How Streaming Changed the Sound of Pop

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Streaming hasn't just changed the way we listen to music, it's changed the way that pop music sounds. After years of losses due to the death of the CD and the rise of file sharing, the music industry has finally found a profitable business in streaming services. Streaming has overtaken all other music sales. Digital music platforms are the new Virgin megastore. But these services are more than just a distribution mechanism, they have created a whole new music economy. Album sales have been replaced by "album equivalent units," a business fiction that equates 1,500 streams to one physical sale. Artists are now effectively paid by the song. With ad-supported and subscription based business models, these platforms have upended incentives so significantly that it can be heard in the songwriting. Songs are getting shorter, albums are getting longer, and there is an entirely new section of the song that draws from the classical past: the "pop overture." In this episode, Nate and Charlie are joined by Aisha Hassan and Dan Kopf to unpack the sound of pop in the streaming era. Be sure to check out their article on Quartz: "The Reason Why Your Favorite Pop Songs Are Getting Shorter." Songs FeaturedLil Pump - I Love ItBenny Blanco - Eastside ft. Khalid & HalseyKodak Black - Calling My SpiritPost Malone - Better NowLeonard Bernstein - West Side Story OvertureDua Lipa - One KissDrake - God’s PlanPost Malone - I Fall ApartAriana Grande - NasaTommy Dorsey - All The Things You Are Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.0	Welcome to Switched on Pop, I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate
0:43.5	Slone. So Nate, have you noticed this anxiety that has overtaken pop music in the last six
0:47.9	months? Which one I feel like where pop is full of anxiety?
0:52.3	So according to many, the economics of streaming is changing music so significantly right now
0:57.9	that pop may literally never sound the same again. And today I want to investigate these
1:03.8	claims by seeing how musicians are altering their sounds to make it in today's streaming
1:09.1	economy. And to do this, I've recruited Aisha Hassan and Dan Koff who have written about
1:14.4	how streaming is affecting the sound of pop for courts in a piece called The Reason Why
1:19.8	Your Favorite Pop Songs Are Getting Shorter. Aisha and Dan, welcome to the show.
1:24.0	Thanks for having us.
1:25.0	Yeah, thanks. Nice to be here.
1:26.4	This is exciting. Yes. It is.
1:28.2	Okay. So in the recent Guardian interview, mega pop producer Mark Ronson said that all
1:35.6	your songs have to be under three minutes and 15 seconds because if people don't listen
1:39.4	to them all the way to the end, they get into this ratio of non-complete herd, which
1:44.0	sends your Spotify rating down and songwriters are forced to turn out hits at short order.
1:50.2	So Aisha, can you untangle Ronson's gripe and explain what is causing so much concern?
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