Playlist: The Advertisement and Destruction of Musical Artists

Playlist: The Advertisement and Destruction of Musical Artists

By, Carl V. Johnson

& Jack W. Galliett

In the recent years a new way of organizing and listening to music has arisen. This new method is called playlists. They can be found on platforms such as Spotify, Pandora, Topsify, YouTube, Apple products, and many other platforms. A playlist is a way that you can organize music and easily access it whenever on the platform that you created it on. But what I want to look at is if playlists are destroying the musician's ability make a living, or do they support advertisement for the artist and can provide compensation?

First we should look at how the music industry has changed and become what we know today. First, it has become very digital in many ways. Here is a video talking about how the music industry we know today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PeroHX3e8k .

You could journey onto platforms like Youtube or Pandora Radio to find a new song or music video that catches your attention. Another popular program is Spotify. This program will allow you to find almost any type of music by a large number of artists and then you can follow the artist or add the song to a ‘favorite’ playlist or another playlist. These are just a few of the many programs that contain the function of creating playlists.

With a playlist, songs are being played on these platforms to give listeners an open chance to listen to any song an unlimited number of times. With this, people no longer need to buy albums because all of their favorite music will be on a playlist created by themselves or another person. With the lower amount of album sales, it will become more challenging for musicians to become self-sustaining. Musicians and bands will now have to rely on people, not necessarily followers, to play their music and tracks over and over. The reason why it is more essential to have more streams than followers is because it depend more on how much attention the video receives, or a in other words, streams or views. Throught seeing how many view a song or video has is how a company such as Youtube will compensate the artist.  How some platforms get money is that they might require that you pay a monthly fee to get special access such as no advertisements from different companies or other features, but it is usually a small fee. These fees are used to pay the people that work for the company and the artists that provide the content on their platform. Not forgetting that each platform usually has ads from other companies, the amount of money that gets returned to the artist is very small. The only way for artist to then get their song to be played more is by placing they in multiple playlists on multiple platforms in the hopes that their tracks will be listen to.

But with the concept of playlists there is an upside which is advertisment. Although there might not be as many sales when there were just CD’s and Vinyl's being sold, placing a song in multiple playlists across many platforms could possibly increase the number of people that hear and possibly purchase the track. One way that people can increase how they advertise is putting major artist’s songs into their own playlist to increase their popularity. Although it does advertise the major artist’s own song, it introduces the smaller artist’s music to an audience that enjoys the major artist. This can be very beneficial to any artist that uses this form of advertisement, but has its downfall of not just purely promoting the smaller artist.

With these forms of advertisement through playlists, artist can make a living, but it is a challenge. With the platforms that they are advertising on, they are getting very small compensation for providing the content on that platform. Within certain platforms, users can freely use the music and place the tracks in playlists of their own. This raises the question, when user of a platform that creates a playlist with an artist’s music, is it the artist’s right to get honors for providing the content of that playlist, or do they, the artist, own the playlist and get honors when anyone listens to it?

Works Cited

Dredge, Stuart. "List for Life: The Growing Role of Playlists in the Music Industry." List for Life: The Growing Role of Playlists in the Music Industry. Music Ally.com, 07 July 2015. Web. 14 Dec. 2015. <http://musically.com/2015/12/07/list-for-life-the-growing-role-of-playlists-in-the-music-industry/>.

Jazz History

Jazz History

Miles Davis once said that  “Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available”(Miles davis). Jazz throughout the years has come a long way since its early beginnings at the start at the twentieth century. Jazz has been called by many as America’s classical music. It has gone from blues all the way up to fusion jazz today.

Swing music of the 1930’s was the beating heart of the people on the dance floors. Swing uses emphasis on rhythm instruments such as the double bass and the drums. Although it does contain the rest of the normal jazz band, woodwinds and brass, there was also some string instruments such as guitar and violin. To ‘swing’ was to indicate that there was a strong groove that was felt when listening to the music. This groove could come from the fast tempo and lifting feeling that would generate from the band. Some of the most of the most notable musicians in swing jazz include Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Between the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, began the peak of swing as it sparked young blood to venture out on the dance floor or inspire people to join the band to perform on an improvised solo. Unfortunately with World War II there was a decline in numbers of band members therefore leading to smaller bands and less amount of performances. Although there was this decline, in recent years, swing has seen it largest comeback in a long time. More people are interested in dancing to swing and playing the style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vOUYry_5Nw

The 1940’s saw a new style of Jazz that developed in New York City called Bebop. Bebop was in essence the exact counter to swing. Unlike Swing, Bebop was music that was supposed to take Jazz out of the main stream of music. Bebop was music that was not supposed to be danced to but rather be listened to and was considered by many to be music that was meant for musicians instead of common people. Pioneers of Bebop include Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.  Another thing that made bebop different from Swing was the instrumentation. Bebop groups usually consisted of a small horn section that and a rhythm section which is normally drums, bass and piano. Also in Bebop there is a larger emphasis on improvisation instead of melody. Here is an example of bebop .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09BB1pci8_o

The early 60’s to the 70’s Jazz underwent another huge change with Fusion Jazz/Jazz Rock. Fusion Jazz is combination of rock style sounds with the complicated chords and chord patterns of Jazz. Similarly to Bebop, Fusion Jazz would have a mainly instrumental melody that would normally be accompanied by a long improvised section from the instrumentalist.  Some famous Jazz Fusion musicians include Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Mike Stern and Wayne Shorter. Miles Davis had a significant part in the influence of fusion jazz with an album that he released in 1968 titled Miles in the Sky. This album was  the first album to include electric instruments such as the keyboard and bass guitar.

Here is an example of fusion jazz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p5Jb8KaiUk.

Jazz today has evolved so much from the days from the Swing tunes of the 40’s. Today jazz has been inspired by other genres such as rock,funk and R&B. One of the major changes that has happened to jazz is the introduction of electric instruments which give musicians a lot more sounds than they have ever had before. One group that utilizes these new sounds is the  New York based group Snarky Puppy. Snarky puppy combines synthesizers with traditional instruments and draws from all different genres ranging from pop to rap. 

Jazz has been around for about a century and it is shocking how much the genre has changed in such a short period of time. From the groove of swing to the calm nature of Bebop, to Fusion Jazz and now Modern Jazz, evolution is strong in Jazz history.  Miles Davis was very accurate in what he said about music changing. Jazz, adapted and evolved through the times.

Bibliography:

"Jazz Fusion." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_fusion>.

"Miles Davis Quotes." Miles Davis Quotes (Author of Miles). N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/54761.Miles_Davis>.

Parker, Jeff. "THE HISTORY OF JAZZ MUSIC - BIG BAND ERA." THE HISTORY OF JAZZ MUSIC - BIG BAND ERA. Swingmusic.net, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <http://www.swingmusic.net/getready.html>.

"The Roots Of Jazz." All About Jazz. All about Jazz, n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allaboutjazz.com%2Fphp%2Ftimeline.php>.

"Style Sheets." Jazz In America. The Thelonious Monk of Jazz, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <http://www.jazzinamerica.org/jazzresources/stylesheets/10>.

"Swing Music." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_music>.