stones rank 3,069th--2 spots above Gene Autry!--amongst all artists on Spotify. Not to despair too much, though: these reports are based on the number of streams that an artist has on songs which have appeared at one time or another on a Spotify Top 200 chart. The Stones rarely chart at all and so most of their collective streams are considered "deep catalog" and do not show up on reports like this.

In general, as we all know, of course, classic rock artists are DOA when it comes to this brave new world. The most popular music on earth right now is being listened to billions of times. I find that mind-boggling. And even if most of that music is not my cup of tea, I think it does belie the boomer adage that music sucks, is worthless, and does not hold the importance in people's lives that it once did.

It also makes me think about what must be going through Mick's and Keith's heads when they think about "the new record." There is no chance that should this record ever appear that its songs will be streamed more than a few million times. In a very real sense, in today's terms, what that means is that the record will really only even exist for the band themselves and for an ever-dwindling cadre of die-hard fans. Everyone else will either ignore it or never even hear about it.

The Stones never sold many albums, compared to the other greats and really popular hitwonders of the day. That trend continues with streaming of songs, it seems.

However, Blue & Lonesome was #6 of most sold albums (I believe it was brick and mortar AND streaming in that mix, no?).

Also it's interesting that the list of most popular Stones-songs is almost chemically free of songs Mick Taylor played guitar on. How can it be? I only spot Angie, Wild Horses and Honky Tonk Women there...

PS: Congrats, LongBeach!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-04-27 11:58 by DandelionPowderman.

1) these thoughts have been put together over the past couple of nights at 3 am while I feed our newborn baby and fumble in the dark, and

Oh my god, that baby must eat a lot! The time tou must be busy with alone typing this all! Not thinking of the time all sorting out! Respect!

Interesting read, and congratulations on the baby LBA72!

yeah congrats and thanks.

GRRReat - very insightful!
Thx - and congratz with the new-born as well.


And yep, when reading that song stream list I immediately tought to myself: "Hmmm... Looks like y'r average setlist these days..." =o))

Well, I'm not surprised, I live w/ 10/12 year old girls and EVERYTHING is thru a phone. This generations entire life- facetimed/vlogged. They're not going anywhere, either (to concert venues)
I have to think as we extinct,
whomever programmed the robots wins.

Congratulations on another child LB :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-04-27 23:12 by 35love.

Good stuff.
Old guy lament: I miss the days when music was more of a shared experience and not a single listener with earphones.
One of my favorite memories was driving around town as a teen-ager with a bunch of guys looking for beer and listening to Hot Rocks on the 8-track player.

Sheet music sales used to make for a lucrative part of the music industry. It's still around, of course, but not with quite the same popularity since the rock era took flight, where music came to be learned by ear instead. I don't see anyone from this forum pining for the parlor music era of the 1860s.

Even if music were still only accessible in physical form and everyone still had to go to a brick and mortar retail outlet to acquire it, not many young people would be listening to the Stones or their contemporaries. Rock culture has undergone a natural demise, as differences between generations are an invariable progression of things. Most young people simply don't want to hang out in clubs or other music venues where there are guaranteed to be a large concentration of raisin heads in attendance.

At the end of the day, a saxophone is still a saxophone, a piano is still a piano, a guitar is still a guitar, a song is still a song. All the rest of it, how it's made and how it's consumed, is just engineering.

Flash ahead to Drake's 50th anniversary tour. A grandfather dressed in his hipster best from the 2010s tells his grandchildren about the good old days:

"In my day, to listen to music we didn't have to put on a pair of space goggles and zone into a virtual world from a program fed through a 3D printer. We streamed music from a cloud and listened through iPhones."

"Grand-dad, what's an iPhone?"

Good read - I mostly use it for obscure blues tunes!
Cheers

Thanks, everybody, for the good wishes re: the new baby. Altho the lil nipper is cute beyond belief and we couldn't be happier about this most recent addition to the fam, there have been more than a few moments in the middle of the night recently where we've stared bleary-eyed at each other and said: "What the @#$%& were we thinking?"

Couple of responses to individual people:

To DP: yes,one of the most enduring conundrums about The Stones is the ratio between their ability to sell records and their level of success as a live band. They made that transition to corporate-ish stadium rock effortlessly and have continued to set the standard as the decades have flown by. All on the back of what is (to the casual music lover rather than the hardcore fan) an impressive but commercially middling (compared to their peers) catalog. Also, the Blue & Lonesome numbers were for sales (of physical and digital product), not for streaming. It was a hit record in terms of sales; it was not a blip on the radar in the wider world of streaming.

To SH: yes, ultimately, "a song is still a song," indeed.

To Zagalo: it's really a remarkable service, isn't it? I fire up Spotify through the Sonos app on my phone and walk around the house dialing in a huge chunk of the entire history of recorded music at my fingertips. It boggles my mind on a regular basis!

To wonderboy: I too lament that loss of shared, communal experience of music. My buddies and I bonded one summer over a bootleg 5th gen 8-track copy of LIVEr Than You'll Ever Be.

Another Spotify thought:

It's been noted elsewhere by people much wiser than me that in the world of the internet there tends to be one winner per category (e.g., Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook) and that everybody else fights over crumbs. The internet was supposed to be a great equalizer, lowering the barrier to entry in so many ways in so many industries, and we were to see a flowering of wonderful small-scale net entrepreneurship. But that's not really where things have gone, at least so far. The big are getting bigger and the small fry, well, we'll see about the small fry ...

I wonder if this phenomenon isn't playing itself out in film and music, too? There are a few big hits (Drake, superhero movies, for example) while small to intermediate musicians and filmmakers struggle more than ever before to get any attention at all. In compiling that Spotify data from my original post, I was continually amazed at the gulf between the biggest stars and everybody else. I mean, back in the day, you had great bands like The Stones who would get outsold by a factor of two or three or even four by Michael Jackson or Led Zeppelin or Elton John or The Osmonds or who-the-@#$%&-ever. But nowadays? Christ, the biggest players in the streaming world are in an entirely different universe of popularity than everyone else.

I'm not sure what that means ... but I do sense that it's not necessarily healthy for the industry.

Healthy for the industry, no, indeed not.
Jay Z and Tidal, for instance, can't seem to win corporate even when they had Prince exclusives (you could buy tangible product from them, too)
The streaming is a response to utube, who made it all (just about) free.
In the young market, it's the gaming they want to spend money on, not music.
Music they get from utube. For free.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-04-28 07:54 by 35love.

Quote
35love
Healthy for the industry, no, indeed not.
Jay Z and Tidal, for instance, can't seem to win corporate even when they had Prince exclusives (you could buy tangible product from them, too)
The streaming is a response to utube, who made it all (just about) free.
In the young market, it's the gaming they want to spend money on, not music.
Music they get from utube. For free.

Actually, Youtube is increasingly irrelevant in music streaming. Spotify passed them in total audio streams last year and its continued growth rate threatens to leave YouTube in the dust. Plus, Spotify is much more artist-friendly, paying somewhere between two and two-and-a-half times per play what YouTube pays. It's apparently generally now thought that since people have indicated a willingness to pay a nominal monthly fee for music the ad-supported platforms like YouTube will suffer.

The question for me really is: if a platform like Spotify, where you can listen to almost anything at any time, produces a roster where the biggest stars are orders of magnitude bigger than anyone else ... is that a good thing? Since you can find and listen to almost anything on Spotify, it just seems weird to me that so many people are listening to so few artists.

Quote
LongBeachArena72
Facebook

You know what? Fecesbook can bite me! It's just a portal where not so human human beings can watch other human beings die from the detached comfort of a computer screen. Okay, just wanted to get that out there.

Now, about this Spotty Fly phenomenon. Exactly what does this mean? Am I to understand that this "streaming" business counts... hmmm, let me see if I have this straight -- because I'm not "straight" at the moment, I've had a few beers you see... -- ...but is this Spotty Fly thing only counting listens? I mean, not sales, but only listens?

Now, mind you, I bought the deluxe Stripped edition, but I haven't actually listened to it yet, after several months... In fact, I haven't even removed the plastic wrap. I just bought it for the on-sale discount that the record store offered if you bought it right away, on release. But I'll listen to it someday, maybe... But does that count? It was a sale, but does not yet qualify as a listen.

So, what about this streaming business? What does that mean? Just because you access a music stream online, does that really mean you're listening? You might click the download link, then while it starts playing you'll take your Philips Norelco bodygroom set-up into the bathroom to shave your eyebrows. You might forget all about that Drake song Spotty Fly counts as streaming and start humming a Syd Barrett tune instead. So, now, just because you're streamin', does that mean you're listenin'? Where's the guarantee?

At the end of the day, John Philip Sousa will still be leaving everyone in the dust (one of his march numbers that tops even "Yesterday" in covers), that and Felix Mendelssohn (The Wedding March).

Spotty Fly! Sounds like a gelatinous British dessert no one can eat.

And, yes, Spotty Fly counts ONLY listens. That's the point. It's designed to measure what people actually search out, cue up, and listen to, rather than what they buy and put on the shelf. And, while it takes all kinds to make up this grand pageant of life on Earth, I don't think that the Drake listener who might instead be humming Syd Barrett is statistically significant. But, you could very well be playing Spotty Fly as background music and not really paying attention. Those still count as streams. Perhaps the next iteration of Spotty Fly will measure the degree to which you are paying attention to the streams you start up ...

Paying attention to music is one of my favorite topics. I call it participatory listening. My favorite band in the world is an Australian improv combo called The Necks. They play hourlong sets, usually two per night, in small clubs over the world, and no two shows are ever alike. They may meander for up to fifteen minutes and your attention can start to wonder and you may even start to doubt ... can they do it this time? Can they find the magic? And then, because you're participating, because you are right there with them, the conjuring spell begins to work its magic and you find yourself in the midst of a truly remarkable shared experience. Because you've trained your ears and your heart and your head to really listen, you've had the great good fortune of being almost inside the creation of something very special. Spotty Fly don't mean much when stacked up against that ...

I'll tell you, LongBeach, this accessing of music on the fly does seem a bit spotty, not to mention overrated.

Does this streaming service track the unique IP addresses that access each title? I ask this because it would seem that numbers of "listens" can be artificially inflated in the same way as can YouTube views.

People with an "interest" in the product can bump up the numbers. For instance, when the Doors released their first single, Break On Through, in 1967, they got their friends to call in to Los Angeles radio stations to request it, so it got more airplay in that market than it otherwise would have generated -- the song "bubbled under" at #126 nationwide.

Another question I wonder about is that since the established music industry seems to make no money from the streaming phenomenon, then what about the artists and songwriters -- do they get compensated? Do the music publishing societies keep track of streams and acknowledge these as royalty generating?

"Paying attention to music is one of my favorite topics. I call it participatory listening." Longbeach said.
I was in a humanities English class age 18, the professor his last year teaching
and he would bring in a record player, and play some vinyl, and we were to sit the entire 1.5 hours with nothing on our desks, no talking,
ONLY LISTENING TO THE MUSIC
to teach this very lesson.

Quote
stonehearted
I'll tell you, LongBeach, this accessing of music on the fly does seem a bit spotty, not to mention overrated.

Does this streaming service track the unique IP addresses that access each title? I ask this because it would seem that numbers of "listens" can be artificially inflated in the same way as can YouTube views.

People with an "interest" in the product can bump up the numbers. For instance, when the Doors released their first single, Break On Through, in 1967, they got their friends to call in to Los Angeles radio stations to request it, so it got more airplay in that market than it otherwise would have generated -- the song "bubbled under" at #126 nationwide.

Another question I wonder about is that since the established music industry seems to make no money from the streaming phenomenon, then what about the artists and songwriters -- do they get compensated? Do the music publishing societies keep track of streams and acknowledge these as royalty generating?

It's a huge business, SH. Here are some numbers from Variety (full article at [variety.com]) for 2016:

—Streaming brought in revenue of $3.9 billion to the U.S. music industry last year. That is more than all downloads and physical formats combined.

—There are now more than 22MM paid subscribers to Spotify ($10 per month for unlimited ad-free access to everything); that's an increase of more than 50% from 2015.

—Revenue to the industry just from paid subscribers was $2.5 billion, nearly 2/3 of the total of $3.9 billion. This illustrates the increased sway of paid services like Spotify Premium and the lessening importance of "free" services like YouTube.

—Digital downloads (e.g., iTunes sales) fell 22% in 2016; sales of physical formats fell 16%. "Owning" music, either physically or digitally, is going to become a thing of the past. Music is becoming something you access anywhere at any time on any device for a monthly fee.

—From the artist's point of view, the dollars have never flowed more freely ... as long as you're a streaming superstar. Drake, for example, is rumored to have generated nearly $35,000,0000 last year from streaming alone. (It's difficult to know how much Drake himself takes home from that after labels and agents and managers have taken their cut but even if it's only 10% ... how many rock stars, even back in the day, were pulling down $3.5 million dollars in royalties per year?

—The downside to streaming, though, from the musician's pt of view, is that it's REALLY hard to make that kind of money for almost anyone but a handful of streaming superstars. Nearly half of all "active" Spotify users, for example, listen to Drake. That's just unprecedented. It's mind-boggling. And dangerous, if you value diversity and choice and a thriving under-the-radar "indie" scene. Streaming is creating HUGE stars ... and everyone else is starving. But the public has spoken and are indicating every day by what they choose to stream what they want to hear and thereby are dictating who gets paid. If you're a classic rock artist, or a jazz musician, or a classical violinist, or an improv combo from Australia, it's nearly impossible to make anything resembling a living wage from streaming services as they are currently structured.

Interesting, thanks for the info, LongBeach.

I gather from this that acquiring music via streaming is mostly a youth-oriented thing, judging by the artists who get the most streams -- I'm 50, and I can't name a single song from any of those top Spotify artists.

I prefer the "ownership" aspect of music. My manufacturer-discontinued Panasonic SL-SW940 portable CD player really packs a strong bass wallop.

Besides, I'm always a late comer to new technology formats. I only bought my first CD in 2004. I just bought my first iPhone last November.

I already pay a monthly fee for my iPhone account, and I don't want to have to pay another monthly fee just to listen to music. Once I buy a CD it's paid for -- I can listen to it for years and years. But with Spotify, you never stop paying to listen to your favorite songs -- it's the ultimate ripoff. Nor am I crazy about the idea of having each of my listens tracked by a corporate entity. It's already unsettling enough that my iTunes program tracks the number of listens each time I switch on my iPod. But at least that data aren't going anywhere -- I hope!

So, for the time being anyway, I'll steer clear of the mainstream.

man i wish i'd started spotify.

Quote
Natlanta
man i wish i'd started spotify.

No shit. When Daniel Ek sells Spotify to Amazon or Apple or Google or Facebook—which is inevitable—his payday is going to be astronomical.

Quote
stonehearted
Once I buy a CD it's paid for -- I can listen to it for years and years. But with Spotify, you never stop paying to listen to your favorite songs -- it's the ultimate ripoff.

True enough. But there's another way to look at it: how many cd's do you buy a year? If you buy more than eight or so, then you are already paying more for music per year than a Spotify Premium subscription would cost you. For $120 per year you can listen to anything you want. You can listen to eight cd's worth of music or you can sample hundreds, if not thousands, of artists that you would never otherwise have even been aware of. I am a dyed-in-the-wool vinyl guy ... but I must admit with each passing month it becomes less apparent to me that I should ever buy another record.

I guess it comes down, ultimately, to how you incorporate music into your life. I'm a part-time music and lit critic, a part-time failed experimental novelist, and the full-time stay-at-home dad to a toddler and now an infant. I honestly can't remember the last time I sat down and listened to even one side of a vinyl record uninterrupted by any other distractions. As a result, I browse and dip in here and there throughout the day and at odd hours through the night. I sample. Try out new things I've read about. Pull up old things I have a hankering for. It's a moveable feast, as opposed to a sit-down banquet. Although I am waaaaaaay outside the Spotted Eye demographic (I'm 61), I am still an ideal customer of theirs in that my lifestyle demands that although I love music almost more than life I must pick and choose and graze and flit here and there, drawing what nectar I can in fitful bursts of attention.

Quote
LongBeachArena72
how many cd's do you buy a year?

You know, I can tell you that how many CDs I've bought in the last year is astronomical. Owing, in large part, to Amazon and their sellers, of course. So many things that I never thought I would have bought, considering how the brick and mortal [I saw this typo, but thought I'd leave it -- kind of fitting, don't you think?] outlets have let me down lately.

I've got, for instance, The Complete Pop Instrumental Hits of 1959 -- and for that matter, 1960, 1961, and 1962. All the instrumental singles that charted on the Billboard charts in a given year. When was the last time you heard Percy Faith and His Orchestra doing Theme From a Summer Place? Well, I can hear it all day long if I want, and no corporation knows how many times I've heard it. I have the greatest hits of the Platters and the Flamingos, and just the other day "The Complete Soul City/Bell Singles" of The 5th Dimension. I've collected all of Dusty Springfield's albums, UK and US, from 1964 to 1974, plus a career retrospective (Simply... Dusty), as well as all of Bobbie Gentry's work. All of the Dutch band the Shocking Blue. I have enough CDs to program a radio station for a month without repeats. By next near, I'd be able to program 2 months' worth. I even have a CD set of Alan Watts lectures, Out of Your Mind (12 CDs).

And there are bootleg CD suppliers as well -- this one in Canada sent me a London audience concert of David Gilmour from April 24, 2016. It was just after Prince died, and Gilmour incorporates Purple Rain into Comfortably Numb. You won't hear that on Spotify. There's this other bootleg CD source where I get all of the out of print CD issues of albums by the Dave Clark 5.

I also found a 5-CD box set of the Walker Brothers. The genius of Scott Walker is something the Spotify generation will just have to live without. Their loss.

Well, that's just a few. To answer your question -- I've bought dozens of CDs in the last year, and I'll buy dozens more in the next.

And how about audio books? Those come out on CD. Do they have audio books streaming on Spotify, like the Big Finish productions of Dark Shadows that have been released over the past decade? Probably not, as I would imagine the average streaming attention span would be too spotty to catch something like that on the fly.

I'm an old-fashioned guy in a modern world, I value vintage things about culture, including the television I grew up on. I'll soon be starting a WordPress blog on one of my favorite TV shows, Dark Shadows. I let my passions guide me -- and these days my vintage tastes guide me into a time tunnel of my own making.

As for "failed" this and that, that's only a state of mind. You've just got to be happy with what you do, and who you are. Distractions are a part of life, but so is balance. Don't let the outside world win!

so it's basically all the music for $10/month.

that's incredible.

it's not even a huge database. i wonder how many musical pieces there are in total. (found it... approx 30 million)

there is a 'private listening' option...

[support.spotify.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-04-29 15:44 by Natlanta.

Quote
DandelionPowderman

Also it's interesting that the list of most popular Stones-songs is almost chemically free of songs Mick Taylor played guitar on. How can it be? I only spot Angie, Wild Horses and Honky Tonk Women there...

The official liner notes of Brown Sugar and Tumbling Dice (which he contributes the undisputed and excellent bass guitar as you well know) list Taylor as a guitar player and he's getting performance royalties so I'm sure he doesn't care. What's even more interesting is that after Taylor there are only three songs from the majority of their recording career.

The fact that Jimmy Miller produced nine of those is no coincidence. He knew how to get the best performance out of the Stones in the studio.

Quote
TravelinMan
What's even more interesting is that after Taylor there are only three songs from the majority of their recording career.

Alas, only chronologically speaking. In terms of actual product, the Stones were on the downhill slide toward senescence after 1974: 15 records in the first ten years of their recording career; only 11 records in the 43 years after MT departed. (Not trying to link MT to productivity, mind you.)

Well, you only need to register as a free User with your E-mail address and you have to pay nothing. You can listen to the music on sporify for free. After 20 or 30 minutes you have to listen to a 30 second advertising clip. That's all.

Quote
stonehearted

Quote
LongBeachArena72
how many cd's do you buy a year?

You know, I can tell you that how many CDs I've bought in the last year is astronomical. Owing, in large part, to Amazon and their sellers, of course. So many things that I never thought I would have bought, considering how the brick and mortal [I saw this typo, but thought I'd leave it -- kind of fitting, don't you think?] outlets have let me down lately.

I've got, for instance, The Complete Pop Instrumental Hits of 1959 -- and for that matter, 1960, 1961, and 1962. All the instrumental singles that charted on the Billboard charts in a given year. When was the last time you heard Percy Faith and His Orchestra doing Theme From a Summer Place? Well, I can hear it all day long if I want, and no corporation knows how many times I've heard it. I have the greatest hits of the Platters and the Flamingos, and just the other day "The Complete Soul City/Bell Singles" of The 5th Dimension. I've collected all of Dusty Springfield's albums, UK and US, from 1964 to 1974, plus a career retrospective (Simply... Dusty), as well as all of Bobbie Gentry's work. All of the Dutch band the Shocking Blue. I have enough CDs to program a radio station for a month without repeats. By next near, I'd be able to program 2 months' worth. I even have a CD set of Alan Watts lectures, Out of Your Mind (12 CDs).

And there are bootleg CD suppliers as well -- this one in Canada sent me a London audience concert of David Gilmour from April 24, 2016. It was just after Prince died, and Gilmour incorporates Purple Rain into Comfortably Numb. You won't hear that on Spotify. There's this other bootleg CD source where I get all of the out of print CD issues of albums by the Dave Clark 5.

I also found a 5-CD box set of the Walker Brothers. The genius of Scott Walker is something the Spotify generation will just have to live without. Their loss.

Well, that's just a few. To answer your question -- I've bought dozens of CDs in the last year, and I'll buy dozens more in the next.

And how about audio books? Those come out on CD. Do they have audio books streaming on Spotify, like the Big Finish productions of Dark Shadows that have been released over the past decade? Probably not, as I would imagine the average streaming attention span would be too spotty to catch something like that on the fly.

I'm an old-fashioned guy in a modern world, I value vintage things about culture, including the television I grew up on. I'll soon be starting a WordPress blog on one of my favorite TV shows, Dark Shadows. I let my passions guide me -- and these days my vintage tastes guide me into a time tunnel of my own making.

As for "failed" this and that, that's only a state of mind. You've just got to be happy with what you do, and who you are. Distractions are a part of life, but so is balance. Don't let the outside world win!

You're a man who knows what he likes, SH; my hat's off to you!

But, just for the record, there are nuggets from most of the artists/collections you mention above available via Spotted Fly, just in case the youngsters do want to get turned on to something new:

—Complete Pop Instrumental Hits of 1959: great collection! Not on Spotify. But every tack on this collection is on Spotify.

—Percy Faith: there are 49 Percy Faith records on Spotted Fly and another 76 compilations that he appears on. "Theme from A Summer Place" has been streamed over 4 million times, which is about a million times more than "Streets of Love" and a million times less than "Anybody Seen My Baby?"

—Platters: can't even count how many records and compilations they have on the Fy. "Only You" at 15MM and "The Great Pretender" are their most streamed tracks.

—Flamingos:6 records, 23 compilations. "I Only Have Eyes for You" has been streamed nearly 8MM times.

—5th Dimension: 13 records. "Aquarius" has been streamed neary 10MM times. Only a couple million less than "Miss You"!

—Dusty Springfield: Spotty has 8 records between '64 and '74; no Simply ... Dusty. They also have 3 versions of my favorite record of hers, Dusty in Memphis. BTW, "Son of a Preacher Man," at nearly 70 million streams, is more listened to on the Spotted Fly than all but 5 Stones songs.

—Bobby Gentry: does not appear on Spotify at all. Apparently t the artist's request. Who does she think she is, Taylor Swift?

—Shocking Blue: 3 greatest hits albums, 7 other album releases from the 60's, 70's. "Venus" has nearly 7MM streams.

—David Gilmour: no live recording incorporating "Purple Rain" on the Fy.

—Alan Watts: no spoken word on Spotty.

—Dave Clark 5: Also do not appear on Spotify, at the artist's request. Who do they think they are, Peter Gabriel?

—Walker Brothers: 7 releases, and another 7 compilations. "Sun Ain't Gonna Shine" is over 5MM streams and counting.

So, while the Fly does not have the particular releases you (rightly) treasure, it does have the numerous recordings of most of the music on those releases ... and so the Spottyflied youngsters will have every opportunity to hear those things for themselves ... in fact, they will have much more of an oppty to hear The Walker Bros and Percy Faith and Dusty than if the Fly did not exist.