From Spotifys Data Alchemist comes a comprehensive guide to musics digital revolution.
Starting with the 1990s days of vinyl and CDs and moving quickly to the explosion of new technology in the 2000s, and then onto the rapidly changing soundscape of the 2020s, YOU HAVE NOT YET HEARD YOUR FAVOURITE SONG is a fast-paced, factual look at:
How streaming has changed the musical landscape for all global music genres, from rap to punk to jazz
How people worldwide listen differently and what type of songs and artists are popular in each country
How music gets onto the streaming platforms, and what platforms like Spotify know about you as a listener
How Spotify and rivals reward artists and the record companies and the lengths some musicians go to to game the algorithm
How to exploit the fact that pretty much every song ever recorded is available now, at the touch of the button and discover new music. (Statistically, you have not yet heard your favourite song...).
With 10 free exploratory playlists downloadable by QR code
Recenzijos
"We used to sell CDs by the weight of pallets, thanks to streaming we know how our content is consumed. In this immersive book, Glenn has demonstrated what we can do with this knowledge, so other industries facing their Napster Moment can learn from his unrivalled first mover advantage" - Will Page, author of Pivot and former Chief Economist of Spotify
"If you want to know anything about how music surfaces today, how to find it, or how to create it, you will find what you need right here. And you will be highly entertained and amused in the process." Joseph Menn, Washington Post staff writer and author of All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster.
Introduction 1
PART 1: THE DISCONNECTED AGE
1. Precious Jukeboxes. Music Consumption as a Shopping Experience 9
2. The Panic and the Crash. The Internet, Napster, iTunes, iPods and the
Downloading Interregnum 13
PART 2: HOW STREAMING WORKS
3. Better Than Free. How Streaming Got People to Spend Money on Music Again
19
4. All the Worlds Music (sort of). How Music Gets Online 25
5. A Zillion Ambiguous Clicks. What Streaming Services Know About You 29
6. The Robots Have No Plan. What Algorithms Do
and Dont Do 35
PART 3: NEW FEARS
7. The New Gatekeepers. Major Labels, Playlists, More Playlists, Algorithmic
Playlists and the Playlists Your Friends Make 43
8. Ed Sheeran Is Taking My Money. How Streaming Pays Artists 51
9. Mercenaries and Fan Armies. Cheating and Devotion vs Math, and the Casual
War Against Hilariously Implausible Fraud 67
10. Our Inertia Exposed. Organic Listening and Social Equity 79
11. Chill Is the New Muzak. The Borders Between Background and Foreground
Sounds 87
12. Constant Engagement. The Death and Survival of The Album 95
13. Undemanded Music in an On- Demand World. The Uncertain Fate of Jazz,
Classical, Experimental and Other Quiet, Noble Arts 107
14. Renting the Things You Love Most. Fluctuating Availability and the
Impermanent Record of the Streaming Catalog 117
15. The Best Bad Answers. How Algorithms Fail 127
PART 4: NEW JOYS
16. All the Worlds Listening (sort of). Streaming as a Global Collective-
Wisdom Collector 145
17. No Walls Without Doors. What Music Tells Us About Each Other and the
World 159
18. Cities In and Out of Hyperspace. Genres as Distributed Communities of
Interest 175
19. Borrowed Nostalgia. Other Peoples No-Longer-Secret Music 191
20. Text as Texture. Hip Hop Literally Everywhere, and How to Listen to Rap
You Cant Understand 199
21. New Punks. Weird and/ or Scary Music that Sounds Normal to the Kids, or
Vice Versa 209
22. Every Noise at Once. Music as an Infinite Resource 223
PART 5: NEW QUESTIONS
23. What Is Art Worth? How Should the New Economy Work? 243
24. What Is Your Love Worth? How Do You Listen Morally? 251
25. Algorithmic Responsibility. How Do You Encode Conscience? 259
26. What Now? We Have All the Worlds Music. What Do We Do Next? 269
AFTERWORDS
Acknowledgements 275
10 Playlists of Somebodys Favorite Songs 277
Glenn McDonald is a software engineer, algorithm designer, music evangelist and former long-time Data Alchemist at Spotify, the worlds biggest music streaming service. From the 1990s, he was one of the earliest and most prolific explorers of how to use data to understand and amplify our collective and individual experiences of music.
His work at the US music-intelligence startup The Echo Nest helped bring about its 2014 acquisition by Spotify, which put him at the algorithmic heart of streaming music and the listening habits of 500 million people.
His website Every Noise at Once (everynoise.com) has an unprecedented computational map of the worlds music genres, and a large and growing variety of other tools for exploring music and joy. His personal blog (furia.com) offers occasional commentary on this, and various other digressions. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
